Is there much of a difference other than the obvious: one being made from rice and the other from wheat?
I have been feeding rice bran to my old guy for extra weight but am choking on the price since wheat bran is so much cheaper. And since I found rice bran pellets FOR horses online for $13/50# bag (shipping wouldn’t be cost effective since it would be $80 to ship 2 bags), I am still not wanting to spend $25 for the Max E Glo 40 # bags.
My local feed stores only carry Max E Glo or Nutrena Boost for rice bran but one place carries 50# wheat bran for $12 a bag.
So is there much difference in feeding rice bran over wheat bran for weight maintenance?
Wheat bran is something like 4% fat. Rice bran is 20%.
So no, not at all similar.
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I didn’t know so --------- I googled it.
it appears a steady diet of wheat bran (as you would feed rice bran) is NOT the thing to do.
http://www.horses-and-horse-information.com/articles/0996wheat.shtml
i read the whole article and that was plenty for me to never feed wheat bran:(
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That article is pretty… half-sciency? Science not well applied? Not sure what term I’m looking for lol.
Rice bran (and all brans) have the same issue of having a very inverted ca/phos ratio. The difference is that rice bran is something that some companies package for horses, and in most areas of the country, you can find it fortified with calcium to balance the cal/phos ratio within the product. Someone COULD do that with wheat bran, and you will find rice bran in the W and SW areas where alfalfa is used a lot, that isn’t fortified. It’s a good point to know, but having it as-is - high in phos/low in calcium - is actually a good thing if you feed a lot of alfalfa.
Phytic acid - always gets such a bad rap without any context applied to it. Yes, it’s an “anti-nutrient” in that it intereferes with nutrient absoroption. Phytic acid is how many plants store phosphorous. Rice bran on average has MORE phytic acid than wheat bran - higher on the low end of the range, higher on the high end of the range.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with wheat bran. It’s just not very useful, and it’s mis-understood and over-used for horses because too many people think it will help keep the horse regular. It doesn’t work that way for them - they keep regular with ample long-stem fiber/forage.
You can upset the digestive system almost as much with weekly, or infrequent feedings, of rice bran as you can with wheat bran.
Between the 2, rice bran just has more value, but feed it daily to get the benefits of that value.
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