Forage Sugars and Your Horse

This week we tackle an issue that we recently brought up in our Equine Metabolic Syndrome podcast and that is the impacts of forage sugars on equine health. The amount of sugar in forage/hay are often a concern for owners with horses that are either insulin sensitive, suffer from equine metabolic syndrome, or have had previous bouts of laminitis. In this episode, we first briefly discuss what nutrients horses receive from their forage and then dive straight into what exactly forage sugars are. Dr. Rambo then describes how sugars are made in forage plants and how weather, season, and even time of day all influence sugar levels in the plants themselves. Naturally we also discuss sugar levels in hay and give some tips on how concerned owners can reduce the sugar load in either hay or reduce sugar intake in grazing horses. We also introduce some latest research on certain forage sugars and how they impact overall equine health.

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