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Posted by Cindy on 3/22/2009, 1:02 pm, in reply to "Re: 'Splain that to me..."
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As far as the calcium/milk conflict, like colostrum, milk or lactic acid is only absorbed by the body for a certain amount of time. You have of course heard of people who are lactic intolerant. We adults who can, drink mil because we like it not necessarily because it good for us. You do have to have the magnesium/phosphorus balance there as well. Loren you are correct about the fermentation being enhanced by the sugars. That is also translated as energy. The fermentation occurs in the hindgut of the horse rather than the chambers of the stomach in the cow. Therefore the process starts with proper mastication of the fiber (chewing) The saliva starts the breakdown and so on. Also in Equine, The horse’s intestine is (help me out here Sammi Jo) something like 9 times the length of the horse, the Donkey’s is 15 times, so that would make the mule somewhere in the middle. A Zebra’s is even more. Thus the reason for fiber. The intestine is extracting the nutrient so the longer it is the more time it has to do it's job. This is why donkeys and zebras can do better on lower quality forage and also have a more "pot bellied" look than a horse. (Not to say that a good quality feeding program won’t “do away” with that appearance or that just because they are pot bellied doesn’t mean that something might not be “wrong”. I would think that logically, because our zebras are not dependant on “finding“ food anywhere but in their feeder, their appearance would be more svelte looking than their wild counter parts) There is simply more room when times are tough to process nutrients. It also explains why donkeys get so fat their crest will fall over when fed high quality hay/feed. They store their fat in their neck crest and over their back. It also explains why mules are a favored over horse for work. They can do better on less feed than a horse with the benefit of hybrid vigor to resist disease, insects and physical burnout. My old horse (29) cannot go on spring pasture because the grass is so lush that it turns to liquid in him! He has always been that way. He’s an Arabian so my thoughts are that his system is, as a desert breed, able to process the dry mature grasses better than the water filled green grass. Also interesting to note that in a “drought” year out here, the “turned out” cattle (on BLM or Forest allotments) seem to do better and have “growthier” calves, too. Theory: higher concentration of nutrition in the thinner forage or shorter growth than the thick heavy growth competing for nutrition provided around the root system. This means that the capacity in the cows stomach has not changed but the nutritional concentrate of feed has. When her stomach is full she lays down and chews her food. If that food is full of “empty calories” then she’s not getting the full benefit of the chewing process anymore than a horse that is given free choice food or has access to highly nutritious forage. It just goes right on through and lands behind them. The difference is that a cow has to find more food to gain weight and a horse wastes it. By the way, I live on the high, dry and cold side of Oregon so I‘m very familiar with the “drought syndrome“!
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