Helpful information from our equine nutritionist: Is soaking hay effective at removing non-structural carbohydrates? Hay is the primary component in the equine diet. In recent years with the increased incidence of metabolic disorders such as laminitis and insulin resistance, the carbohydrate content of hay has come into question. Water soluble carbohydrates (WSC) are the predominant culprits in most grass forages. One of the recommendations for horses and ponies suffering from these metabolic disorders is to reduce the WSC content of the diet. In an attempt to reduce the intake of WSCs, owners of horses and ponies predisposed to laminitis often soak the hay intended to be fed to such animals in water. It has been shown that nutrients, including water soluble carbohydrates, may be leached from hay during the soaking process. The current recommendation commonly used is to soak hay for 30 minutes in hot water or 60 minutes in cold. A study in England evaluated the amounts of total WSC leached from a range of different grass hays. Hays were soaked for 20 minutes, 40 minutes, 3 hours and 16 hours. The amounts of WSC lost from the different hays in the study varied greatly, which has been a common feature in other studies. This study illustrated that although soaking hay results in reductions of WSC content, the extent of the losses was highly variable between hays, and not related to their initial WSC content. Other options to reduce the non-structural carbohydrate content of forages fed to horses is to incorporate a bagged low carbohydrate forage. These products offer consistency and have little variation in their WSC content from bag to bag.
Posted on: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 14:25:19 +0000
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