 We're super excited you're here today. Welcome. We are going to be talking about feeding grain and supplements today on our winter horse management webinar series. This is webinar 203 for this winter. And so there'll be one more coming up on January 13th. And you probably already registered for that when you registered for this one. But if not, the link will be in the next email that you get. So today we have Dr. Carrie Hammer here joining us to talk about grain versus supplements. And so Carrie is going to go first. And she's going to give us a rundown of each and chat a little bit with us. So like the last webinar, we're doing, Carrie's going to give us more of the science side of things. So what does this mean? What are these? And when would we maybe use a grain or a supplement? And then Paige Brumman is going to come in with feed grains found in North Dakota, processing options, and example rations. And then Rachel Wald is going to end with reading a feed label, comparing costs by nutrients and feed by weight, not volume. So I think that'll be a good one. And so with that, we will talk just a little bit here about who we have with us. And so we have 76 registered for this particular webinar. We have some friends, our international friends from Canada are joining us today. And you can see that most of the other participants are from North Dakota or Minnesota. Most of you have between one and five horses was the number that I most often found. So three to four, there's a lot of horse owners that have three to four on here today. 12 to 15 would be the next grouping of numbers that I saw. And then just a couple of you have 50 to 75 horses on here. And so a lot between one and 15 is where we're at today. With that, I am going to click forward and give the remote to Carrie. And I will be quiet. All right, so as Mary mentioned, I'm Carrie Hammer and I oversee the horse program at North Dakota State University. And one of the topics that I do a lot of talks about and answer a lot of questions about has to do with nutrition for horses, especially in the winter. And how do I feed them? How do I take care of them? What do I need to add? What do I need to change? And so as the weather's been growing colder and you've got horses out in the snow, you may be thinking, does my horse need grain? How much do I need to feed them? Do I feed them one pound? Do I feed them five pounds? Do I feed them a scoop? Do I need a supplement? The neighbors feed a supplement. Maybe I need to feed a supplement. And so we're gonna try and talk a little bit about that today and kind of help you work through that decision process. All right, so we're gonna start first by talking about the difference between grain versus supplements. So kind of what is that difference? And for some people that may seem obvious, but others, it's not quite that simple. And as horse owners, we use a lot of different terms for grain. Sometimes we talk about it as a concentrate, we might use the term sweet feed and there's subtle differences between those terms, but often we use the term grain to mean any kind of mixed feed that we might feed to our horses. And what might be in that grain, depending on what specific feed particles are added, there's gonna be energy. And so energy is provided by fats, carbohydrates, and we usually think of that as calories and human nutrition, but that's what's gonna help our horses either gain weight or if there's not enough energy, they might be losing weight. And that energy is used within the body for a lot of different functions. So it is converted through some really fancy biochemical processes into the exact things that the body needs to either grow or to make muscle, to make your heart work, to make your lungs inflate properly, the horse is gonna use that the same way. Grains will also supply protein and protein can be used for energy, but it's really expensive to use for energy. So it's much better in horses that we use carbohydrates and fats first. And we save that protein to use to build muscle for growth and a lot of different body functions as well. Grain also is gonna contain different vitamins and minerals and those all have important physiological processes, they're important for the immune system. So the horses are able to fight off diseases, they're involved in reproduction and growth. And it's important to note in grain that they're gonna have all those things. So they're gonna have energy, protein, vitamin, minerals, it's all in there together. So the grain is always a combination. Now on the other hand, supplements can sometimes have some of the same ingredients that you might have in grain. So you might have fat as a supplement and that would increase energy just like it would do in a grain mixture, it can also add shine to the hair, it has some functions to modulate inflammation, you can have a protein supplement. So that protein supplement would improve the protein quality of the diet, it might supply specific amino acids or it might just boost the protein level of the diet in general. Vitamins and minerals, you can have a supplement that provides vitamin and minerals and it may be a group of vitamins and minerals that's meant to supply what might be missing in the diet or it might be a specific targeted mineral. So maybe you're just wanting to add vitamin E or maybe you're just adding some selenium to the diet. And then there's a whole host of health related supplements that are maybe targeted towards hair and skin improvement or joints, so somehow modulating inflammation or improving joint health. There's a lot of supplements geared towards guts and ulcers to modulate that response. And the thing with supplements is that you have the option to either buy them as a single ingredient supplement or as a combination. So as a supplement you could buy just a fat supplement or just a protein supplement or you could pick a supplement that is some sort of combination. So it might be a overall health supplement or it might be an overall vitamin and mineral supplement that has added protein. And so it's important to know kind of which one of those you're trying to provide. All right, now that we've got that kind of terminology out of the way. Before you know if you need to add a grain mixture or add a specific supplement, you have to know what you have, okay? And the best way to do that is through an actual nutrient analysis of your feed. So I harp on that a lot. That's the best way to know. But having said that, a lot of owners don't wanna do that. For whatever reason, they don't wanna send in their feed. They don't wanna take the time to get a hay analysis or get a feed analysis. And there are some websites that have estimates. But one of the things you have to know, they are just that they're an estimate. A lot of times they're pooled samples from across the regions. And one of the big things that dictates, especially mineral levels and feed are soil conditions. So the soil in North Dakota may be different than the soil, well, we know it's different than the soil samples in say Florida or say in a different area. And even between the edges of North Dakota will be different. And so your actual vitamin mineral nutrients can be changed depending on that region or the soil that that grain or hay was raised on. So you wanna know what feed you have and what it's providing, but you also need to know what your horse needs. And I know Dr. Skirpe talked last week that the first seminar in this series kind of about the different classes and the different nutrition classes that horses can fall into. But is your horse a pregnant mare that's growing a full inside her? Is it a growing horse? Is it just a maintenance horse that's not being ridden and just kind of hanging out for the winter? But all that makes a difference in terms of what the daily requirements are and what that horse actually needs. And then finally, you need to know your horse's current body condition score. And I'm not gonna go through body condition scoring today. I know they touched on that in the seminar last week, the first seminar. And if you're not familiar with that, you can definitely do a quick Google search and look at the body condition scoring system for horses. But it's an easy way as owners to get an idea is your horse underweight? Is it overweight? And that helps you determine, do you need to change? Is the feed that you're giving your horse right now okay in terms of their weight optimum? Or are they thin? Are they overweight and need to lose some weight? Maybe you're feeding too much. And that really is gonna be important because it helps us dictate and you need to have an understanding of what your horse's body condition is and how it's changing, or is it changing? So from this slide, you can see there's not a real easy answer because not every horse is gonna be the same. Not every farm is gonna be the same. The feed they have may be different. The horses they have are different. The current body condition score of the horses may be different. And so there's a lot of decisions that have to go into that. It's not just as simple as making a recommendation that can be blanket applied to all horse owners in the state. So let's get back to that kind of first question. Does my horse need grain? Does my horse need a supplement? And we're gonna kind of work through four areas to start that are kind of general in some big areas where I think a lot of people tend to fit and have some questions. So let's start with this first one. Is he losing weight? And if your horse is losing weight, there's some first things you've gotta rule out. Is there a medical illness issue that's causing this weight loss problem? Is there a heavy parasite burden? Have they been dewarmed lately? And I'm not gonna talk about those. We're gonna stick to nutrition today. And so I'm gonna fall on that one that is they're not consuming enough energy. So not enough calories in their diet. I tend to think that there's four main reasons why horses aren't consuming enough energy or they're not getting enough calories. So maybe sufficient amount of the feed isn't available. So it's just that simple issue that you're not giving them enough feed. Could be that the feed energy value is too low. So the feed you're feeding, maybe you're feeding enough, but it just doesn't have enough energy for the conditions that they're in right now. If you look along the bottom two boxes, maybe they can't eat to a physical problem. So does the horse have some arthritis issues and can't get through the snow from the shelter to where the feed is placed? Sometimes behavior goes into that too. So is there a boss horse that is kind of guarding the resources and not letting some of the horses that are lower in the social hierarchy get to the roundail or to the hay or to the water? And then maybe the horse won't eat due to an illness, due to stress, poor palatability of the feed and water intake. Water intake is most definitely linked to feed intake. So if you limit and restrict water availability, you will limit the horses feed intake. So that becomes a really important one in winter, especially in our area where you've got to deal with freezing water, making sure that that water is available. I'm gonna stick to the top two, since I'm trying to stick to nutrition topics today. The others, obviously as horse owners, you can look at, make sure that the horse doesn't have an illness issue, make sure you don't have some physical reason why the horse can't get to the feed, but assuming those are all taken care of, we're gonna stick to that idea that either there isn't enough feed available for the feed energy values are too low. And so the easy answer, feed more, right? The horse is losing weight, you need to get more energy into them, simply feed more of what you have. But there's a little bit of a caveat there in that a horse, the high end of the maximum is about 3 1⁄2% of their body weight. And that's on a dry matter basis of what they would eat. So for a thousand pound horse, that would be 35 pounds of feed that they would eat per day. And that's the high end max, like I said, typically it tends to be more that one to 3%. So feeding more is an option, but if that feed energy value, if it's a lower quality hay, so it doesn't have a very high energy to begin with, you may not simply be able to feed them enough because you'll start to get above that 3 1⁄2% to meet their energy requirements. So if you can't simply feed more, that's where we start to get into adding grain. So you can supply the energy or the calories they need through grain. And that can be an individual grain, so oats, corn, it could be a commercial mix. If you wanna go to the store, there's lots of different varieties that can be purchased. Another option to add simply calories or energy is to add fat. So fat is incredibly energy dense. It's more dense than our carbohydrates. And so you can do that through adding oil to the feed. And I'm not gonna have time today. We could spend a lot of time talking about the different types of fats and the different types of oils. And some are believed to be a little more pro-inflammatory than others. But the bottom line, if you're not dealing with health issues and you simply need to add calories to the horse's diet, then any type of fat supplement will work. Whether that's vegetable, corn, canola oil from the grocery store or whether it's a commercial fat supplement. A lot of times these are termed weight builder supplements. So any of those can add calories to the diet and increase the amount of energy that that horse needs, especially in the winter when they may need a higher level. Now, if the horse might not be losing weight, but we may be dealing with a problem with hay. So is the hay a lower quality hay? Is the hay maybe missing some nutrients? And they especially stored hay. We know decreases in vitamins, especially vitamins A, vitamins E, very readily after it's harvested. So most hay by the time it's been stored three months, you can consider it's definitely low in vitamin E and vitamin A as well. So the first question, how do you know if you've got a lower quality hay? And there's some obvious things. Visually, a lot of times you can look and tell if it's over mature, if it's really stemmy and kind of that woody stems, not a lot of leaves, that'll give you an idea that it's over mature, but the best way again is to get it analyzed. Our lower quality hay will be lower in protein and lower in energy. It's gonna have an increased indigestible fiber portion, which is gonna mean you're gonna have more waste as the horses are kind of eating and picking through it. Usually it's a little lower in palatability as well. But that lower quality hay, it might meet the energy needs of some of our horses. Some of our really easy keepers that aren't being ridden all winter, especially some of our pony breeds, they do not need a super high quality, high energy, high protein feed. And so it, depending on the class of horse again, this is why I said it's not a really simple answer, it might be meeting the energy needs of that horse, but it very well may not be meeting the protein or the vitamin mineral needs. And so in this case, you might just be able to meet those needs with a simple supplement. You might not need to supply a whole grain mix to the horse that's gonna provide energy as well, or they maybe start to get too fat. So this is a case where you may just need to supplement an individual ingredient. And I'm gonna talk about two common ones that we often hit with that hay issue where we're trying to just meet a certain ingredient. And two easy ways to do that is with ration balancers or lick tubs. And if we start just by looking at a ration balancer, that is a mix that is usually quite high in protein. So they're often potentially 30% protein, lower in fat and fiber. So they're not really providing much in terms of energy or in terms of calories. They're gonna have added vitamins and minerals. Most of the commercially available ones have probiotics as well, which help with digestion and gut health. And these products are fed daily, similarly to the way you would feed grain. So it's fed individual to each horse, but it's a very small amount that's fed, less than two pounds a day. Sometimes it's almost looks like a cup type of scoop is enough for what we'll provide. And that's one of the reasons why the protein level is so high in these mixtures is because you're feeding a very, very small amount. And so if you just need to balance out protein and provide some vitamins and minerals that may be lost in the hay due to storage, then ration balancers are great for that if you don't need to supply any extra energy. Lictubs are somewhat similar, but they tend to be really variable amongst manufacturers. And so protein levels can be variable, the amount of fat and fiber again is usually lower. Some tend to provide a little higher energy level. It really depends on the manufacturer. They usually have vitamins and minerals. Some will have added molasses. This can be an issue if you're dealing with horses that have some metabolic issues, especially those that have some issues with our muscle disorders or equine metabolic syndrome. They can be a little sensitive to sugar levels. And so you've got to be careful when purchasing Lictubs to make sure you're getting one that doesn't have that if you have that issue. They may or may not have probiotics added. They may or may not have some kind of ulcer preventative type of ingredients. They may or may not have some fly regulators, some insect growth regulators added. And so this one, the Lictubs tend to be much more variable and you've got to read those labels carefully and kind of know what you're looking for. The other thing about Lictubs is you have to be a little careful because they rely on the horse consuming adequate amounts on their own. And so the horses need to go out and lick a certain amount per day to get the recommended level that those Lictubs are designed for. So again, if you've got behavioral issues where you've got a horse that is maybe guarding the Lictub and not letting others there or maybe you've got one that's a little bit of a picky eater and doesn't readily consume the Lictubs then they're not gonna be getting the levels of protein or vitamins and minerals that you may be trying to get them to consume. So both great options, you just kind of have to know which one you prefer and which one works best kind of with your feeding system and your horses. And just to highlight again, neither one is really designed to provide a lot of extra energy. So if your horse is losing weight and what it really needs is calories and it needs energy, ration balancers and Lictubs aren't going to supply that. So instead you're needing to look at some sort of grain or fat supplement to provide that extra energy. Now these can provide a little bit of energy so you gotta be a little careful sometimes with those super easy keepers because if you feed them a lot of the ration balancer the high end of what's recommended or they're really kind of vigorous on the Lictubs they actually can gain a little weight. But for the most part they are low energy and they're just a great way to supply the extra protein or extra vitamins and minerals that might be missing from hay. All right, let's talk a little bit about senior horses just because they can be really difficult in the winter. And one of the first things you have to know about senior horses is you've gotta make sure you're not dealing with any medical issues. Okay, so I'm gonna assume the vets have already checked your horses out. Their kidney and liver function is good. You're dealing with any arthritis that may be preventing them from moving around well in the winter. You know, if they've got a lot of arthritis issues it can be real difficult for them to move through the snow to get to their feeding areas. If they're stalled a lot more they can get real stiff. And so being able to keep them moving if they've got arthritis which almost all our senior horses do is really important. So let's talk about forage. As our horses age we've done a great job medically now of managing these horses but we've gotten them so they kind of outlive their teeth. And so our older horses can really start to have some tooth issues and just from the fact they wear down they become pretty smooth and it's just really hard for them to properly chew hay the way it needs to be processed so that their digestive tract can handle it appropriately. And so there comes a point in every horse as it gets older where they just cannot properly chew and consume hay. And so then you've gotta look at feeding them alternative fiber sources. They might be fine during the summer when they're out on grass and they can get that chewed and consumed. But when it comes to winter and they're on the hay bale they just can't get through that hay. And so providing alternative fiber sources, beet pulp is a great one. Hay cubes and pellets also work well. For the old guys sometimes soaking hay pellets is wonderful although in winter that prevent or provides its own set of challenges. So you've gotta be a little careful about that if you've got freezing issues because a block of frozen pellets isn't gonna work very well but making it into a slurry works wonderful for these guys that can't get the forage in. Forage is incredibly important. And pelleted forage is still good and still provides forage. The horse's GI tract needs that. They've gotta have a forage-based diet. So in these old guys you can't simply just replace their forage with grain. So you can replace it with complete feed that's different because it's got forage added to it but you can't just supply the calories and the energy they need simply with grain they still gotta have some forage. So if they can't chew the hay you've gotta find an alternative fiber source to help provide that. The other thing with our winter horses is they have a lot more difficulty with thermal regulation. So that reduced ability to keep themselves warm when it's cold it's gonna require more energy for them to do that. And so you've gotta add some grain you've gotta have some added fat a lot of times to keep them with the calories they need. And a lot of horse owners underestimate how much feed and how much energy it takes to keep these senior horses at an optimal body condition. So especially if they're not able to eat hay properly the normal amount of feed a horse should eat is about 2% of their body weight per day, two to 3%. So 20 to 30 pounds if they're not eating that in hay then they need to be eating that 20 to 30 pounds in terms of hay pellets, in terms of a complete feed. There's some senior complete feeds that are designed that you can soak and feed them. That's a lot and it can be really expensive to feed that much per day but that's what some of these old horses are gonna require to keep the weight on them through the winter. But adding a blanket to help them keep warm adding some fat to help keep the calories can be really important and help keep these guys with the weight that they need. All right, I've flown through a lot of things and just kind of breezed over the top of it but in terms of take home just know that there's no easy answer. It's not as simple as just add a pound of corn or just get a scoop of this feed and your horses will be great all winter. It really depends on every management system. It depends on the feed you already have. Depends on the horses you have and what nutrition class and what their body condition is and where you're trying to go with them. So you've got to know what you have what your horses need. You need to monitor their body condition score in the winter. One of the hardest things to do is if horses get thin during the winter is to make that up while it's cold. So if you get behind the game to start with and the horses are already getting thin by the time you notice it is compounded exponentially for them to gain weight while it is still incredibly cold because they need those extra calories and energy to keep warm plus trying to add enough for them to gain weight. You can provide protein and other supplements if it's needed but always remember too, it's a balancing act. So you add one thing maybe you're just adding a supplement that has vitamins and minerals but it can change the relationship to others. So some vitamins and minerals are kind of antagonistic so they impair the absorption of a different vitamin or mineral. So increasing one may actually decrease the absorption of another. And the other thing a lot of supplements have added stuff that you don't even realize. So you're buying a joint supplement but it has some added vitamins and you buy a coat supplement and it has some added vitamins and before you know it you're feeding extremely high levels of copper because you didn't even realize that it was in there in your other supplement. So you've got to read the labels carefully and know that sometimes they can hinder each other. So you've got to be a little careful it's a balancing act between the nutrients and then manage the unique needs of senior horses. They all have kind of their quirks and medical issues and needs. And so it's a bit of a kind of game where you've got to tweak and try things and figure out what's gonna work. But they do require an alternative forage source as they get older and they definitely require increased energy to keep them warm during the winter. All right, I'll pass it on and I'll definitely be around to answer questions as we get through and feel free to pop them up in the chat too as we go. Okay, so I am next on the list and Carrie just mentioned about making sure to read what's in the label. And that's actually gonna be my first discussion point here is actually reading a feed label. So a lot of you when Mary was talking about how many horses you have a lot of you are in that one to five and a lot of times that size horse herd you're going to be buying your feed by the bag. So usually a 50 pound bag and on that 50 pound bag you're always gonna see the label at the bottom. So the American or Association of American Feed Control Officials or AFCO is the organization that oversees all of the commercial feeds and require all of these things that are on the label. So we're gonna kind of go through all of them so that you know what you're looking at when you're going through that label. So first off on the very top you're gonna see the product name and purpose. The product name is going to have Johnson's that's the possibly the company 12% texture to horse feed. So it is a horse feed that's the purpose of it. And it's also probably going to talk to you about the class of horse or horses that can use it say if it's a full or a lactating mare those are gonna be some things that you'll pick out on that label too. Right here you can see this is for maintenance of mature horses. It'll also talk about the commercial feed class. So there are four commercial feed classes that are divided into four horses. And this one says textured feeds. So textured feeds would be considered like a sweet feed. We also have process concentrates like pelleted or extruded complete feeds and then supplements that protein mineral trace minerals or vitamins are part of those supplement classes. The next thing you're gonna see on this list is actually a guaranteed analysis. The guaranteed analysis make sure that that it's consistent through all of the begging process. Obviously they're gonna make a big batch to beg several different 50 pound bags. So that guaranteed analysis make sure that it's all the same. And that's where you're gonna see your protein content, crude fat, all of the things that go into that diet including the vitamins and minerals that are possibly put into that bagged feed as well. So by law the feed companies are required to list those ingredients contained in the feed as well as the standard nutrient content. So that's where you're gonna see the percentages. And then down lower with copper and selenium and zinc you're gonna see in parts per million. And then vitamin A at the bottom would be in international units per pound. So that's how it goes by it. Also you're gonna see behind say crude protein, it says minimum or maximum. It does require you to put in this bag of feed the minimum amount would be at 1% or 12%. So that's something to make sure that you look through when you're looking at a diet for your horse. That'll tell you what's in it and what percentage or what part per million. The next thing on it is the ingredient list. This is where you might see some ingredients snuck in that won't be on the guaranteed analysis. And keep in mind when an ingredient list is listed the amount or the first thing, so on this one it says grain products, that's gonna be the vast majority of what's in the bag. So the amount, as you list them, the amount of whatever it is in there goes down. So the most in the bag is gonna be those grain products and then the plant proteins are next and so on and so forth. So the amount of each feed goes down as the label is written. So each ingredient, so the sodium selenite would be the least amount that's in that bag. The next thing it will include is directions for use. So it'll give you an idea. And I just wanna say, you know, yes, it'll give you an idea of how much to feed, but it also depends on your horse. So body condition again is something that we need to look at prior to feeding or prior to developing a ration for this. The next one is net weight. So as you can see at the bottom of this tag, it is a 50 pound bag and then the manufacturer's name and address. These are all required by law. So when you're looking at these bag feeds or feeds in general, you wanna make sure that you're comparing costs and sometimes comparing costs by nutrients is one way to do it. So the first one that I'm gonna focus on is crude protein and the reason that most of the time we look at crude protein is because it's the most expensive portion of the diet. So I have a couple of different versions here. If you're buying corn by the bushel, it's gonna be a different price versus a 50 pound bag versus per ton. So as you can see, there's very different levels of cost per protein per pound on this one. And it also will change as well with processing and page. It's gonna talk about that too. So a lot of this is in the whole form. So corn per pound per bushel costs per pound, sorry, it ends up being about 62 and a half cents. And as you go down, you're gonna see it gets a little bit more expensive like whole oats per 50 pound bag, $2 and 20 cents. Blacks, even though it has more crude protein in it is actually more expensive per pound at $3 and 11 cents and so on and so forth. The next slide, I'm gonna talk about how we get get that number, the cost per pound. So cost per pound of protein, if we have a 50 pound bag that costs us $14.99 at 13 and a half cents, or 13 and a half percent crude protein. The first thing we wanna do is find out how much it costs per pound. So I'm gonna divide that $14.99 by 50 pounds and I'll get 29.9, well 29 cents essentially, 29 to 30 cents per pound. I divide that by the crude protein that I have and that's how I end up with a $2 and 20 cents per pound of crude protein. We can also do this in the per ton and you're gonna see per ton, you're gonna be paying about a quarter of what you would be for a 50 pound bag. But again, it's all in how it works for you. If you have one to two horses, you're not gonna be buying a ton of oats. You're gonna be buying it in the 50 pound bag. The next one we wanna talk about is feeding by weight and not by volume. A lot of people in the horse industry, you get in the habit of feeding by volume. If you have a scoop, that you scoop your feet out of, how many scoops do you do? I do two scoops, that's what you think about, but nobody, you have to keep in mind how much that scoop fits in there. And then also keep in mind that different feeds are different amounts. So if you see the table here, it says a one quart coffee can. If I filled that with whole barley, that would be one and a half pounds. But if I filled that with dried bead pulp, it'd be 0.6 pounds. So make sure that you know how much each feed weighs and how much you should be putting into that diet. Weights change with different types of processing as well. So if that barley is rolled or steamed, it would weigh different than what it does as it's whole. Weights can change when new formulations come out. So if you have a complete feed that you have bagged, just one quick scoop to make sure that you have the right amount in there is what you need to do. So just have that scale in your feeding area and when you open that new bag, ensure it's the same. That went actually pretty quick. And Paige is going to be the next one to talk about common grains that we find in North Dakota. All right, so we have easy access to many ingredients that can be used to formulate your horse's grain rations. And when we think of horse grains, we kind of think of oats as a staple and that's because they're a little lower in starch and higher in fiber than other grains. So our energy feeds are typically those cereal grains, oats, corn, barley, oats at 40% starch, so a little lower corn up at 70% and barley at 60%. I do get a lot of questions about, can I feed wheat to horses? We grow a lot of wheat in North Dakota. And while you can feed wheat in small, small quantities, it's typically not recommended. There seems to be a little bit more issue with them balling up the gluten forming and can cause some impaction and digestibility issues. So wheat's typically not recommended. We have a lot of sources of protein feeds and also some oil feeds as well in North Dakota. Some of those common byproducts can be soybean meal, canola meal, distillers grains, wheat middling pellets, they're kind of on the lower end of a protein feed around that 15%, whereas your soybean and distillers grains are up on that higher end. Depending upon where you're at in the state, you can access pea splits and pea chips, sunflower meal and flax as well. So we're really lucky in North Dakota to have a large variety of ingredients to balance our rations with that are pretty readily available. Something else we haven't talked a lot about is beet pulp. And beet pulp is really popular with horse people and we do grow a lot of sugar beets in North Dakota. So we have access to fairly affordable beet pulp if you're on either side of the state in the valley areas. Pulling up some of the prices from the NDSU co-products pricing list show that right now you can get beet pulp for $40 to $60 a ton and that's already been dried down and shredded. If you're looking for some of these prices, NDSU does have a website where Carl Hathi updates all of the co-product prices regularly. And then if you're looking for just whole grain prices, you can check with your local elevators or whatever your local source would be, whether you're buying a direct from a farmer or a local feed store. Okay, so processing options. While you don't have to process all of the grains, it's typically recommended. And processing is gonna break that outer layer of the seed or the grain and overall increases digestibility. Sometimes increases palatability as well. Well, most horses don't have a problem with eating grain. So some things you can feed whole, you can feed oats whole, but again, they're not gonna utilize as much. Cracking the grain is simply just splitting it into a few pieces. So there's a picture of cracked corn there. When we look at oats, oftentimes we'll crimp it, run it through a crimper or a roller mill just to split it open. Again, to break it down and make it easier to digest. Steamplaking adds steam to the process, another popular thing for horse feeds. Grinding feed, while you can do it, it's typically not recommended to feed just a pile of ground grain. It makes it almost too digestible. Digest is too quickly. And also it's gonna create a lot more dust and fines in your ration. However, a lot of our grains are ground before they are pelletized or put into a textured feed. Textured feed is up the picture in the upper right where you have still the grains that you can pick out. You can see the corn kernel in there. It looks like it's been steam flaked. You can see the oats that are in there as well. And then that pellet, that is probably the protein supplement along with the vitamins and mineral mixture that's been heated, adds some water to it and then forced through a dye. Something that's been pretty popular in the recent times anyway is extruded horse feeds. And that's what would look like the lower right picture. Kind of looks like a little bit of dog kibble or dog food. And it's kind of the same process where the feed ingredients, they're cooked under pressure with moisture or some steam and then they're forced through a dye to form a uniform shape. It does make it more digestible and very uniform in appearance. The other thing I don't have on here is often these feeds contain feed binders. So we need something to make our loose vitamin and mineral additive stick to the feed and sweet feed. That is usually a molasses mixture. There's other options as well, some oils that we can use to make everything stick nicely. And then sometimes those feeded additives or binders after they've been moved through the pelleting process or extruding are actually used so that they flow easier. So that's something that we consider if we're making feed on our own, which is what we're gonna talk about next. So here I have just an example ration. And this ration isn't necessarily going to fit everybody's situation. If you have a horse that is sensitive to starch, such as a horse with a metabolic concerns, this wouldn't be an ideal ration for them. You'd wanna substitute lower starch feeds, beet pulp, rice bran, something like that. And keep in mind that depending upon the age and stage of production and any specific health issues your horse has, plain grains are likely going to be missing things that your horse needs. But again, the only way to know is to really test your feed. So even a mature horse that just maintenance that's just out there not having any exercise or stressors is still likely gonna need a supplement. But that's why we talk about needing to test our feeds to know for sure. So quickly here just to run through an example if you were mixing one ton of feed for those people out there that do have like over a dozen horses or so, this might be an option where you can throw in 800 pounds of oats about 600 pounds of corn. The protein supplement I chose was canola meal pellets because up here in my region of the state we are right next door to a canola plant. Easy to access. Dical would be a phosphorous supplement and limestone would be your calcium supplement along with a trace mineral mix of vitamin mix and then that binding agent I mentioned. If you want to mix just a small batch you would divide that out if you just want to make 200 pounds of feed and then here'd be kind of your ingredient or your recipe for mixing that. And then actually I should pop back there for a second. So this would be an example for a ration that would meet a lot of the requirements for a growing horse like a young two-year-old, three-year-old, a horse in light pregnancy or early lactation. If fed in adequate amounts. This feed when I balanced it ended up being about a 14% protein feed when fed at about six pounds or so per day per horse. Now I want to talk about costs because a lot of times people say, well, I want to mix my own feed because I can do it cheaper than buying it at the store. So I want to show you kind of how we would do that and compare those costs. So Rachel already talked about how to do this. So I'm just going to briefly talk about the first ingredient on oats. Say it's a little over $3 a bushel. There's 32 pounds in a bushel. So you end up with about nine cents per pound of oats. And if you take that times your 880 pounds you need in your ration, your oats will cost you about $85 in that ton of feed. And then we did the math for the other ingredients in that example ration. And you come out with about $180 per ton for this particular ration or about 10 cents a pound which means you'd end up at a cost of around $5 for a 50 pound bag. And if you fed that at about six pounds a day for the horse class that I talked about earlier he'd be at about 60 cents per day per horse. Now a lot of people are thinking, well, that's way cheaper than the bag of feed that I would buy for 15 to 25 or more dollars at the feed store. However, what you need to think about is those hidden costs when you're mixing your own ration at home. And if you're not experienced in rashing mixing it's often safer and more convenient to buy pre-formulated commercially available feeds from a reliable feed company. Because you need to think about that you're gonna have leftover ingredients that you're not using. When you're mixing that ton of feed and you're only putting in two pounds of your vitamin A, D and E mixture you're still gonna have 48 pounds that you had to purchase from the feed store. And a lot of those ingredients are not shelf stable they're not gonna carry over very well, very long certainly not multiple years. You have to think about shipping and transportation cops to go and pick up all of the variety of different ingredients that you're gonna need. Can you get them locally or are you gonna have to drive a few hours to pick up your protein supplement? Do you have the equipment that's needed to mix in large batches whether it's a feed mixer, a feed wagon, a roller mill, a hammer mill to process things or are you gonna have to haul it to a local elevator to have it processed there? Think about your storage costs as well. Do you have the available space to store totes full of tons of feed? Do you have a grain bin that you could use or a gravity wagon? How are you gonna be storing bulk feed? And then will you be able to use it up before it spoils? If you have just a few horses, probably not. And it'd be easier to go buy those bags. If you have, I think Mary said there's somebody on here that had the 75 range horses, you probably are gonna come out ahead if you're mixing your own feed by the ton. I wanna round it out with just a few tips for grain feeding overall. Feed forage first, increase the amount of forage that you're feeding and see if that meets the needs of your horse. After that, oftentimes we are gonna have to add the grain and even then when you're feeding grain, it's a good idea to make sure your horses have some forage and digestive tracks if you're not feeding a large meal in an empty stomach. And speaking of large meals, don't feed large meals. At maximum, feed no more than five pounds per feeding. And typically your horse isn't gonna want to consume more than 10 pounds of grain a day at all. So you'd at least wanna split into two feedings. Even better would to be feed no more than two or three pounds per feeding. So split it into maybe three feedings if you're having to feed a significant quantity of grain. Feed according to the needs of the individual horse. We talked about that before. You can balance your ration and feed exactly what the computer or the nutritionist says your horse needs. And maybe as an example, that's 20 pounds of hay and four pounds of grain a day. But if you look at your horse and it's a body condition score eight, which would be an obese horse, that's probably not the route you wanna go. You probably wanna cut back a little bit and feed a ration balancer instead, something that isn't gonna provide additional energy and calories to the ration. Feed horses separately if you can. So if you have a small group, maybe one horse needs more grain than the others, pull them out of that pen or if they can put them in a stall, feed them separately so that you ensure that the horse at the top of the totem pole or the top of the hierarchy isn't getting the majority of the feed. Store feed securely, meaning behind chained up gates and panels, behind the locked door, because of the risk of a horse getting loose and consuming an entire bag of feed or a significant portion of feed is not gonna be a good situation. So certainly store that feed very securely. Check for spoilage before you feed and that's whether you're mixing your own ration or purchasing from the store. Feed goes bad. If there's a high level of oils in a feed, it can go rancid. You wanna check for insect infestation. You wanna check for rodent infestation and throw the feed away if it's not a clean sample. Just the smell of the feed will tell you a lot as well. Place in the feeder up off the ground if you can. Get it off of the dirt, off of the sand. We don't wanna have them consuming more sand and dirt than is necessary. Options for fast eater would be a picture here where there's certain types of feeders you can purchase that have little holes that slow a fast eater down where you can put some large rocks into their feeder, their pail, softball slides are larger to slow that horse down as well. Horses that eat too fast are at increased risk for choke and other digestive upsets. Anytime that you're gonna change a feed, change it gradually. So if you're gonna switch brands of feed or add a different type of grain, a different type of hay, do it over time so that you maybe add one pound of the new grain to their ration and subtract one pound of the old feed. Monitor their weight and body condition score regularly. At least monthly, maybe more frequently if needed. And then always utilize research-based resources. So we'll have some here on the next slide, some of the resources that we utilize today. There's a lot of information out there about what to feed your horse and what not to feed your horse and what's good for them and what's bad for them. And it can be really tough to sort through all of it. So check your resources and make sure that they are research-based ones. Do you wanna talk about, there were a couple of questions that popped up into the chat box before I started that I tried to answer. One of them was determining or how do you know what your horse nutrient requirements are? And there's a link there that'll lead you to that depending upon the class of horse. And then another question was about where to get them tested. And there's a variety of labs in the Midwest that we can test feeds at. One necessarily isn't better than the other, but make sure that they have an equine package. That'll give you a little bit deeper analysis so it'll give you your non-structural carbohydrates, which the cattle or the cow analysis don't do for you. So just make sure it's an equine analysis and whatever lab you choose, just check on that. So with that, I'm gonna turn it back over to Mary and we can answer some questions. I was also gonna mention Paige, if you guys are looking for a hay probe, you can talk to your local extension agents, which Paige and I are. You can check out with us. Usually we do have hay probes available to sample any of your feedstuffs. I know we had mentioned it last time, but it's good to mention it again. So check out or talk to your local extension agent on feed analysis so that'll help out a little bit too. Okay, so I am going to change the settings here. So if you guys want to unmute yourselves, you can and ask a question. If you just wanna type in the chat, that's okay. You can do that too. And so we will spend some time here just answering questions if you have any. And there was, Randy had asked the question about using recycle cooking wheel as an option. And Carrie just answered that, that it is. Some people do use that as an option, but there are some things to take into consideration like contaminants. So contaminants from the food, the pans, the equipment, whatever was previously used with that and how horses are probably a little more finicky. Maybe they're a little more sensitive to those types of things versus other classes of livestock that we would feed a recycled oil to. I just had a question come to me privately about a horse that has allergies and how to know whether or not that horse would be sensitive to the feed. So that would go back to a little bit about what Rachel talked about. So if you're purchasing a feed, it's gonna have all of the feed ingredients in there. But keep in mind, for instance, if the horse comes back and it says it's sensitive to soybeans or allergic to soybeans, I should say, it might not say soybeans on the feed label. It might say soybean meal or soybean byproduct. And that would also be similar in content. So just keep that in mind. I can take this one about what are the pros and cons of feeding straight versus rolled oats? So straight oats, they're just gonna be a little bit less digestible, whereas if you roll them, it's gonna crack open that kernel to make the starch a little bit more digestible. So it comes down to a cost analysis as well, if you can get whole oats for an affordable price, you can maybe afford to feed the horse a little bit more knowing that some of the nutrients may not be digested and they may go through the horse. However, if you're not able to get to an area where you can roll it or crack it or don't have a roller mill on site, that added cost, you might be better off in the long end just feeding them a little bit more oats rather than trying to get them processed so that they're more digestible. So that's gonna be a, it depends answer. But there'd be any benefit in adding flax to a ration? Yeah, flax has been really popular. Maybe Carrie can talk a little bit. She touched on the different types of oils that are better or worse for inflammation properties. Flax is sometimes deemed to be a better one. One thing I'll mention about flax is that it's often better if it's processed and once it's processed, it does not stay stable or fresh very long. So some people, if they have whole flax, they'll grind it every couple of days but know that it'll go rancid. It doesn't last very long if you're mixing it yourself. There are shelf stable cold press flax available commercially that you can buy by the bag that does last a little longer. But Carrie, do you wanna touch on flax, Annie? As I say, everything you mentioned is right on the, the upside to flax is that I mentioned there's some differences with regards to inflammation and it has to do with the portion of omega-3 fatty acids versus omega-6 fatty acids that are within that oil product with the idea that the more omega-6's that are there, it tends to be a little more pro-inflammatory. And flax is one that is actually higher in omega-3 fatty acids. So it's really good for inflammation. The other oils that are really good in terms of high levels of those omega-3's tend to be the fish oils or the algae and the seaweeds. As you would imagine horses, the palatability with fish oil is terrible. So it's often hard to get them to eat those. But the seaweed and algae are great products for the omega-3's and flax is a great one to add some increased omega-3's to the diet. Nikki threw in a question about cooking flax, microwaving it with water to make it more palatable. And if that's a whole flax seed, I don't know if microwaving it would break that seed coat down so that it is a little bit more digestible or if it would have to be ground first and then maybe softened with water. I'm not quite sure. Nikki maybe could elaborate on that. Well, Nikki is typing, unless of course, Nikki, you can show unmute if you want to. We'll go to Greta. If you have a variety of horse ages, yearlings to senior, although each horse would get a different amount for the ease of the program, should you supplement for the seniors or the average horse or the young horse? Greta, do you mean that you'll have one basic ration and you'll be using basically the ration to go towards the, go ahead and talk about it. If you have a variety of horses, do people really buy, like so I would buy over the counter, I'm not gonna mix my own. Would I really buy a couple bags for the seniors and then a couple bags for my teens, a couple bags for my younger ones and really a couple more and a couple more? There's, and so instead of just having like one and kind of altering it a tish for the ease of the program, I'm gonna line an entire wall of my barn with all the different feeds. You can, and that might be easier in the long run. So some feed companies will have some pretty handy calculators too, where you can put in the type of horse that you're feeding and they'll give you how much you would need to feed of each individual product. Like they might have 20 or 30 different types of feed. So yeah, it might be easier in the long run to purchase a different feed for your senior horse than for your maintenance horse, definitely. If you're mixing your own, there might be some ways we can work around that to make it a little bit easier just by adjusting the quantity. I don't carry if you have anything to add to that. Yeah, no, I mean, right. When you've got multiple classes like that, it gets immensely more difficult. And ideally, no, there's not just a base feed that you can just tweak just slightly and works for everybody. But there is some ways to at least kind of group them. The seniors, if they're not having a lot of issues can probably be treated as maintenance horses. If the seniors now are having issues, then yeah, they're gonna have to have probably their own feed and they're probably the most difficult in terms of just their forging behavior and their special needs. The growing horses, depending what age, they may be able to kind of share a similar feed type to the maintenance horses with just a little bit of tweaks or maybe just an extra added protein mineral supplement on top, but it definitely takes a little more work to kind of tweak that between all the classes. It's like Nikki typed in the chat that she was microwaving whole flags with water to make it kind of a sticky consistency and it seemed like it broke down the seed coat. She comments how she's never really sure the amount should be and that's gonna depend on, are you feeding it just as a supplement to provide a little bit of oil and shine and energy content or are you feeding it as a protein source? Kind of what was the goal? And that'll vary on how much you're gonna feed it. You might only have to feed it at a half a pound per horse. You could feed it up to a pound and a half if you wanted some of those other goals. So that's where it comes back to balancing your ration, knowing what nutrients and the rest of your feeds are. A lot of people just top dress flax for the reason you said to give them a little extra oil, improve hair coat, that sort of thing. That flax does end up being around a 33% protein as well, doesn't it? Yeah, around 30% and then there's the oil content in there as well. And yeah, remember what Carrie had said with when you're adding stuff to it, it'll change things so that 30% protein and it also has the fat in there too. So whatever you're feeding, make sure that you're balancing it for that reasons as well because it can move things different ways in your ration. Actually, I stand corrected. I think flax is around that 20, a little under 20%, but it's still considered a protein. Nikki, we do have good intentions, but it is. It's hard to, I think especially when you have a handful of horses and not a lot of space, it is hard to sometimes justify feeding them differently, but like Paige said, probably in the long run, it's actually easier or more cost effective to do that correctly. So we don't have to worry about any kind of health issues like Carrie was talking about down the road.