The last (?) edition of the NRC’s Nutrition Requirements of Horses was published in 2007. I haven’t been able to find updates. Are there updates? Which more recent reliable scholarly papers have been published on the topic?
Thank you.
PS Thanks also to tazycat and the respondents in the recent thread on feeding, which raised some questions about my own feeding program.
[QUOTE=Hermein;8802499]
The last (?) edition of the NRC’s Nutrition Requirements of Horses was published in 2007. I haven’t been able to find updates. Are there updates? Which more recent reliable scholarly papers have been published on the topic?
Thank you.
PS Thanks also to tazycat and the respondents in the recent thread on feeding, which raised some questions about my own feeding program.[/QUOTE]
There is an updated NRC listing JB is the one who mentioned it, in the supplement thread. Maybe JB will see this and chime in for you, tell you where you can find the updated NRC.
2007 is the latest. I bought it with great hopes to see better evidence than the previous version. But none of the trace mineral requirements were changed, all due to having no better research than before. The research the recommendations are based on are really not very convincing to me. Some are actually based on other species.
There is no money to fund basic research in equine nutrition.
I just signed up to receive newsletters (free) from the NAP. I deduced from my speed read that you can select what sort of info you want to read.
Quite possibly there’s more current info at the various vet schools that are doing nutritional research.
Yep, the 6th edition of the NRC’s Nutrient Requirements of Horses is the most recent version (2007). It is the text I used for my equine nutrition course last year.
I would just use the 2007 version of the NRC book, along with a googlescholar or pubmed or something similar, search on whatever topic you are interested in at the moment. Nutritional research for horses doesn’t happen very often, or very quickly, so it’s unlikely there are a whole lot of advances in many things in the last 9+ years. Some new knowledge yes, on some things yes.
Updating the NRC is a massive undertaking and in comparison to the editions for the other species 2007 is not that old. The Dairy NRC was last updated in 2001. The newest edition of the Beef NRC was just published this summer, with the previous edition being 1996! And you have to keep in mind that significantly more research is generated for production livestock species.
Google scholar is your best resource, although the quantity of new research is pretty limited.
There is a biennial European Equine Health and Nutrition Congress that publishes nutritional research on a regular basis.
And stuff turns up in various academic journals.
But Katy is right–there’s precious little funding for independent equine nutrition research.
[QUOTE=Ghazzu;8803241]
There is a biennial European Equine Health and Nutrition Congress that publishes nutritional research on a regular basis.
And stuff turns up in various academic journals.
But Katy is right–there’s precious little funding for independent equine nutrition research.[/QUOTE]
The other aspect of it, aside from the major lack of funding, is that trace mineral research is a difficult task in horses. The current NRC recommendations are extrapolation at best. Mature horses are an odd bird-we don’t measure growth rate or production in adult animals like we do say cows or chickens and we cant take samples of invasive tissues, so break point analysis studies are difficult or rely on indirect measurements of response.
Add to that balance studies in horses aren’t the most accurate for some of the micronutrients and the amount of variation in between individuals, and TM requirement work becomes really difficult to do correctly, so the NRC recommendations are based mostly on “what is the amount that you can feed and not see negative effects” rather than true requirements. It would fantastic to get more research to truly define requirements and not just recommendations, but it will take a lot.
Equine Applied and Clinical Nutrition (edited by Geor, R.J., Harris., P.A., and Coenen, M.) has excellent, in-depth chapters on V&M.
I can also recommend the U of Edinburgh fall class on Eq Nuti starting soon. Grad level, excellent, online.
A very useful text.
[QUOTE=Hermein;8802714]
Quite possibly there’s more current info at the various vet schools that are doing nutritional research.[/QUOTE]
You’re unlikely to find vet schools doing nutritional research in horses. Veterinarians tend to focus on diseases, injuries, etc. For nutritional information, you’ll have better luck searching for new research being published by those of us whose academic focus is equine nutrition. My go-to resources are the Journal of Equine Veterinary Science and Journal of Animal Science when I’m looking for papers on a specific subject.
I prefer EVJ (Equine Veterinary Journal) to JEVS, but both have significant useful content.
Thanks. I have a mixed herd–ridiculously healthy mustangs to elderly wb with multiple issues, and several in between, each of which has at least one quirky requirement.
I’ll peruse the suggestions.
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