Do you feed lineseed to your horses? Does it help for weightgain? Tia
Most of us know this as flax.
Yes, I feed flax. It’s tough to feed enough for weight gain, but I suppose it’s possible, especially for an easy keeper. I feed it for the omega 3 content, and because it makes them shiny.
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How much do you feed per day?
1/2 cup to 1 cup per day is a pretty standard feeding rate.
It’s already in my feed but typically I fed 1/2 to 1 cup a day. I agree it’s not a good weight gaining tool but nice for putting the bloom on a coat.
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I buy it whole and grind it daily in a little electric coffee mill. If you buy ground linseed (flax), it is supposed to be stabilized to keep it from going rancid.
I purchase it from Brooks (Flax Appeal - stabilized flax) and I feed about 1-2 cups a day. As others have said, it brings a nice shine to their coats and it has some Vit E content to it, so I like it for that aspect as well. All of my 5 ponies look great on it.
I used a little more of it on one of my ponies that is IR and was on the thinner side He was unable to be fed any grain (or grass of course) but could have no molasses beet pulp, flax appeal and hay cubes.
Here is some info from the Brooks site on feeding rates etc:
My mare has been on 1/2 cup/ day of ground flax for a couple of years. Her prior owner had her on PP skin & allergy but my trainer switched to flax when the mare moved to her barn (prior my purchase) to see if it met her needs since it’s significantly cheaper and we’re getting the same positive outcome. The PP didn’t address the insect allergy and her skin actually looks a lot better on flax so that works for me! She is an easy keeper but 1/2 cup doesn’t seem to impact weight gain or loss. I recently bought a 25lbs tub of Nutraflax (stabilized) to see how it goes instead of grinding my own (unstablized). Some of the studies on flax used several pounds which would be a chore to get my mare to eat that, 1/2 cup is definitely her limit in one meal.
Flax itself actually has very little vit e, although the supplement you’ve linked has a small amount of it added. Not really enough to make a difference in the diet, though…it looks like a little over 100 iu vit e per cup.
Flax alone is in the neighborhood of 1 iu per cup, so pretty much nada when considering what horses need.
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