Ramey needs to be taken with a large grain of salt on a lot of his articles. Sometimes he really misses an important component of his subject of discussion, sometimes it seems he writes a contentious article just to write it
"It’s hard to find a definition of a “balanced diet” in horses, but they abound for people. "
No, it’s not. It may be hard to find a definition of an OPTIMAL balance for horses, but the same can be said of people. The NRC has been around for decades, akin to human RDA. Neither of those are about optimal health, but more or less about preventing disease.
" It seems to me that for humans anyway, “balance” is mostly about getting enough calories to maintain a healthy weight from a variety of foods, along with the requisite vitamins and minerals."
Same for horses. Enough calories from horse-appropriate forage and fiber, along with requisite vitamins and minerals.
“Another thing to consider about wild horses is that they are almost undoubtedly NOT always meeting all of their nutritional needs, especially in winter. Curiously, they are also not dropping like flies from the lack of daily attention to their aluminum requirements. What they are doing is eating a lot – they have the food they forage pretty much constantly going through their digestive tract. Nobody talks about the “quality” or “balance” of the diet of a wild horse: quantity is the thing for them.”
This is the kind of thing where he really misses an important component. Wild horses survive. They survive to procreate, and those who can’t deal with the limitations of the wild, don’t survive long.
Wild horses also aren’t selectively bred for anything other than the ability to survive. They aren’t bred for size or speed or color, above things like good feet, easy to get pregnant and easy to foal, “stomach of iron”.
AND, wild horses aren’t asked to work. The couch potato human has a lower nutritional need than someone who takes their exercise seriously with 4-7 hours of strenuous exercise a week. The latter will not be healthy on the diet of the former.
"From an evolutionary perspective, it doesn’t make any sense at all that if would have to be difficult for a horse to fill its nutritional needs on those relatively poor-quality feeds that made up a “balanced” diet. I mean, if it was hard, wild horses would have just died out. Instead, they thrived. "
Their SPECIES may be thriving in terms of populations, but individuals aren’t thriving their whole lives. He seems to be confusing the 2 things
"As with humans, the most important consideration when it comes to nutritional “balance” is that the horse be kept at a good weight (generally said to be where you can’t see the horse’s ribs, but you can feel them easily). "
No, no, and no. Weight has nothing to do with nutritional health. Have you never seen the “healthy weight” girl who has terrible skin, bad cholesterol, and pushing Type 2 diabetes? Genetics and lower calories keep her weight in check (or she only eats 1000 calories a day), but poor food choices are taking a toll on her body.
Caloric needs are separate from nutritional needs
“o be frank, this goal seems to be considerably more challenging for some folks that others, as evidenced by the fact that obesity seems to be a bit of a problem in domestic horses”
Well yes - over-fed and under-nourished is a real thing - it’s a common issue in humans. And it doesn’t matter how fat a horse is on just hay, he’s not getting the vitamin E he needs for long-term health.
“It’s impossible to make a horse deficient in any of the B-vitamins”
No it’s not. Gut dysbiosis can easily make them B-deficient
"He likely gets enough Vitamin E, unless he’s constantly getting brown, low-quality forage. Even so, he can store enough Vitamin E to last six months or so "
See above - unless that forage is GRASS, he’s not getting the E he needs, no matter the color of the hay. And there are PLENTY of horses who never get more than a 30 minute session of hand-grazing, if even that
" * Most decent quality forages have enough vitamins and minerals"
Agree, but there are a LOT of forages that don’t. Lots of the US has high iron soil which means low copper and zinc to the point the horse has to eat 3% of his weight, sometimes more, just to meet his bare min requirement, and for many horses, that would make them fat
““Ration balancers” are given along the same rationale as are vitamin and mineral supplements in people, a sort of “nutritional insurance” (also known as, “Just in case”).”
Except the provide enough of the more critical nutrients to make up for some of the more common deficits in average forages. They’re more than “just in case”. And since most people can’t test their forage, that “just in case” is a very good thing
"In humans, vitamin and mineral supplements tends to lead to excessive intakes of vitamins and minerals "
Because people like to take multiple things without understanding them, let alone understanding their diet, it’s not that the average v/m supplement’s going to push them into toxic or truly wasteful territory. Same with horses - a ration balancer, forage balancer, or good v/m supplement (there are FAR too many that are useless) - doesn’t provide truly excessive intake
The problem is when someone doesn’t understand these, and uses a ration balancer AND a “senior supplement” that’s got v/ms in it along with joint-supportive ingredients, AND a “gut supplement” that’s got v/ms in it along with the gut stuff, etc. That’s also not over-supplementing, necessarily, that’s not paying attention to or understanding what’s in what you’re feeding
" according to the US government’s 2020–2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans , “Because foods provide an array of nutrients and other components that have benefits for health, nutritional needs should be met primarily through foods."
Well of course, horses too. But have you seen the craptastic diets the majority of people eat? Obesity isn’t rampant for no reason. Have you seen how “mono food” many people’s diets are? They eat the same small handful of foods, often very few vegetables and too little protein.
“How about reducing or eliminating grain concentrates, which can cause all sorts of problems in horses, especially when fed to excess.”
It’s statements like this which has IME led to the recent surge in “forage-based” and “forage-only” diets that has too many horses look like crap, despite their forage actually being pretty decent. Why? See above.
YES, feed horses like they should be fed - a healthy amount of hay/grass to meet their calorie needs. Amen. Forage-based is how horses SHOULD be fed. In addition to that, they need some nutritional improvement for the reasons I’ve listed above. Maybe that needs to come with some, or significant calories, maybe it doesn’t. Figure that out for your individual horse at any given point in time (Summer vs Winter, work vs no work, etc)
I really dislike his articles in general.
