When I was growing up, overweight horses were called "easy keepers", but now you hardly ever hear that term; instead, we call them fat, or in some cases, insulin-resistant. It's this group I'm going to discuss here.
Here at Freedom Farm we allow our horses to live in herds with free access to hay and some pasture. In our "fat" herd, kept away from pasture, we have two feeding stations: both are supplied with ample first cutting hay 24/7. This pen is reserved for horses that I (still) call 'easy keepers'-prone to weight gain-but it is also where we keep any horses that need a low- sugar diet due to insulin resistance.
This herd is currently enjoying our first cutting hay, which has tested very low in sugars (along with a specially formulated supplement I discuss later in the article.) Typically, first cutting hay is thought of as lower quality hay, but because of its low sugar we can feed more of it, which address the horses' natural need to graze.
Our equine nutrition advisor Barbara Noble offers insight on why controlling sugar, and also having access to the right feed throughout the day, is important to natural health.
She says: "There are two hormones that are little known that end up being quite important: Ghrelin and Leptin. Ghrelin is a hormone from the pancreas and stomach that stimulates hunger. Another hormone, Leptin, from fat cells, turns hunger off. Because horses are built for eating nearly constantly, always having some food in the stomach suppresses the levels of the hormone ghrelin. Horses that are allowed free choice feeding, or given multiple small meals throughout the day, have the steadiest levels of hormones related to appetite.
[Several studies have shown that] leptin is associated with how fat a horse is; the higher the body condition score, the higher the leptin. ...Studies digging deeper into leptin levels found that very high leptin levels are associated with insulin resistance. ... Insulin resistance is not something we can cure; it is something we need to manage."
So our feeding low sugar hay throughout the day follows this advice by supporting Ghrelin and Leptin balance. With Barbara's guidance, we have also developed our First Cutting Hay Balancer, a supplement enhancing the nutritional balance of our homegrown hay. If you are feeding Freedom Farm hay we would encourage you to use our hay balancer as your supplement. We have First Cutting Hay Balancer for the easy keeper and Second Cutting Hay Balancer for everyone else.
Once again, thank you Barbara for helping us achieve better health in our horses!
Barbara Noble, a student of Dr. Eleanor Kellon, VMD, is helping Freedom Farm develop nutritional balance for our horses, based on independent hay analysis described in the August and September newsletters.
Freedom Farm's hay was analyzed by Equi-Analytical and the pdf can be downloaded from our website.
