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| A young Hampton snoozing in his food |
If I feed dry beet pulp to my horse will his stomach explode?
Myth.
Beet pulp is sold in either dried shreds or pellets and yes, when you add water to it it does expand. But it expands too slowly to worry about. Given a horse's stomach capacity and how quickly it empties into the small intestine (and beyond) when it becomes full, it's an extremely unlikely thing to happen.
There is a large university study which further dispelled the stomach-exploding myth in a study where horses ingested up to 45 percent of their total diet from dry beet pulp. No adverse effects were noted. No colic, choke or change in manure moisture.
(Two sources have mentioned this study and I cannot find it online anywhere...grrr)
Throwback to our jumping days!
Beet pulp seems to also suffer from rumors that feeding it dry can cause choke. It's more likely that a choke would be caused by bolting feed, or some abnormality with the horse. Not so much beet pulp itself. Although, sometimes the pellet forms DO come in rather large, hard chunks so personally I wouldn't try my luck there.
Nonetheless, many feed beet pulp soaked and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. It makes it easier to chew, adds some hydration, you can sneak supplements in it and it can slow down a horse who wants to hoover his feed.
Just use caution not to soak it for too long (more than 24 hours probably) because it will ferment.
Hampton's grain contains quite a bit of beet pulp and it's such a great forage to feed. And I don't soak it. Except when I add beer. haha.
I was having this conversation with a client just the other day! So funny how this myth persists
ReplyDeleteI was always told to soak it then dump the liquid to get rid of extra sugar. Not sure if that is true either. There is a lot of beet pulp in the complete feed I use and I don't soak it for one horse, I do for the other due to teeth issues, and see no difference between the two and their stomach or choke hazards.
ReplyDeleteyeah that one has always felt more than a bit exaggerated.
ReplyDeleteI've always soaked beet pulp to get any possible residual sugar out of it, because I've often been feeding it to my senior Cushings horse.
I have always wanted to see a pigeon explode from eating raw rice!!!!! No luck yet.
ReplyDelete