Feed to Succeed:Supplements for the Endurance Horse

I adore the Kentucky Equine Research Institute. Yesterday I attended a webinar by Dr. Kathleen Crandell, discussing the 10 major concepts of feeding the performance horse. I also had to admire her patience, as storms were causing her some (most likely) truly annoying technical difficulties. I'd still like to thank her for donating her time !

For many years, I found I'd settle down to read about nutritional information in regards to feeding performance horses and zzzzzz. I have known the basics for years, but reading page after page of what THIS supplement can do for your horse- just made me want to cry, along with the overpowering headache I would achieve.

Now that I'm older, and hopefully have a longer attention span, I find I can march through a bit more of it at a time, and then.. yep.. zzzzzz

So I cheat now. Between KER and MSU's eXtension portal - and their research papers/webinars and podcasts- there is a veritable mountain of information available.

Given the unique demands of our sport, and the need to maintain our horses in top physical condition - it certainly behooves us as both horse owners and competitors to take full advantage of the valuable information so willingly given out by these institutions.

Which brings me to my post (finally you all say)
KER:

Feed to Succeed: Supplements to Help the Endurance Horse

The endurance horse is unique among all other equine athletes. Because of the prolonged demands placed upon the endurance horse with protracted moderate intensity exertion, its performance may be influenced quickly by the quality of its diet. A simple diet of hay and oats may lack essential nutrients that allow the horse to perform as expected. Understanding how competition affects the nutrient needs of the horse will help the owner select the appropriate supplementation program for the individual endurance horse.

Improving the diet
Approximately 80 to 90% of the feed eaten by horses is used to satisfy their energy requirements. Horses, like people, utilize energy to run most of the chemical reactions within the body, particularly to fuel muscle contractions vital to the work effort. As such, any horse diet should focus on providing adequate energy (calories). The major source of that energy is dietary carbohydrates (grass, hay, grain, molasses, etc.) Because the amount of energy available from forage alone can be a limiting factor for performance, grain is often added to increase the energy density of a diet.

Dietary fat is another source of energy readily employed by the horse for calories. Fat contains roughly 2.25 as much energy as an equal weight of carbohydrate, so less is needed to fuel body processes. Dietary fat has been scientifically proven to be advantageous to the performance of horses undergoing prolonged bouts of exercise. More Here...