Is protein heating in horse feed?

making them potentially more difficult to handle and ride!
If nonathletic horses with low exercise levels are fed heating feeds this can also be detrimental to their health. Feeding higher energy feeds inappropriately can result in obesity.
What is nonheating feed?
In contrast a nonheating feed is one that is less likely to produce excitable behaviour in horses when fed in appropriate amounts. Following on from our discussion about race horses having high energy needs due to their huge expenditure retired racehorses differ. Retired racehorses no longer in work need lower energy levels to ensure maintenance and this can be sourced from nonheating feeds containing oils and fibres as the main source of energy. A horse fed a lower energy diet may have more roughage in their diet which still remains a good source of protein. It is also popular for horse owners to feed balancers and they contribute a small amount of energy starch and sugar to their diet meaning that they too have no heating effect.
Conclusion
To conclude I hope that this article has provided more of an insight into heating and nonheating feeds. The biggest difference is that heating feeds result in horses receiving a diet much higher in energy compared to nonheating feeds. Its all about the energy not the protein! Diets higher in energy should only be fed to horses that are undergoing intense exercise or work levels otherwise it can result in obesity and potentially undesirable excitable behaviours.