Baileys’ feeding advice for managing ulcer-prone horses
If your horse has special dietary requirements, finding a suitable feed can be a minefield. Baileys Horse Feeds advises on feeding horses prone to gastric ulcers
MANAGEMENT AND DIET can play a big part in helping to control the occurrence of equine gastric ulcers. Feeding an appropriate high fibre and low starch diet is the key to helping your horse stay comfortable as starch, from cereals, can make the stomach and digestive environment more acidic. With Baileys’ help you’ll have a much better understanding of which feeds and forage will suit your individual horse’s needs the best.
Forage first
Providing ad-lib forage reduces stress by allowing your horse to do what comes naturally – that is, chew. Chewing also produces saliva, which has a buffering (neutralising) effect on stomach acid. Fibre in the stomach can act as a physical barrier, too, helping to prevent acid splashing onto the vulnerable stomach lining – it’s also essential for the overall health of the digestive system. Time out at grass is important for similar reasons, so every horse should have as much daily turnout as possible, with living out 24/7 being the ideal.
Maintaining fibre intake
For hard-working horses who have limited access to pasture and may not be good hay/haylage eaters, providing alternative forage is important to increase fibre intake. Alfalfa Blend and Alfalfa Plus Oil are ideal for providing digestible fibre and have natural acid-buffering properties, while soaked Speedi-Beet or Fibre-Beet are also very useful. These can all be fed in separate buckets from the compound feed, to add choice and encourage natural foraging behaviour.
Concentrate feeding
BETA’s new feed approval mark is designed to help you identify which feeds are suitable
if your horse is prone to gastric ulcers. When you see this logo, it means the starch and sugar contents in the feed are low enough that, when fed according to recommendations, they’ll deliver very low levels, according to parameters identified by specific research. If you’re not sure about the levels of starch in a feed, take a look at the labels: Low starch would probably be 10–12% and below Reduced starch is 12–22% Competition mixes can be around 30% starch As with so many aspects of equine nutrition, it’s important to look at the whole diet, rather than focus on only one aspect or nutrient; this is when talking to an experienced nutritionist is advisable.
Higher calorie requirements
When only a moderate reduction in starch intake is necessary, or if your horse needs some cereal intake for performance, All-Round Endurance Mix or Slow Release Condition & Competition Mix provide slowrelease calories, support work to the highest level and have reduced starch content (22%) compared to other competition feeds. If low starch is required, Ease & Excel is a BETA-approved, fully balanced, low starch (8%), high specification feed, formulated to help promote and maintain condition and support performance, while still being low in starch. It’s most appropriate when calorie requirements are higher, so it’s ideal for working and competing horses and those who need to gain condition.
Moderate calorie requirements
When calorie requirements are moderate, lower energy feeds like Keep Calm are ideal. This fully balanced quick-soak feed contains Speedi-Beet and is low in starch but high in fibre and supports up to medium workloads. Care must be taken with soaked feeds to ensure the full recommended amount is fed – they are often quite bulky so the volumes can look large. If underfed, your horse will miss out on vitamins and minerals and not be getting a fully balanced diet.
Lower calorie requirements
Good doers must still be kept chewing, even though forage intake may need controlling to avoid weight gain. Choose coarser hay or haylage that’s more mature and should be less nutritious, yet still provide enough fibre to chew. Smallholed nets can make forage last longer; also consider soaking forage to leach out water-soluble carbohydrates and reduce overall calorie content. For working horses, BETA-approved Performance Balancer is ideal when calorie requirements are lower, and provides quality protein, vitamins and minerals without unwanted calories and with little starch. You can feed it with some lowcalorie chaff, like Light Chaff, or a small amount of Speedi-Beet, which is naturally low in starch. As a bonus, beet pulp is high in soluble fibre and pectin, which, in acidic conditions like those in the stomach, changes its structure to one similar to mucus and has been show to bind to, and thicken, the stomach mucosa, thereby protecting it from acid attack.
A flexible feed
For a flexible low starch diet, feed the recommended amount of balancer to supply vitamins, minerals and quality protein, then add non-starch calorie sources as required. Alfalfa Plus Oil gives a reasonable level of calories from highly digestible fibre, but as it is light, volumes can creep up when calorie requirements are higher, testing the more limited appetite. Speedi-Beet and Fibre-Beet will also deliver reasonable calorie levels with low starch content – although, again, the volume can overface some horses. A combination of these fibre sources plus a high oil supplement like Outshine can prove useful as oil is a concentrated source of slow-release, non-starch energy, which can increase overall calorie intake without significantly adding to the volume fed. Alternatively, a combination of Ease & Excel and balancer will allow calorie levels to be adjusted, while keeping the diet balanced to deliver optimum nutrition.
Good management
Good feed management will help reduce the risk of digestive or nutrition-related upsets, whatever the feed’s energy source. Keeping meal sizes small will help ensure the stomach is never overfaced. Divide your horse’s daily compound feed into as many small feeds as possible. If meal sizes become larger than around 1.8kg per feed, then lower starch, higher fibre feeds are more appropriate.