by Win Wolcott
Coconuts In Horses?
Surprising ingredient has great effect on equines.
It seems that every few months a new nutritional fad appears with wild claims of the benefits to be realized from the latest new thing. A good friend in the cutting horse industry once told me, “If the big futurity was won by a horse eating only carrots, there would be nothing but orange manure in the cutting pens for the next year.”
While I believe that following fads is all too common, every once in a while something that has the potential to change the game does come along. This awakening happened to me four years ago when I received a call from a nutritionist in Australia wanting to know if I was interested in consulting on the development of coconut meal into the US equine feed market. My initial response was what you might expect: not really interested. Luckily, he did not give up on me. In the end, it required that he make a trip to the US. This trip resulted in him walking into my office in Northern California with a two-foot high stack of clinical work that extended back years in Australia. I had before me the most tested equine feed ingredient that I had never heard of: coconut meal.
What?? Coconuts in horses? Before you quit reading, give me a few more minutes. In the late 1980s we developed the low starch approach to feeding performance horses with the creation of food grade stabilized rice bran. Few can argue that the resulting product, Natural Glo, did not deeply influence the feed industry. By shifting energy production away from high starch feeds to higher fat concentrates, equine management became safer and more effective, with feeding programs that fit the horse’s digestive system in a better way. Today, every major company who argued against this approach then makes a low starch equine feed now, many with rice bran added.
Stabilized rice bran and coconut meal are vastly different ingredients. The unique way that they work together to solve issues in the horse’s body deserves a serious look. While most people have some understanding of stabilized rice bran in equine nutrition, the value of using coconut meal remains cloudy. It is time to fix that. Coconut meal that is used in Renew Gold is the result of the mechanical extraction of part of the natural oil found in the inner meat of the coconut. The oil that remains after this process, about nine percent, has very unique properties not found in other vegetable-sourced natural fats. Coconut oil falls into a category known as medium chain triglycerides, or saturated fats. Other saturated fats are from animal fat, not vegetable, and not proper to use for horse feeds. Coconut oil is pretty unique in this respect. Saturated fats are digested directly to the portal blood and reach the liver much faster than typical unsaturated fats found in other vegetable sources. This gives a much quicker energy response. As such,
continued on pg 51
www.ridingmagazine.com | March 2014 | California Riding Magazine 47
www.renewgold.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76