Creating the Right Mix: Understanding Nutrients in a Horse's Diet

can provide a number of other benefits to your horse. A higher fat diet can give your horse a nice shiny coat. Adding liquid fats like oils to concentrates can help reduce dust thus lowering irritation for horses sensitive to dust in their environment. Fat can also be used to replace calories for horses that must be on a lowNSC diet.
Horses on a forageonly diet will consume very little fat. Grass and hay simply do not contain a lot of fat. Similarly grains also do not contain a lot of fat. So where do we find fat in the horses diet? Pelleted feed is one source and the amount of fat will vary depending on the product typical range is 515 percent fat. There are certain products that are designed to add a lot of energy to the diet which are typically sold as highfat products and can contain up to 30 percent fat. The fat found in pelleted feed can come from sources such as flaxseed or rice bran. Oil is another excellent way to add fat to a horses diet while there are many types of oil you could use most commonly vegetable corn or canola oil is used. This oil can be used to topdress grain or pellets.
There has been recent interest in specific fats called omegas. Omega3 alphalinolenic acid and omega6 linoleic acid are essential fatty acids which means they are required by the horse and must be supplied by the diet. As long as your horse is receiving a balanced diet they should be receiving enough omegas in their diets. But omega3 and omega6 are of special interest due to their roles in the inflammatory pathway in the body. Omega3 is considered antiinflammatory while omega6 is considered proinflammatory. Both are necessary in the body for

normal physiological processes but current research is ongoing to see if there are health benefits to adding additional omega3 fats in the diet of horses.
If adding extra fat to your horses diet it is important to do so slowly. It should take up to 23 weeks for you to add fat to the diet. When adding oil start with ¼ cup total each day and gradually add an additional ¼ cup every few days until the desired amount is reached. Divide the total fat evenly between meals. No more than 12 cups of oil or 20 percent of the dietary energy needs of the horse should be added. If using rice bran make sure to select stabilized rice bran as unstabilized rice bran can go bad quickly. Follow the same protocol to add it to the diet gradually.
Proteins
Proteins play a variety of important roles in the body. While many people associate proteins with their part in building muscle proteins in the body are also important for communication as hormones and enzymes structure as muscle and collagen transport of nutrients in the blood and buffering the pH acidity of the body. Proteins are composed of chains of amino acids while some amino acids are made by the horse other amino acids must be provided in the horses diet and these are known as essential amino acids. Essential amino acids include histidine leucine isoleucine lysine phenylalanine threonine tryptophan methionine and valine. On many feed tags for commercial horse feeds you will find some of these essential amino acids listedin particular lysine.
Protein can be found in many different places in the horses diet. While forage will contain protein the amount can vary based on the species and maturity of the forage. In general legumes such as alfalfa or clover will contain more protein