FATS, FATS, AND MORE FATS

FATS, FATS, AND MORE FATS We all think that we know the role of fat in a horse’s diet. It helps him gain weight, right? Like the other nutrients, there is so much more to it. In this month’s article we’ll talk about what fat does, why the type of fat matters, and the practical everyday use. After all, your horse’s concern is what is in his feed bucket, not what is written on this page. We’ll start with some terms and descriptions. Technically, fats belong to a molecular class known as lipids. For our purposes here, we’ll use the term “fats” as we talk about fats and oils. Fat is solid at room temperature; oil is in a liquid form. Fats come from many sources, both plant and animal. You won’t see animal fats used in horse feeds though, so we don’t have to talk about the concerns of saturated fats. Before we wade in too far, you should know that studies of fats and horses are ongoing and there is still much to learn. If you research articles from twenty years ago, you will find that they have different information than articles written ten years ago, and those are different than the articles written today. We are still discovering the ways in which different fat sources affect the horse, which fats are healthier, which fats should be avoided. We don’t even have an accurate measure of how much fat should be present in the horse’s diet (but there are lots of suggestions out there.) Why is this? One would think that by now we would have explored and tested every aspect of this. Part of the reason, I believe, is because the horse’s natural diet does not contain a lot of fat. The most natural diet for a horse is forage first. We add things like ration balancers, commercial feeds, and supplements because with the increased demands that we make on him, it can be hard for the horse to get enough calories, protein, vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients from his forage. Somewhere in the history of our collaboration with equines, we realized that they tolerate fat in their diet, and tolerate it very well. We are essentially adding something to his diet that he would not access easily in the wild. Being humans, we want to study it, test theories, and see where it leads. Research is driven by current needs, current trends, and the improvement in equipment and measuring ability. We’ve seen this happen in the past with research into diets for older horses. Now that horses live longer, more research is done on them, which helps them live longer still. So why are we feeding more fats to horses, when it isn’t a huge part of their natural diet? It turns out that adding fat has a lot of benefits. First, it contains two to three times more calories per gram or ounce than carbohydrates and protein. Adding fat is safer way to increase your horse’s calorie intake because you can get more calories into him without giving him as many pounds of feed. (As a reminder, horses should not have more than five pounds of a concentrated or commercial feed per meal as it can overwhelm their digestive tract. This does NOT apply to forage though, which they eat at a slower rate.) Adding calories by feeding a large amount of carbohydrates, such as corn or oats, can overload the horse’s GI tract when it breaks down the starches and sugars, and the starch especially can lead to laminitis and colic. Calories equal energy, and the energy that is produced by the breakdown of fats appears to be “cooler” than that of carbs. What that means is that a horse on a high-fat diet may be more levelheaded than he would be on a high-carb diet. There is still more research to be done in that area, but it has to do with the way that the sugars and starches in carbs break down versus the way the fat molecules break down. If you have a horse with metabolic issues that requires a low-carb diet, then feeding fats is a way to help him maintain his condition and health. The break-down of fats is slower than that of carbs, which helps lead to a longer, sustained energy release instead of the shorter burst associated with carbs. Partly because of this, the use of fat in a horse’s diet helps to increase his endurance. Fats are also easier to digest, without the added burden of producing the amount of heat that is associated with the breakdown of carbs. Let’s digress for a moment and explore a popular myth. I’m sure you’ve heard it…some old timer has told you that adding corn to your horse’s diet in winter will help keep him warm. Nope. What it will do is give him a big jolt of carbs that break down into an abundance of starches and sugars. As we read above, too much starch can overload the horse’s ability to digest it and lead to laminitis or colic. If you want to keep your horse warm in the winter, give him more hay. The fiber in hay is a carbohydrate too, but it is one that is harder to break down. The work that the body does to break down the fiber generates metabolic warmth: it warms him from the inside. Okay, back on track. So, what else does fat do? In addition to improving a horse’s endurance, there is evidence that fat also helps your horse in tolerating heat (the kind that we associate with weather.) More research needs to be done, but it’s thought to go along with the fact that the breakdown of fat molecules doesn’t generate the amount of metabolic heat that carbs do. Yes, fat can make your horse overweight if he eats more calories than he uses on a regular basis. Just like us, horses are very efficient at storing