Ep. 088: NSC, Sugars, Starches, Fructans – Are They Good or Bad for Horses?

Episode Notes

On this episode, co-host Katy Starr and guest expert Dr. Stephen Duren, PhD, MS, PAS discuss the confusing terminology of NSC, WSC, ESC, sugars, starches, and fructans, including:

• What are sugars, starches, and fructans?
• What are non-structural carbohydrates (NSC) - is it something that can be measured or is it a calculation?
• What feed changes have the GREATEST impact on horses needing a low sugar and starch diet?

We’re breaking it down to better understand how carbohydrates are utilized in the horse’s body and how it matters more for certain horses than others. Dr. Duren also shares what is most often misunderstood by horse owners when it comes to ESC, WSC, and NSC. Don’t miss this episode!

Have a topic idea or feedback to share? We want to connect with you! Email podcast@standlee.com

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*Views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of Standlee Premium Products, LLC.*

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Helpful Info – 

NSC = starch + WSC

WSC = ESC + fructans

ESC = sugar

• A hay analysis will come back reporting on starch, ESC, and WSC
• A non-forage feed label will generally report on ESC, which is sugar, but this is still not quite the number for NSC

~18-01 – “Ep. 037: Navigating When to Soak, Steam, Wet or Leave Hay Dry with Dr. Krishona Martinson” – podcast episode on research of soaking or steaming hay to reduce sugars - https://www.standleeforage.com/podcast/episodes/ep-037-navigating-when-to-soak-steam-wet-or-leave-hay-dry-with-dr-krishona-martinson/

Read full episode transcript

Katy Starr (00:01):

Hi, I'm Katy.

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (00:02):

And I'm Dr. Cubitt. We're going Beyond the Barn. Come join us on this journey as we bust equine and livestock nutrition myths, and interview some of the most intriguing experts in the country.

 

Katy Starr (00:15):

We'll go behind the scenes of how premium Western quality forage is grown and brought to your favorite farm and ranch retail store. We're so glad you're here. Welcome back to another episode of Beyond the Barn. Today I have Dr. Duren joining us on the Beyond the Barn podcast. Thanks for being here with us.

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (00:36):

No worries at all.

 

Katy Starr (00:37):

We are going to talk about a topic today that can be very confusing and a little bit complex for horse owners, and that involves NSC, ESC, WSC, the complicated topic of sugars and starches. What can my horse have? What does all of this mean? And so, I think this will be a really, hopefully, helpful conversation for our listeners today.

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (01:02):

Yeah, there's certainly a lot of confusion about carbohydrates and the importance of carbohydrates in the equine diet and then limiting those types of carbohydrates or certain types of carbohydrates for diseased animals. So, it's a question as an equine nutritionist, I get all the time and there's certainly a lot of confusion on the topic.

 

Katy Starr (01:22):

Right, and before we get started today, I just would like to remind our listeners that any of the topics we cover on the Beyond the Barn podcast are more generalized and not specific to any individualized horse or any specific situation. Be sure to always work with your veterinarian and nutritionist before making any drastic changes to your horse's feed program. Or you can reach out to us and talk directly with Dr. Cubitt or Dr. Duren on any specifics that you would like to know. So, to kind of get us started on this topic, Dr. Duren, can you talk to us about what are sugars, starches, and fructans?

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (02:01):

Yeah, so there are definitions for each of those, but first of all, they're all carbohydrates. So, a sugar, there are simple carbohydrates. So, just the individual sugar molecule, like a glucose or a fructose, that is what we call a simple sugar or sugar, the definition that we use. Starch, then you start to hook some of those together. So, starch for instance is a chain of glucose units. Okay? Still digested the same way. Still small intestine enzymatic digestion in the horse. Then when we talk about a fructan, that's a chain of fructose sugars. Now, unfortunately, they're resistant to enzyme digestion and they're digested in the horse a little bit differently, in the sense that they're fermented in the hindgut of the horse.

 

Katy Starr (02:50):

Right, and what feed ingredients, I guess, can you find sugar, starches, and fructans? Is it in concentrated feeds? Forage? Where can we find these?

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (03:01):

So, the simple answer to that is yes, you can find them everywhere.

 

Katy Starr (03:05):

Yeah.

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (03:05):

And I think that's a tremendous misnomer that you think, "I can feed a sugar-free diet to a horse". No, you can't because horses are fiber digesters. That's the very nature of their diet, and fiber, hay, pasture contains sugar, some starch, and certainly fructan. So, the thought or the thought process is, "I need to put my horse on a sugar-free diet, that would be similar to a human on a sugar-free diet". There are certainly ways we can significantly reduce the sugar intake, but the thought of eliminating those? That is not practical. So, sugar, starch, and fructans are found in every single ingredient that a horse eats, with the exception of oil, obviously, which doesn't contain any carbohydrate.

 

Katy Starr (03:53):

Right. So, can you talk to us then about what the difference between non-structural carbohydrates and structural carbohydrates are? Because the same that you're talking about with, you know, limiting sugar, I think people sometimes talk about with carbohydrates as well, saying like a low-carbohydrate diet and things like that. But a horse needs structural carbohydrates in their diet. Correct?

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (04:19):

Exactly. So, non-structural carbohydrates are simply those carbohydrates that aren't used for the structural component of the plant. Okay? They're inside the cell, they don't make up the cell wall. There are carbohydrates that are inside the cell, not used to help the plant stay upright, anything like that. And that is different from the structural carbohydrates, which we call fiber, if you will. And those fiber carbohydrates take on names like cellulose and hemi-cellulose and lignin which are these carbohydrates that have been joined together in these complicated arrays that make up the fiber component of the diet. Fiber in horses and fiber in humans are not enzymatically digested. There's not an enzyme that will break down fiber. Those have to be fermented by microorganisms to break that beta bond and make those available. So, horses absolutely on a daily basis require fibers, carbohydrates, or structural carbohydrates. Then the amount of non-structural can be titrated, if you will, increased or decreased depending on the discipline of the horse, the activity level of the horse, any disease process of the horse. We're able to modulate or modify that portion of the diet or the structure carbohydrate. Those are not the ones we want to modify.

 

Katy Starr (05:46):

Excellent. And then, can you also talk about what the difference between ethanol soluble carbohydrates, or ESC, and then water soluble carbohydrates, or WSC?

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (05:59):

Yeah, so the fascinating point of feeding disease horses, okay? All the literature and original estimentation was that we have to have the non-structural carbohydrate at a level below this. Okay? And a lot of that data is very, very arbitrary. I'll give you some references at the end that you can put up so people can read this if they have insomnia and can't go to sleep at night, I guarantee this should do it for them.

 

Katy Starr (06:27):

, this will do it. This will put them to sleep, huh? .

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (06:30):

Yeah. So, there's not a lab that actually analyzes non-structural carbohydrate. Okay? So, all our premise is based on a value that we don't have. So, the closest thing we have with modern laboratory technique that estimates non-structural carbohydrate is the addition of starch plus WSC. Okay? On a forage report, on a bag of feed, what we typically get back is we get something called ethanol-soluble carbohydrate, ESC. And these are the carbohydrates that dissolve in ethanol. So, these are your sugars. The glucose, the fructose, the sucrose, the ones that easily dissolve apart. Okay? The other thing that we get on a forage report is we get starch. Okay? Where they're specifically looking for those glucose polymers. Okay, we get that. So, we get ESC and starch, and then we get something that's called WSC. WSC is the same carbohydrates in the ethanol-soluble fraction plus those fructans. Okay? Those chains of fructose that are added in that. So, if we were wanting to estimate the old non-structural carbohydrate, we have to add WSC, which gets the sugars plus the fructan plus starch to get that value. So, feeding a diseased horse, if you will, is not as simple as, "Okay, I got this number on the forage report, that's all I need to do," you have to do some math to actually get what the total sugar/starch load is basically for that horse.

 

Katy Starr (08:13):

Right, and anytime that you're working with equations like that and numbers that are two numbers put together and involving an equation, it gets complicated in getting an accurate number.

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (08:27):

Complicated and, unfortunately, then the misinformation starts to spread.

 

Katy Starr (08:33):

Yeah.

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (08:33):

For example, if you get a forage report, you send a forage analysis in, you'll get starch, ESC, and WSC. So, adding the WSC and the starch, that's pretty easy. But then, when you go to the feed store and you purchase a bag of non forage-based feed, what you typically get is sugar, which is ESC and starch. But if you add those two numbers together, you don't quite have the NSC value.

 

Katy Starr (09:04):

Right.

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (09:04):

You're still short on that. So, again, let the confusion begin.

 

Katy Starr (09:08):

Would you say, as an equine nutritionist, that that is probably the most often misunderstood thing about like ESC, WSC, and NSC by horse owners? The fact of not necessarily understanding that it's basically an equation that it takes to get close to the number rather than an actual, you know, analysis that is tested for or an element test.

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (09:34):

Exactly. Absolutely. It's misunderstood and then there's variability in any test.

 

Katy Starr (09:40):

Yeah.

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (09:40):

There's going to be variability based on ingredients from batch to batch with respect to forage from field to field, from cutting to cutting, within the same cutting, or what time of day it was cut. All those things are going to add variability. So, the only way to really know is to actually analyze. Well, as an equine nutritionist, I will often get phone calls and said, "Well, we looked at the website or we looked at the feed tag and they guaranteed this," most of the time - pretty accurate. But if you don't understand that there's variability to that. Okay? So, you could have something that they guaranteed certain values on and you send it to the lab and you get different numbers, don't be surprised.

 

Katy Starr (10:19):

Yeah.

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (10:19):

Because there is variability and we're just trying to get to a workable number.

 

Katy Starr (10:24):

Right. So, what type of horses, in particular, need a lower sugar and starch diet? Because not necessarily all horses need to have a focus on that. Is that correct?

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (10:37):

Correct. So, I think one of the big misnomers, first of all, is that horses don't need sugar. Every cell in the body functions on sugar or is capable of functioning on sugar and the brain, nervous tissue actually prefers it. Okay? So, sugar is something that's required. It's required for muscle contraction. You know, we can go other ways around it. The other thing is the digestion of fiber. You know, these low sugar starch forages, when they ferment by the bacteria, they produce volatile fatty acids, which guess what? Form sugar. So, I'm telling you, it all comes back to sugar. So, it's necessary. So, to your question, which horses don't need as much sugar? Horses that aren't as active, you know, that aren't using muscle contraction. You know, horses that may be resting or horses that may be injured or horses that may be overweight. Now an overweight horse also needs less calories in the diet. So, it's not just sugar. They also need less total calories from other sources as well. So, certainly those horses. And then, any horse that has diseases that are carbohydrate sensitive, so horses that have different metabolic diseases, Cushing's, or a tumor of the pituitary gland, those horses are sensitive to the sugar starch content of the diet. Horses with laminitis, horses that tie up horses, horses that are insulin resistant. All those are a horse asking its owner to be careful. Okay? Not eliminating but just be careful with how much sugar and starch those horses are seeing.

 

Katy Starr (12:18):

Right. Are there, and obviously this could be different depending on the nutritional condition that a horse might have, but are there any specific symptoms that kind of come to mind that might indicate that a horse could be sensitive to sugars and starches?

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (12:33):

Yeah, so they will have some changes. Most of these are metabolic changes. So, most of them are blood work changes. But some of the outward signs you'll see is you'll start to see some regional adiposity, you know, cresty neck, fat deposits in other places are an indication of a potential insulin resistance and some issues like that. Other diseases, laminitis, you know, where horses actually get sensitive, become lame because of damagedlaminaein the feet. An indication of high carbohydrates. Horse people seem to go in cycles of what they're worried about and carbohydrate, something absolutely justified that people are concerned about. But a basic understanding of what you're doing, what you're feeding. And if you feed a horse like an athlete and he's not an athlete, he's going to get way more sugar, starch, and way more calories than he needs and it's going to cause some problems down the road.

 

Katy Starr (13:32):

Right.

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (13:33):

I think a lack of exercise stimulates a lot of these sugar sensitivities.

 

Katy Starr (13:38):

Right.

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (13:39):

Because I think if you go back and look historically and you say, well how did we feed horses 20 and 30 years ago? And I know you being such a young woman that you don't even remember that you would've been just in grade school at that particular point. But the feeds that we have for horses now are much safer, much more modulated, or much more controlled sugar starch than ever before. So, did we have those diseases years ago? Absolutely. We didn't have any idea what we had, but because of longevity of horses and keeping that horse well into their twenties or thirties, then a lot of these minor feeding changes that have happened over the years have finally negatively affected that horse. He's become an age where he is affected.

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (14:24):

And I think if we think of our own diets, when you were young, and I don't know what you ate in college, but if you were like most college students, your diet was not great. Consisted of caffeine and sugar and lots of both.

 

Katy Starr (14:38):

Yeah.

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (14:38):

And then, in your old age, you chase health.

 

Katy Starr (14:41):

Mm-hmm .

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (14:41):

Okay, how do I get healthy again?

 

Katy Starr (14:43):

Right.

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (14:43):

It's the exact same thing with horses. So, you know, just don't go overboard, but just some simple changes in the diet of a horse, you know, monitor body condition, do some things like that, it's going to keep that horse healthy and then you aren't going to chase things later in life for that horse.

 

Katy Starr (14:59):

Right. Good management to start with. Nice. So, we've talked about this actually quite a bit and I think this is a really good point to kind of hit on for listeners. About what diet changes have the greatest impact on horses, that are needing a low sugar and starch diet?

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (15:20):

Yeah. So, if you have a horse that's diseased or a horse that you're certainly concerned about and you say, okay, I want to start to modulate or influence the sugar starch content of that horse's diet. So, what ingredient do I need to think about? Simple answer. What ingredient in that horse's diet is fed in the greatest amount? And that's the forage component of the diet. Well, I've been told many times that forage doesn't contain sugar. It absolutely contains sugar. Okay? Different types of forages contain different amounts, it contains different amounts depending on time of day, all those things. But the one thing, if you have a horse that's sensitive to sugar and starch, the very first thing you need to pay attention to is the forage component of the diet. Okay? There are all kinds of good low carbohydrate concentrates that you can feed to horses, that don't have grain or molasses in them. Okay? But those are fed at very small levels compared to the 20 pounds of forage or 15 pounds of forage. You can make massive fluxes one way or the other just by selecting the right forage, testing forage, and finding out truly what the values are.

 

Katy Starr (16:32):

Right. Well, and if we're feeding a horse like one and a half, two and a half percent of their body weight in forage, right? That's going to come out to be about 15 to 25 pounds of forage per day. And if, I mean, obviously it depends on the horse, right? What they're doing. But if you have them on grain as well, help me, we don't feed a lot of grain to our horses. So, help explain to our listeners a little bit so we can kind of give an example. If we have that much of the diet in hay, what would you say as an example for a horse that might be on some grain, how much that is?

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (17:06):

Yeah, so let's say that you have a horse that's sensitive. So, the listener or horse owner said, "Okay, I want to reduce the sugar and starch intake of this horse. I had a horse that was laminitic before and I had a horse that had insulin resistance. I don't want to go through that again. I want to get this right on my horse." So, what they've done is they've changed from your normal grain concentrate to one of these fat and fiber, no grain, no molasses type concentrates, but you're only feeding five pounds of that particular product. Okay? Yet with the forage component, you're feeding three times that. Okay? So, if they were getting five pounds of some sort of concentrate, they'd be getting at least 15 pounds, 1.5% of their body weight for a thousand-pound horse in forage. So, you can see that whatever change you make is three times as drastic with forage.

 

Katy Starr (18:01):

Right.

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (18:01):

So, just a couple points lower in forage makes a massive difference. Most of the listeners certainly are aware of that with the soaking of hay and different methods to try to reduce the sugar content of forage, that that's the important part. But boy, it's a lot easier to say, "Well I'm not going to feed that grain concentrate or that feed for my horse because I looked at the feed tag and the level was too high." Does your bale of hay have a feed tag on it? It does not. You know, some of the Standlee products, you know, because of, you know, packaging would have some of that data on there because they're packaged, but not just a bale of hay, not even a compressed bale of hay. So, how do you know? The only way to know is to test it. And you say, well I'm feeding this particular hay because it's low in sugar and starch. Not necessarily! Time of day, what the fertilization, what the watering schedule was.

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (18:57):

So, if you have a horse that's that sugar sensitive, where you're trying to do better for your horse on the sugar side of things, absolutely start with the forage component, get it analyzed. If you don't know what the numbers mean, contact your veterinarian or better yet, your equine nutritionist or Standlee. Get some help and do the calculations, but don't think that you can get to zero sugar.

 

Katy Starr (19:24):

Right.

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (19:25):

Okay? Calculate where you are and do better. Okay? Move the needle in the right direction. Don't panic, just get the needle going in the right direction - is the big part.

 

Katy Starr (19:35):

Right. And I will add too, that if you feed Standlee products, you can reach out to us at any point in time and talk to Dr. Duren or Dr. Cubitt, and they can help you look at an analysis that you got on, maybe if you had any local supply that you're trying to, kind of, put into your diet and add some Standlee into it or whatever, they can kind of help you get that figured out. And so, feel free to reach out to us, our customer service, and we would be happy to work with you guys on that. So, one thing I wanted to ask you about is, you know, obviously we talked about the importance of trying to find some of that, I mean it's going to be easier to find hay that is lower in sugar and starches. You talked about the type of hay can be a determining factor in that, but can soaking and then draining that hay of the water help limit sugars and starches in the hay? Does it remove other nutrients? Is there a certain timeframe that you should look for in doing that?

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (20:39):

Yeah, so there is some research on that and absolutely soaking hay will reduce some of the sugar content of hay. The amount of reduction depends on things like stem thickness, length of soak, temperature of the water, all those sorts of things. But right now, you live in Twin Falls, Idaho, and I'm doubting that you're wanting to, really, soaking hay is high on your priority list because it's cold, it will freeze. Okay? So, start by first analyzing hay and you know, a forage analysis, just looking at the carbohydrate fractions is not expensive. The more nutrients you look at, certainly the more the cost is. But just looking at, if you're just selecting hay, I got two varieties of orchard grass or two varieties of timothy or a timothy and a teff, you could spend that money and say, okay, which is lower to start with?

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (21:33):

And then, know that soaking - typically it's 30 minutes rinsing the water off, will reduce the sugar content but not predictable, because that depends on some of the characteristics of hay. Will you lose other nutrients? Certainly! You'll lose a bit of potassium; you'll lose something like that. A lot of the studies on what's lost in hay use much longer soaking, that you would have in Europe, where they have to soak hay to get rid of mold spores and things like that. But a 30 minute soak, if you're feeding a fortified feed, whether it's a low-carbohydrate feed or what it is, you'll make up all those nutrients. So, that's not a concern. You're just mainly losing sugar.

 

Katy Starr (22:14):

Right. And definitely not, you know, everybody's favorite option like you said, especially in the wintertime, it can be a little bit challenging, but as an option, if somebody needs it, it's something good to think about. But if you're able to find a hay that is lower in sugar and starches, that will be a lot better, I think. And you had mentioned a few factors that can impact non-structural carbohydrates. And so, if you wouldn't mind kind of briefly touching on, we talk about plant species, right? The type of plant or hay, the time of day that a horse might be grazing, or that it is cut for harvest, the season, plant maturity, environment and just pasture and plant management in general. Can you touch on a little bit of that and how the NSC can fluctuate due to some of those factors?

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (23:09):

Absolutely. So, first of all, type of forage, certain plants store carbohydrates differently. So, for example, legume forage is alfalfa, okay? Doesn't have a high sugar starch level, because they store carbohydrate differently. Warm season grass, what they call C4 grasses; bermuda grass, teff grass, again those don't show or store carbohydrates the same way that some of our cool season grasses. So, generally your warm season or C4 grasses are lower in sugar and starch. Our cool season grasses, timothy, orchard, those types, bluegrass, those types of things, they store carbohydrates as sugar and starch. So, generally they start off with a higher sugar than either the alfalfa or the warm season grasses, like teff do. Other things, such as time of day. So, any plant biologist, they're going to shoot me for all this, because this is a massive oversimplification, but for horse owners, if you just basically think of when the sun shines on the plant through the process of photosynthesis, it produces sugar.

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (24:21):

Then at night, it takes those sugars and then it forms them into complicated carbohydrates, fiber, and the plant grows taller. Okay? So, when would the sugar be the lowest in the plant for grazing? Early in the morning. Okay, so it uses those sugars at night, it's respired those. And then, early in the morning it's the lowest. Well, that brings another interesting thought, why do horses have sugar and starch problems in the spring and the fall? Let's think about that. Spring weather; lots of sunshine. Okay? Lots of sugar production. Then at night, okay, it's not warm enough for that plant to turn that sugar into complicated carbohydrates, fiber and grow. Okay? Not much spring grass grow until it starts to warm up more at night. Same in the fall, sunshine, but cold at night, plants can't grow, just accumulates sugar. So, it's equivalent of putting three inches of oats out on your pasture and turning your horse out and say go for your life. It's an issue. So, grazing - think early in the morning!

 

Katy Starr (25:29):

And is there an exception if it freezes?

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (25:31):

Well, so freezing is nothing more than it being too cold at night. Okay? For it to grow and it just traps all that sugar. Well, the other thing is, is the plants’ survival mode. Okay? The only way it survives the winter is collecting sugar.

 

Katy Starr (25:45):

Yeah.

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (25:46):

Okay? That's what keeps those plants alive in the winter. The other incredible oversimplification, because that's what I do. Is if you think about stress, anything that stresses the plant increases sugar content. Okay? So, in a drought, okay, grass doesn't grow as tall, but it's just holding onto sugar for all it's worth to survive. So, if it's a drought, if it's not fertilized, it's nutrient deficient, more sugar. Anything that stresses the plant, the plant's survival mode is to accumulate sugar. And then, a horse that eats that is eating a lot of sugar because of it.

 

Katy Starr (26:27):

What other tips would you say that you have for, kind of, properly feeding a horse that needs to maybe limit the sugar and starches in their diet?

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (26:38):

Yeah, so again, the forage is a big component. Get your forage analyzed, figure out what you have, and select a lower sugar starch forage to begin with. That makes a massive difference. If you need to provide, and you do, if you need to provide vitamins and minerals, look at low-intake products first, like the balancers, okay? Typically, they're only fed one to two pounds a day. So, even if they do have a tiny bit of grain in them, even if they do have a tiny bit of molasses in it, it's two pounds compared to 20 pounds of forage. So, the difference in a balancer, a low-sugar balancer versus a regular balancer, is trivial. Compared to just a small difference in the forage, just because of how much they eat. If you don't want to use a balancer, there's many low carbohydrates concentrates out there that don't have grain or molasses, but all the vitamins and minerals in them as well.

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (27:33):

The other thing is, and I harp on this probably too much, is feed your horse for what it's doing. Don't overfeed. I think that the chronic small elevations in calorie intake over years are what precipitates a lot of these problems. So, that old analogy, "killing horses with kindness", I think actually holds true. And so, you know, I'm certainly not saying don't feed your horse properly, but at the same time you need to get the calorie content correct and you need to say, okay, I can get the calorie content by using forage that's lower in sugar or starch or selecting a low carbohydrate concentrate for the horse. That's all fine, but you still got to get the calorie right. And the irony is that's the only thing you can look at a horse and get right. Because you can see if I'm feeding too much calories, what happens? They gain weight. Okay, not enough calories? They get thin. So, that's the only thing you can see. You need to get that right.

 

Katy Starr (28:40):

And to, kind of, add to your point about, you know, how much hay or forage is made up in the diet and how we need to pay attention to that. What is, kind of, the, I guess, appropriate range that people need to look for to make sure that they're feeding, kind of, a safe level of sugar and starches in their diet?

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (29:04):

Yeah, so safe level depends on what the horse is doing, right?

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (29:08):

So, if it's a racehorse, sugar and starch don't mean anything.

 

Katy Starr (29:12):

Right.

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (29:13):

Okay? Because that horse is running on sugar. But let's just say you have a horse that is either diagnosed with a disease or is a candidate for a disease.

 

Katy Starr (29:23):

Right.

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (29:23):

So, let's start by looking for a candidate. So, if you have the total diet at about 12% non-structural carbohydrate (NSC) or water-soluble carbohydrate (WSC) plus starch, if you have it at about that level, that's a massive benefit to you. For horses that are diseased, full on, on medication, those sorts of things, then we try to get it a little lower. We try to get it in that 10% WSC plus starch or the old non-structural carbohydrate. But those are arbitrary, depends on the horse.

 

Katy Starr (29:59):

Right.

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (29:59):

Depends on the disease, state of the horse. So, people get these hard and fast numbers, oh my gosh, it needs to be this, my advice is calculate where you are now and then try to move the needle in the right direction.

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (30:15):

Okay? Don't get all hung up, I've got to get below 12% and stuff like that because you'll do your head in with the math and, and trying to figure out, move the needle in the right direction. And again, if they're using some of the Standlee products, you know, we'll be glad to help them do some of the calculations because I know once you start calculating this, if you're not used to doing these things with numbers, I do it every day. So, I'm really fast at it. If the average horse owner had to go from, okay, I've got to concentrate on keeping my heels down and left, reign, left, reign, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, all the things you have to do from a riding standpoint. And then, you're then halfway through that lesson you're going, I wonder what the sugar and starch content of this diet is. You know, you can't be good at everything, so get some help. We'll be glad to help.

 

Katy Starr (31:03):

It's okay to outsource a little bit . And honestly, if you have the ability to work with a qualified, you know, equine nutritionist, this is one of those many reasons where it would be very beneficial for you. Or you know, like we said, reach out to us and we can help you work with Dr. Cubitt and Dr. Duren. But kind of like what you mentioned, sometimes I think people forget about that. They do get kind of caught up in the specific numbers here and there, but when you talk about 10% or 12% of the non-structural carbohydrates in the diet, that includes like the whole diet, right?

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (31:40):

Correct.

 

Katy Starr (31:40):

Like sometimes people are like, oh, I can't give them this little treat because this is not sugar free. Or, you know what I mean? And it's like, well when you're looking at the whole diet and putting everything together, which can get a little bit complicated if you're not used to doing it on a consistent basis, you know, you got to work with people that can be a good part of your team and help you be successful for the goals that you have with your horse.

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (32:04):

Yeah. So, like, again, its moderation, you know. Can they have that one morsel of treat? You know, is that going to wreck the diet? And I think once you see the calculation and what really affects sugar starch intake of the diet and what is kind of trivial in the, the whole thing, I think it's eye-opening. And so, seeing some examples of that.

 

Katy Starr (32:30):

Excellent. Well, thank you Dr. Duren. I feel like today was a really great conversation, and I hope that it's been really helpful for our listeners, gives them a little bit better insight into non-structural carbohydrates, what they mean, what they're made up of, what they need to be looking for if they have a horse that maybe struggles with sugar and starch in their diet. And so, thank you for being here today. And to our podcast listeners, if you have any topic ideas that you would like us to cover on the Beyond the Barn podcast, reach out to us at podcast@standlee.com. We love to hear from you guys. And thanks again Dr. Duren, it was great having you here today.

 

Dr. Stephen Duren (33:09):

Thanks for having me.

 

Katy Starr (33:12):

Thanks for listening to the Beyond the Barn podcast by Standlee Forage. We'd love for you to share our podcast with your favorite people and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite listening platform. Until next time, keep your cinch tight and don't forget to turn off the water.