Feeding endurance horses: Oil, fibre, and the carbo connection

Horsetalk.co.nz - Full Article

David Marlin | 12 February 2016

Horses that are on high fibre and or high oil diets may take longer to recover their muscle and liver glycogen after training and may fatigue earlier during competition if they are not receiving any source of available carbohydrate in their feed.

Over the past 20 years there has been a major shift towards using high fibre based feeds and feeds with a high oil content or oil added as a supplement in the nutrition of the endurance horse.

This is supported by an online survey of feeding amongst endurance riders in the UK last year (Marlin and Sadler, 2015), which found only 15% of riders fed cereal-based feeds whilst 68% fed highly digestible fibre and 63% fed oil.
oil-feed

This type of feeding has many desirable aspects. For example, energy provided by oil as opposed to starch is less likely to cause hindgut disturbance and colic, less likely to result in adverse behaviour and reduces the risk of tying-up, particularly in horses with a predisposition to tying-up...

Read more: http://horsetalk.co.nz/2016/02/12/feeding-endurance-horses-oil-and-fibre-carbo-connection/#ixzz40ATloGFM