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Discussion on Straight alfalfa hay
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Member:
mysi
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Posted on Tuesday, Jul 17, 2007 - 10:16 pm:
My vet recently came out and saw in my horses stall his hay (I feed him straight alfalfa and also timothy just to munch on when he's bored). She flipped. Said that I should by no means be feeding him any alfalfa. That I'm killing him with too much protein. She said only race horses should eat like that.
He eats 2 flakes of alfalfa 2xday and unlimited timothy which is usually 2-3 flakes a day and he leaves leftovers of that. He also eats 1 scoop of Equine Senior 2xday & 1/2 scoop Ultimate Finish 1xday.
He's 17.2hh, about 1700 lbs, and we work for 1 hour a day 6 days a wk, right now walk trot as he's coming back from an injury. His weight is great, his coat is great, I see no reason to change anything.
From what I'm reading I think I'm ok, but I'm not sure. What do you think Dr. O?
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Moderator:
DrO
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Posted on Wednesday, Jul 18, 2007 - 9:25 am:
Killing him with protein? In experiments horses have been fed diets as high as 25% total protein long term without ill effects. Very high protein / high calcium diets may be associated with enterolith formations and urinary stones but these are very small risks and your diet should not be considered very high.
Let's say you get average timothy with a 8 percent protein level and average alfalfa with a 18% protein level. Doing some very rough calculations (based on the many assumptions that the weights of the flakes are the same and the quality of the hay is average) this makes the total protein from forages in the diet 12% a very comfortable level. NRC says 10% is the minimum but many think this may be a tad low. The calcium would work out very similarly. You will find more on all this in the article associated with this forum, there are protein and calcium sections in there, and you also should follow the links to the article on forages.
DrO
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Member:
mysi
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Posted on Wednesday, Jul 18, 2007 - 11:19 am:
THANK YOU! I read all of your articles regarding this subject and I just wanted to be sure I understood it correctly.
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