Doc-t
Forum Replies Created
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This report is great news! Thank you for sharing. Would you add how long he has been on the new diet program? I am guessing one year.
I understand that it takes determination to stick to it through a hard winter. However, the reward is a healthy horse. What does your vet think?
Of course, now you are obligated to tell others . . . LOL. Let the fun begin!
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I have not heard of a bad odor from feeding SBM to any horse.
Usually, an odor comes from bacteria on the skin that has overgrown, such as excessive sweat. But the real culprit is the body’s microbiome, which is not “normal” for the area. The most common cause of body dysbiosis is excessive cleaning with antibacterial soap (or any kind of soap). Coupled with poor nutrition, skin with dysbiosis can stink when a change in diet or stress is added.
How SBM is affecting this horse is curious to me. I would need to ask questions about the grooming/bathing and a timeline of the feeding changes. I am certainly interested in the results of removing the SBM and how long it took to resolve. However, it would be important not to change anything else, such as increasing the bathing to clear up the smell.
Remember that bedding can affect some horses. Was there a change in this? Are other horses fed SBM at this barn and starting to smell, or are they unaffected? This case needs a detective or at least a lot of questions asked. Remember, correlation is not causation, so we can’t make assumptions, especially when something seems to be a one-off.
Keep me posted about the removal of SBM results.
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-Is there anything you would add or change about your diet protocol when access to pasture isn’t an option? Such as Vitamin E or continuing SBM indefinitely due to nutrients lost in the drying process of hay? (this is common where I live. Drought ridden area, small property- the pastures have been trodden down to year-round dry lots without a viable option for rotation and irrigation)
They only need the SBM plus forage, mined salt and well water. The forage will supply the fuels of glucose and fat while the SBM will provide the high-quality protein needed to maintain the body and the structural and processing functions. So, yes, you will need to give the SBM for life. There are differences in how much they need depending on age and workload. This would be a good question for the next AMA!
-As grass hay becomes astronomically expensive and difficult to locate, is increasing the rate of alfalfa hay from the recommended 4lbs a safe option?
Many people prefer alfalfa to grass as their hay source. It is dependent on the region you live in. I personally don’t favor one over the other, but all legumes provide more nitrogen which helps the bacteria make more amino acids. Yes, this is a new idea I just learned that consuming nitrogen in ruminants amplifies the amount of protein they take in. While horses are not ruminants, both are pure herbivores with gut bacteria good at digesting plants. It might be reasonable to think that adding alfalfa (or any legume) may increase the total quantity of amino acids available to the horse. Is anyone interested in sending millions of dollars to a university to research this? Until then, most horses like to eat it!
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Hey there Kay – Glad you’re here!
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Thank you for having your horse on a non-inflammatory diet, plus added protein. This diet will help your colt throughout his life.
Soft tissue injury occurs as acute trauma (a direct blow) or a chronic injury from overuse (common in working horses such as racehorses). If from trauma, the injury usually heals quickly, and the diet he is on now should be fine. However, if it is from chronic overuse, the tendon is already poorly made and will need more protein to help repair plus strengthen the rest of the tendon. In other words, the horse needed the addition of high-quality protein before the injury occurred.
I’m glad to hear your vet is on board with this diet. Seeing is believing! Doc T
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I am not aware of any treatments for sidebone fractures other than surgery. Surgery may not help, either. Bones need about four months to heal, provided the fractured pieces are immobilized. However, there is a lot of movement in the hoof.
One thing to remember is that “sidebone” is the ossification of the lateral cartilage. What triggers this is not understood, but the cartilage is not a bone. Usually, the mineralization of anything requires a matrix to receive the Ca plus the trigger, which is stress (piezoelectric currents) that attract Ca. Adding SBM and removing inflammatory ingredients will help to strengthen the hoof capsule, which, in turn, may give more support to the underlying structures. This should reduce the need to ossify the cartilage but requires a minimum of a year. In the meantime, reducing the stress on the hoof through weight reduction, work reduction and supportive shoeing is all we have.
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If the side bones are only seen on radiographs but are not causing a problem, then I wouldn’t worry.
Deposition of bone is a result of forces applied to the bone. These forces create piezoelectric currents that attract calcium and form more bone, which is why all bones are curved and have bumps. I also have “bone spurs” on every knuckle of my hands caused by increased forces. They cause zero problems but are there because I use my hands in my profession, strengthening the ligament attachments to the bones.
Altering the pH of the blood via vinegar will affect the absorption of calcium from food, but it should not affect the deposition of calcium where needed.
If the sidebones are causing lameness, this is another story. These can become painful and create sores at the coronary band. These need to be addressed by your veterinarian and farrier.
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Please send me some topics that YOU are interested in discussing – Doc T
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You’re welcome!
There is no need to adjust the hay right now; however, if you start to see additional body fat, you will need to reduce the amount of hay fed daily. Remember that hay is last summer’s grass, and you should reduce the amount given (or soak it to remove the sugar) through the dormant winter months to mimic nature. This reduction allows for hormesis, which cleans up inflammation within the cells.
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Welcome!! Here are some thoughts:
1) as a member, you have access to the nutrition course so dig in!
2) A 17h horse probably weighs about 1200 to 1400 pounds (lb BW). If she has excess body fat and you want to reduce that, feed 1.5% body weight in forage. This rate calculates to be 21 pounds of forage at 1400 lb BW. However, if she is lean at 1400 lb BW, feed 2.0% BW in forage (28 lb).
You are now feeding 21 lb Timothy hay plus 4 lb alfalfa = 25 lb forage PLUS what she eats for 2 hours outside. Depending on her body fat and your goals, you are either overfeeding her or maintaining her.
3) Scheduling feeding is a human concept. We don’t allow for hormesis, a period to rest the digestive tract, and all the cells to repair and clean up. Humans practice time-restricted feeding (intermittent fasting), but we shy away from this in our horses. There is no proof that horses should always have forage in front of them. In my opinion, horses with excess body fat are probably on their way to metabolic syndrome just like humans, especially when sedentary. Hormesis helps reduce the inflammatory effects of metabolic syndrome, such as removing free radicals.
A 6-year-old is like a teenager with the ability to eat everything in the house and not get fat. Then, as they turn 30, they start gaining body fat and developing health issues. Many report cardiovascular damage as early as 30 years, so the damage we see later in life begins in young humans and horses.
If your horse is an athlete, eliminate all inflammatory foods (you have done this) and reduce the sugar of hay fed all year. Remember, hay is last summer’s grass with all the sugar of a summer pasture now fed in winter when there should be low sugar. As you go through the nutrition course, you will learn about gut microbe digestion of cellulose into fat, creating an efficient fuel.
4) Minerals such as selenium (Se) require amino acids (the building blocks of protein) to be absorbed, so adding soybean meal (SBM) will help with that. Everyone claims they are low in Se where they live, yet I don’t see Se deficient horses. Additionally, I don’t believe we have a Vet E deficiency but rather an increased consumption of Vet E (proven in the Morgan breed). Removing inflammation and adding the required amino acids may alleviate this.
5) There is no need to gradually reduce the grain and supplements if they are all inflammatory. The sooner they are removed, the better.
6) Your own eyes tell you that your mare had inflammation (better hair coat, loss of skin bumps). But changes in a 6-year-old are not eye-popping like in a chronically inflamed and protein deficient 12-year-old. You are lucky because you have started early before any damage has occurred.
Congratulations! Remember to keep a journal because time will slip by, and you will begin to think that adding something, as suggested by marketing teams, will “help” your horse. Going back to read about your mare’s condition at the old barn, then the transitions you see as you go through the next 12 months will help keep you on track.
Remember, there is a podcast and the replays of the rounds – all filled with info to help you understand this better. Again, welcome! Doc T
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Hi there, and thanks for asking this question. SBM (soybean meal) is a worldwide manufactured product, and cattle are the primary target for distribution. The protein’s amino acids vary in the distribution in ruminants and monogastric animals (swine, horses, humans). Cattle indeed drives the SBM research; however, SBM as an ingredient is the most abundant plant protein made for all animals.
Your question is about quality control in the process of making SBM. There should be a standard to ensure that in the heating step, all manufacturers are equal. As you discovered, they are not. Under-heating and over-heating both affect the availability of certain proteins. Moreover, if the manufacturer focuses on SBM for ruminants, the process might be different for swine and horses. It is frustrating as a horse owner to stay afloat in a sea of uncertainty. But I might have something here to help.
Horses are fed grains, supplements and one or two types of grasses or legumes. With a diet like this, it is clear that the amount of high-quality protein needed for maintenance, growth, or repair is absent. While adding a particular SBM versus another source of SBM may offer variable levels of amino acids, all SBM add the amino acids not found in a grass and grain diet fed without high-quality protein.
Therefore, it isn’t a matter of trusting a SBM manufacturer to follow a process but rather assuming that any SBM will be in the “ballpark” and provide the essential amino acids missing in the diet being fed without SBM. It isn’t perfect. Imagine your house is on fire, but the fire department won’t spray any water on it because the water pressure isn’t high enough, even though the pressure they have would do something to put the fire out. Any of the different manufacturers of SBM will be beneficial for your horses.
However, there are a few problems with the SBM available for horses. The biggest of these is availability. Many horse owners have difficulty finding any SBM within an hour of their farm. The second problem is some manufacturers don’t make a clean products. Foreign grains, chunks of mold, and unidentified pieces have been found in bags where owners purchased sieves for screening the SBM before feeding. Finally, some manufacturers print on the bag’s tag, “Do not feed to horses.” Southern States is one distributor that does this, but in several letters to them, they replied that they purchase SBM as an ingredient and the SBM in the bag with the warning label is the same SBM used in their commercial horse feed. Further, they said they indicated the warning was to discourage horse owners from feeding SBM as the only source of nutrition.
I have a 50-year history of feeding SBM to horses, and just about every feed manufactured for horses has SBM as an ingredient. All SBM is heated, usually with steam, to neutralize the enzyme trypsin inhibitor. I only recommend de-hulled soybeans because of the potential lectins in the hulls of all seeds. All SBM has their oil extracted, usually with hexane, thoroughly removed due to EPA regulations. Your horse only gets the heated, de-hulled and oil removed soybean – the definition of soybean meal.
I found some resources searching for “agricultural engineers soybean meal.” It is a huge business in America.
https://agricsite.com/soybean-meal-for-animal-feed/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/soybean-meal
https://www.fas.usda.gov/commodities/soybeans
Your last sentence says it all: “My horse, a 15-year-old OTTB, is on this diet and doing well.”
Doc T
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Can you describe what “reacted badly” means?
In humans, adding coconut oil can be tricky. As I type this, I have caprylic acid in my coffee. This is an 8-carbon length fatty acid that comes from coconut oil. The brand is Bulletproof “Brain Octane.” Here is what is behind this.
Coconut is basically a non-inflammatory fruit oil like avocado and olive. It is good to avoid seed oils like corn, vegetable, canola, etc. With coconut oil, there are a few different lengths of fatty acids and some of them can be less effective in creating ketones. By the way, this is why I add caprylic acid to my coffee (plus butter). These add ketones immediately without adding any insulin which provides enormous energy. Ketones are also known as the “fourth fuel.” Maybe this would be a good podcast!
There is a downside to adding coconut oil to human food. It will cause diarrhea. Adding it must be done slowly over time. Start with a teaspoon and slowly work your way up from there. I suspect that in horses, adding a good dose from the start caused digestive upsets.
There is a product for horses called “CocoSoy” oil which a lot of people use. Soybean oil is a seed oil and is inflammatory. It is removed in the process of making soybean meal. Further, why are people adding any oil to the food of horses? The common answer is to help the hair coat shine. We humans used to grease our hair back in the 1950s but the secret to shiny hair is (you guessed it), to stop feeding inflammatory ingredients and add high-quality protein (soybean meal). We must remember that horses are NOT humans! They are hindgut fermenting and thus can digest cellulose effectively into all the fatty acids they need.
I hope this answered your question. Please come back and describe what “reacted badly” means because if it wasn’t digestive upset, I will need to dig into this further.
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Send your vet to any of my materials on Cushing’s and the use of SBM. I have plenty written and on my podcast (The Horse’s Advocate Podcast).
Next month’s Rounds with Doc T (November 28th, 2022) is on Cushing’s disease in horses.
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Thanks for this update. It is hard to give excess protein in the diet (at least in humans). 1 pound of SBM raises the total protein to just the minimum, so I don’t believe it is excess protein.
If you bathe the horse, does the odor go away? If not, then where is the smell coming from? If it resolves with bathing, the microbiome (skin?) is affected somehow. It would be interesting to test the SBM/odor without the probiotic.
Other than doing a thorough elimination test, I can offer no advice on this. I have never heard of an odor from consuming protein or, specifically, SBM in horses. It forces me into a genetic explanation, which I don’t like to do. Please let us know what you find as you progress through your investigation as well as with the seasonal changes or if you choose another protein source (pes, whey, hemp, man-made amino acids).
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@KrissyHumptyDooNT – We have little experience feeding lupins to horses here in America. In AU, its’ use is only for 30 to 40 years. In addition, little research has been done on the bioavailability of the protein in horses making its dosing unclear.
Lupins are a legume like alfalfa, peanut, and soybean. I can tell that feeding sweet lupin seems OK for horses, while other species of lupins may not be healthy. The same goes for raw soybeans, though I saw one report where horses turned out in a soybean field in South America seemed OK. SBM is a processed soybean denaturing an enzyme (trypsin inhibitor) in the raw bean that prevents the horse’s use of amino acids. I wonder if this may also occur in lupins.
From Hygain’s website, I understand that their “micro” processing of lupins makes it “more digestible,” causing the release of any sugar (starch) to occur earlier in the process. This keeps the sugar away from the hindgut, which, they theorize, decreases hindgut inflammation. However, releasing sugar in the small intestine should be avoided in horses with insulin resistance, metabolic disease and laminitis.
The protein content of lupins is less (in %) than SBM, so more needs to be fed. I do not know the economics of this. In addition, the amino acid profile is different, specifically lower in methionine, which is needed to make good keratin (hooves and hair).
In light of the SBM working, why change to an unknown protein source? If SBM is unavailable, maybe try lupins, but keep good records and report back to us.
Here is a link to what I thought was a good article on lupins: https://ker.com/equinews/lupins-horse-feeds/
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The gut microbiome and its relationship with our bodies are fundamental to our health—disease results from our body’s immune reaction to this relationship (inflammation). The foods and medicines placed into this gut environment determine the microbiome’s population and the immune response. When correct, health occurs.
Probiotics, like all nutraceuticals, abound with good, useful products and bad and also useless ones. Adding bacteria that don’t belong can be detrimental, while adjusting to the proper ratios is beneficial. Unfortunately, what works for one may not work for others.
Interestingly, some research has found that those with Bifidobacterium sp. do not get COVID-19 (any version), while those without it do.
While there is more to learn, the evidence is clear; health comes from a healthy microbiome.
The added microbs in the probiotic need to get through the stomach’s defenses. Only those protected should be taken; very few, if any, have been proven to do this in horses.
More unbiased research is needed before I believe that probiotics are useful in horses; however, reducing carbohydrates in their diet will help to reset the gut microbiome.
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I’m glad you’re enjoying the nutrition course! Thank you!
Grass, legumes, grass hay, and legume hay are all the same: they all have non-structural carbohydrates (NSC, starch, sugar, fructans) and structural carbohydrates (SC, cellulose, non-digestible fiber). All these definitions complicate things because they are sugars (carbohydrates, carbon+hydrogen+oxygen). However, you can identify the two groups of carbohydrates in another way.
NSCs are digestible sugars that can be broken down into glucose or fructose using enzymes and placed into the metabolism, and used as fuel to drive the production of energy and promote life at the cell level. All of this by the animal consuming them; horses, humans, etc.
SCs are non-digestible sugars in all animals because they have no enzymes to digest them. Instead, the bacteria in the digestive system (usually the hindgut consisting of the cecum and colons) can digest these fibers and turn them into short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs). The animal can then absorb the SCFAs into the body and use these as a fuel to create energy through a different pathway than sugars.
The trick to feeding pasture and hay to horses is to balance their needs for fuel with the type and amount of raw material they can access. To add body fat for winter, the horse needs to eat more NSCs. To reduce body fat, the horse needs to eat fewer NSCs. It is this simple concept where horse owners adjust the percentage of pasture and hay and know the content of each—the eyes seeing the results of the decisions.
For protein consumption, two rules need to be understood: quality and quantity. Not all proteins have the same amino acid (AA) profile. Remember that AAs are like letters; without all the letters available, you cannot make all words. This letter and word analogy applies to proteins, so feeding a wide variety of the essential amino acids (EAAs, the amino acids the horse cannot make but need to ingest)) is necessary for a horse to thrive. Unfortunately, pasture and hay are only “good quality” proteins because they do not have a complete EAA profile. In addition, the proteins in pasture and hay are not absorbed well (about 50%), so the amount of protein used by a horse is about half of what they provide. This poor absorption of protein is why all grazing animals need to eat throughout the day; to ingest enough protein to meet their daily needs.
The other rule of proteins is the quantity to eat daily. The rule of thumb is between 0.5 and 1.0 grams per 1 pound of lean body weight (LBW) (1.1 to 2.2g per kilogram BW). This calculation becomes tricky because if you feed the maximum protein daily, but it is of good or poor quality, you are not meeting the daily requirements of EAA for the horse. Therefore, providing a high-quality protein, such as soybean meal (SBM), is essential to get the AAs into the horse daily.
The bottom line for feeding a 1400 lb (636 kg) horse is to provide an adjustable amount of pasture and hay, depending on if you want to increase or decrease body fat) and 700 g to 1400 g of total protein. If the pasture and hay provide 10% good quality protein and only 50% gets absorbed, the net is 5% protein. If your horse eats 28 lb of hay and pasture combined, the total protein is (28 x 10% protein) 2.8 pounds, but the net absorbed protein is half of this or 1.4 pounds. Converting 1.4 lb gives you 635 g of protein. This total amount of protein is less than the daily requirement, but remember, it also misses many of the EAAs. Adding 1 lb (0.5 kg) of SBM will add 174 g of high-quality protein and will also raise the total protein intake to (635 + 174) 809 g putting the total within the objective range (700 g to 1400 g). Each increment of SBM will help add more high-quality protein with all the EAAs needed for growth, performance and life. Keeping daily protein from exceeding the maximum range will keep the kidneys functioning correctly because this protein will be used and not excreted in damaging amounts through the kidneys.
Where horse owners fall short on these feeding concepts include 1) they don’t see the chronic protein loss as lost muscle covered by body fat, and 2) they don’t recognize the chronic protein loss until it has exceeded the horse’s ability to remain healthy (illness, unsoundness). However, adding enough high-quality protein and limiting the NSCs during the winter will yield a thriving horse that will last longer with longer usefulness.
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Chris – Any changes with Ben with the warmer weather and better grass?
I can understand any hesitation with diagnosing and treating when there is a lack of confidence in vet care or “the system.” However, until making the diagnosis, it is hard to shoot in the dark.
Shedding a lot of parasite eggs is interesting (FEG or fecal egg count). Did you test the other horse? Have you tested the FEG in the past, either in spring or at any different season? Some parasitologists believe that shedding is a natural event and that screening for a shedding horse doesn’t correlate with a horse with a disease. Interesting. With your closed herd, it is safe to assume that your horses have been carrying a parasite population all along. Herbal remedies are not effective. The only “natural” approach to ridding the parasites is to pick up all the piles regularly, at least every 3rd day and throughout the year.
I agree with your doubt about the test for Cushing’s disease, as this is confusing. It varies with the time of year. Pergolide treatment has some side effects that don’t harm the horse, but it is effective in reversing the cortisol levels in horses. However, it doesn’t treat the root cause, the underlying metabolic syndrome, believed to be the cause in humans but may be associated in horses. While often confused with insulin resistance (IR), Cushing’s disease is not IR. However, decreasing dietary sugar decreases signs of metabolic syndrome in humans and horses. Also, horses reduce their need for Pergolide, according to horse owners working with their veterinarians on this issue.
One of the most obvious questions is whether Ben’s age is accurate. His chronic weight loss, despite your great care, usually indicates an underlying condition. Add to this the high egg count and lack of shedding, and you will need to look elsewhere from just a diet as a cause of the weight loss. However, a horse nearing the end of life does fit the bill. If this is so, and with winter coming in 6 months, you will need to adjust what you feed him so he can do well in the future, including providing extra calories.
Adding Coolstance adds calories and avoids starch, but adding starch isn’t bad if there is body fat loss. Excess daily glucose creates body fat, so adding some whole grains without byproducts may be needed in Ben’s situation. De-hulled oats (race horse oats) and corn are traditional grains and, when used for this purpose, should be OK as long as you don’t let him get too fat. Gut inflammation should be minimum, but you can keep an eye on that (behavior, squirts, gas, acting uncomfortable, etc.). I would consider this before winter but after seeing how the summer grass affects him. Continue the SBM as all horses still need high-quality protein in their diets.
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Can you help me understand what was “not at all helpful?” Then, when you get a moment, please explain so I can correct any issue.
Many people have contacted me saying that SBM is hard to find, and when they do find it, there can be quality issues. Some people travel for over an hour to find their SBM. Locally, for me, the SBM is of high quality, abundant, inexpensive and less than 3 miles away. Many have found SBM in Africa and, as you say, in the UK with no quality issues.
After reading the material in the links, I was surprised at the variety in manufacturing. Archer Daniels Midland seems to be the largest global manufacturer and distributor of SBM and may have a more standardized process. However, there are smaller, local companies whose manufacturing processes may be different. I think the original question was why there are differences between manufacturers. It may be which animals they are focused on or the company’s size. However, I believe horses consuming any clean SBM will benefit despite the slight differences.
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Inflammation can show in different ways. The skin is the largest organ and is also the most common site for showing the effects of inflammation. Sweet itch is an excellent example of this.
I guess that the coconut oil she gave to her horses was of poor quality with “other things” in it. Pure coconut oil should not cause a skin reaction.
The dose for a human is 1 TEASPOON to start with. Five teaspoons might be a good starting point if a horse is five times our weight. I would guess that the amount of the coconut oil in question given to these horses was more – just a guess because most supplements for horses are used in more significant amounts.
Remember I said I take 2 TABLESPOONS of 8 carbon length coconut oil (caprylic acid). If math is used to extrapolate the dose, this will be 10 Tbs for a 1000-pound horse. Based on science, the reactions a horse would have or the amount needed are unknown. Getting this fractionated medium-chain triglyceride (MCT) oil for horses would also be expensive.