Ep. 096: The Problem with One-Size-Fits-All Feeding Plans for Metabolic Horses - Part 2

Episode Notes

On this Part 2 episode, co-hosts Dr. Tania Cubitt and Katy Starr continue their conversation with Dr. Erica Macon, assistant professor of equine science at Texas A&M University, diving deeper into practical nutrition and management for horses with PPID and insulin dysregulation, including:

• The results of Dr. Macon’s study on Standlee pelleted forage and insulin response
• Whether feeding one pound of ration balancer at once could trigger a laminitic episode
• Why feeding lean metabolic horses is more complex than it seems
• What recent research says about seasonal spikes in insulin and winter laminitis risks

They also discuss the importance of building a trusted horse care team, realistic timelines for results, and how small management shifts can make a big difference in long-term health.

🎧 Listen now on the Beyond the Barn podcast, to take a smarter, more proactive approach to horse care.

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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Nutritional resources from past episodes – 

• Ep. 095: Metabolic Horses Aren’t Always Fat - Here’s What No One Tells You - Part 1
• Ep. 088: NSC, Sugars, Starches, Fructans – Are They Good or Bad for Horses?
• Ep. 084: How to Help Your Horse with Cushing’s Disease
• Ep. 057: How to Prevent and Manage Laminitis
• Ep. 006: Successful Strategies to Help Limit NSC (aka Sugars and Starches) in Horse Diets
• Ep. 005: Are Horses Carbohydrate Sensitive?

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Connect with Dr. Erica Macon via email at erica.macon@ag.tamu.edu or visit her university page at https://animalscience.tamu.edu/people/macon-erica/

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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.

 

Katy Starr (00:26):

If you missed our previous episode, episode 95, go listen to that first. We talked with Dr. Erica Macon about PPID, formerly known as Cushing's Disease and Insulin Dysregulation in horses, including the most common misunderstanding horse owners have about metabolic diseases, how non-structural carbohydrates are used in the horse's body and where NSC percentage recommendations for metabolic horses actually came from. Today we'll discuss how Standlee pelleted forage impacts insulin levels in metabolic courses, potential feed management ideas that could also help metabolic horses and more. Enjoy our part two conversation now. Dr. Macon, if you want to go into that study that you were talking about where you did look at the forage pellets and things like that. Yeah, that'd be fantastic. I think it'd be good for us to hear a little bit about that.

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (01:21):

Tell us first why you chose the products that you chose.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (01:24):

Okay, so Dr. Adams and I, this is when I was in my PhD. This is my first grant I actually ever wrote. I wrote a Morris Animal Foundation Grant, and I had this idea that okay, we had been working on commercial concentrates or feedstuffs that had cereal grains in them, and they were in a pelleted form. And then we think, okay, well horses are herbivores, we need to start working in the forage area as well. And they're like, well, can we go from a pelleted knowledge base into a long stem forage base? And we said, no, we need something in the middle. And I'm like, you know what? Standlee has pelleted forage. Why don't we do this? So, I remember we were sitting in this tiny little, what seemed to be a storage closet with a whiteboard in it. And we were just trying to write out this study and I was like, Hey, there's a place in, I was in Lexington, Kentucky, there's a Standlee Forage place.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (02:20):

I can just go and see what forage pellets they have and we can use those and test. So, that's exactly what I did actually. I love that warehouse cause it smelled so good to me. Only horse people can say, you walk into a hay barn and you're like, oh, this is great. So, we use alfalfa pellets, we use timothy hay pellets and then we use the mixture of alfalfa and timothy. Because you go back and forth as a researcher what to include and what not to include. And I wanted to use the more common ones to keep it on a practical level. And I wanted to feed those hay pellets in a small amount like we had done in previous studies, just to see what those insulin responses were and seeing if they were quote on quote safe for metabolic horses. And for the rate that we fed them, which is like roughly one to two pounds at a time.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (03:05):

They didn't have these horrible responses to them. And they're actually pretty similar to the low NSC pellet that I had been using in my previous studies, which I use as a negative control. And by negative control, I knew those horses would not respond to that pellet. And those horses in that study didn't respond to those hay pellets. And I was like, guys, this is great. These pellets can be really helpful, especially for horses that have PPID as well as insulin dysregulation and they're on the lean side and we need to get them some energy somehow. We could use these hay pellets and we could supply some energy this way too. And that was kind of the thought process behind it is, let's see what these horses can tolerate. And I love that forage pellet study. I was really excited about the design and I've, I've actually even continued it. I'm working on another hay pellet study using Standlee products here at Texas. And even I, I use Standlee Hay products with my own thoroughbreds because they go the eat me out of house and home in alfalfa. So, I try to give them a little, just a little bit more when I feed them their actual ration balancer that they get.

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (04:21):

What I loved about the setup of this is the majority of horse owners will add, unless it's a senior horse, and I'm talking about senior horses that have no teeth. But the majority of people will add a pelleted or cubed forage, whether it's Standlee or another brand as a supplemental source of better-quality forage. We've actually launched a campaign because I'm like, not everybody is going to use Standlee as their a hundred percent of their forage. They're going to use it as a supplement to improve the quality. So, I like that you've used it in those, it's more practical to look at it in the smaller quantities. Because that's really what a lot of horse owners are doing. They're not feeding 20 pounds of alfalfa pellets to a horse and calling it good. We're feeding in a small amount as a supplemental forage source. So, I think that that aspect of the research, whether you tried to or not, is very practical to how people actually feed these forage products across the board.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (05:21):

Yeah. And even in like my own barn, I can confidently say every person and there's like 40 people where my horses are, every individual horse is fed some type of commercial concentrate and then they put alfalfa pellets in it or an alfalfa cube in it. Every single person in the barn does that. And some people, and I ask them just because I'm a researcher, I ask them like, hey, why do you do that? Just out of curiosity. And I get some people that say, I just want to put more fiber in their diet. I'm like, okay. And the next person I ask, they'll be like, I just want more protein. I'm like, okay, sure. And I get a different response from everybody.

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (06:04):

But most people's honest answer is, I just want to feel like I'm feeding my horse more.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (06:08):

. Yeah. That's also from the fat ones. And no shame on the fluffy ones, man. I love me a good fat horse because that's all I do.

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (06:14):

And if you go to Australia, it's going to be chaff. We call it a chaff. It's chop. Every horse is going to get a dipper of chaff, white chaff, which is oat and chaff or green chaff, which is lucerne. But everyone just because that's what you do. If you don't do that, you're not a good horse owner. So, sometimes it's just trying to be a good horse owner.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (06:33):

Yeah. And especially for metabolic horses. Because you don't feed them that much. And owners feel so bad. Like I have two corgis, they get fat off air. Okay. So, they both get this tiny little amount of kibble in comparison to the collie who gets like two cups morning and night. And he's still thin and we can't put any more weight on him. But he needs it. And I feel so bad for the corgis, and I have their feed in like little maze bowls, which really upset them. They're actually mad at me. And I always feel bad when I tell owners, I'm like, this is how much you need to feed your metabolic horse. And they're like, that's just not enough.

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (07:11):

Oh. Try talking to the horse owner that has a metabolic mini. Oh, that's just what you say first.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (07:20):

. Yeah. Oh.

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (07:22):

One cube every hour. Yeah. That's until you get to five cubes and that's enough for the whole day.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (07:27):

Yeah. Or a mini donkey. I feel bad for those little guys, man. Yeah. But that's why we have these specialized concentrated things called ration balancers now. Yes. . Because this isn't, it's not an excessive amount of energy. You're not going to put weight on them because they're feeding them a ration balancer. It has their protein, their minerals and their vitamins that compliment a forage-based diet. And like even my off the track thoroughbreds, even though they're both hard keeping, they have a predominantly foraged diet because I don't ask them to work that hard. And I just ration balancer around top of that and they get alfalfa cubes in their ration balancer. And then they even do get a little bit of chaff too because I can't help myself. ,

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (08:12):

Here's a quick question for you. Because you were mentioning it before about the research study and it sounded like it was a ration balancer. Different protein levels, a couple of different carbohydrate levels. Not every ration balancer is percentage wise super low in sugars and starches. Some of them might be between 15 to 20%. But my logic in my mind is you're feeding one pound a day. Yeah. It's the actual grams per kilogram of starch that you're giving the horse over the total day is very small. Now let's say you had a sick actively laminitis horse actively showing all these signs. Is that spike because that one meal, should I be asking my clients to take that one pound and split it into two to decrease it a little bit more even though the total amount they're getting for the whole day is still well within those normal low limits. But is that one meal of one pound a day? Is that spike just a wee bit too much? Would I be better off saying, hey, half a pound here and half a pound here?

 

Dr. Erica Macon (09:16):

Yeah. And that's still up for debate. It depends on who you talk to.

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (09:21):

And I think it depends on whether the horse owner has the time.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (09:24):

That too. That too. Because you said it when you're asking the question, it's that volume that's within that tiny little meal, even if it's a pound of a ration balancer. But if it, you know, if it's over that what my little threshold that I found, they still can have a higher response. But what we don't know is how many times do they need to have a higher response to set off subclinical laminitis. And then when does that subclinical laminitis turn into full-blown laminitis event? And this is why we're being so extreme and strict with it, is because we don't know. And our best recommendation at the current time is if we take away that spike that comes from eating that small amount, even though it has over that threshold quote on quote threshold, maybe that will decrease their risk even further.

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (10:18):

Yeah. Anything we can do. Yeah.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (10:20):

Yeah. Anything we can do to decrease the risk is better than making an owner feel sad because they can't feed their horse a big meal. And you were absolutely right. Not every ration balancer on the market right now, there's very few actually that actually have low NSC in them.

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (10:43):

If you look at the numbers, they're the lowest NSC feed you can feed per day. But in the single meal in that one pound. So, yeah, I think its probably, if it's practical for a person, even if they're feeding one to two pounds of the ration balancer just to split it up. Yeah, certainly doesn't, doesn't hurt anything.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (11:05):

Yeah. And another study I want to do is what if we decrease maybe the duration of maybe how fast they eat and maybe we could feed them that one meal if they eat it really slow, like in those in the little maze things. I think I touched on it in that paper and that's actually a study that I'm trying to work with a couple other people right now to see if, if we can slow them down, is that enough to limit that response?

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (11:33):

Yeah. So, many cool things. That's job security .

 

Dr. Erica Macon (11:38):

Well yeah, anytime you put a group of scientists in a room, they're like, we can make six studies real fast. You know,  

 

Katy Starr (11:47):

Just give us the money

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (11:49):

Well see that's the problem is just give us the money. No one's got the money.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (11:54):

Yeah. But yeah, that's oftentimes the biggest frustration

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (11:58):

And I think that's why we end up having to extrapolate so much information from other livestock species or other species in general and just say, well maybe it would be the same in horses. We're just at the mercy of so many different limiting factors.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (12:13):

Yeah, we are. But what keeps us going back to asking the questions is because we have love and passion for these creatures and we want to improve their welfare and their health. So, yeah, funding is often very frustrating, but we always find a way to make it happen anyways. But I don't want to get off topic again.

 

Katy Starr (12:31):

No, its okay.

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (12:32):

Katie says to me, we're going to talk about salt tomorrow. It'll be a short podcast two hours later. We're still talking about salt.

 

Katy Starr (12:41):

. Well and honestly as long as your timeframe is okay, Dr. Macon, I think I will go ahead and split this into two episodes because there's just so much to this. Especially when I was going through and like working through some of the questions to talk about today. I was like, there was just so much to what you've done so far. And I think that goes like for what Dr. Cubitt was saying earlier about how you're being invited to go and talk at all these places because there's just so much that you have kind of developed and worked on that's really creating a lot of benefit I think to the industry. And it's just very valuable and useful for us.

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (13:21):

And I think this discussion is validating to horse owners. Look, we've got three people that know what they're talking about or try to and look at all of the questions that we've just raised in an hour and a half. So, it's not black and white, none of this is black and white. There's so many little nuances. How does your boarding stable set up? What horse do you have? What, where's your forage grown in the soil and what you've got available to you. So, people get so confused and then they feel like they're just not doing the right thing. But don't worry, we're all confused. We're all just trying our best. And so I think that that message in itself that it is confusing, don't worry, just hang in there. We say get off social media, get your group right. Get your team that you trust and ask them the questions. Because I could go online and ask 5,000 different chat groups and get 5,000 different answers and then I'm no better off than when I'm started. I'm way worse to be honest. So, you know, it goes back to having your team that you trust. Ask them, trust them. Don't expect anything to happen overnight.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (14:32):

Yeah.

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (14:32):

Be realistic with your expectations.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (14:34):

Yeah, absolutely. And I'll touch on a few things. I have been getting a lot of invitations to go and talk lately and every time I get an invitation I'm like, oh, am I ready for that?

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (14:45):

Yes. Don't put too many words on your slide then you can say anything. Yeah,

 

Katy Starr (14:49):

Exactly. .

 

Dr. Erica Macon (14:50):

Yeah, when I got the invitation from the Julian family in France, I was like, you want me to come talk? Okay. And that, that was a, a huge honor to go over there and to chat with them. I had such a good time. And there is so many different questions we don't know, but there's so much we need to cover. And every time I get a consult with an owner, I try, my first questions to them are what’s your set up, what are you working with? Because everybody's got your barn is this way, this is who feeds, this is when they feed, you know, what feedstuffs do you have available to you? And I really try to work with them as an individual because if not, it would never be a great consult. And for the team that you assemble, please don't use every Facebook group that you have available to you.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (15:44):

I think any equine nutritionist that has master's, a PhD, that is really focused on this, if you reach out to them, I bet you they'll answer your questions and they'll be happy to answer your questions. And I get a lot of people that reach out to me and they ask me first, they're really appreciative for how much information I give them, but at the same time they're like, thanks for taking the time. And I'm like, this is literally what I've always wanted to do. I've always wanted to help people feed their horses. So, this is actually what I got trained to do. And then I do like research as my primary. But when I get to do something like that, that's my happy little win in my career is, is just helping owners and your questions actually give me more questions to put into research too. So, I, I always love doing consults with owners and how different everybody is. And sometimes I learn stuff from other people too and whatever their new tricks and stuff are, I'm like, Hey you mind if I steal that? And they're like, oh yeah, go ahead. So, again, I don't know everything and I'm so happy to talk to anybody.

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (16:49):

Well it's funny, I remember when I first started consulting and I would go into a barn and they'd say, this is what's happening. And I would immediately say, well you need to change this, this and this and you need to do all this and you're doing this wrong. And then I realized very quickly that that was not the right approach and I am exactly like you. I say, okay, so what situation are you in? Because there's usually five different ways that I could feed your horse, but your finances make a huge difference. Your management, your time, your emotions. Do you want to keep something out of the diet? Do you want to keep something in the diet? Do you look after it yourself or does somebody else.

 

Katy Starr (17:24):

Boarding, yeah.

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (17:24):

There are so many other questions that come in. Feeding horses is actually pretty easy. But all the other stuff that comes with it that are very, very important. The other thing that I ask horse owners a lot these days is, what's your goal with this horse? What's your goal moving forward? Because there are certain things that we might do. If the goal is I want athletic performance, that's my goal versus I just want to walk out in the field and pet my horse and look at him as therapy. You know? Yeah. And so what is the horse owner's goal is also really, really important.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (17:59):

Yeah, absolutely. And that's also one of my questions too. I'm like, what are you trying to get to? I just, I need to understand all the variables in here to give you the best little game plan. And I also, I don't know where Dr. Hoffman got the saying, but I use it in my nutrition classes now too. You can't feed a horse to win, but you can feed them to fail. And that's what I tell all of my students. You can't promise great performance, but you can promise that you'll do your best to give them the energy and the stuff they need for their GI to be happy. And if all that's happy, maybe they'll perform great or that's the hope.

 

Katy Starr(18:39):

It gives them their best chance to right.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (18:40):

Yeah,

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (18:42):

Yeah. Yeah. And I think another thing hopefully that our listeners will get out of this is if you're working with somebody, these are the types of questions that they need to be asking you in order to give you the best consult and evaluation. And if they're not asking you a series of these questions, then maybe you do want a second opinion or maybe you ask, tell them, okay, I think this might be important. Do you need to know this? So, sometimes it's just so overwhelming to even know what do they need to know.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (19:15):

Yeah, and that's true. Normally people contact me by email first and I come back with a set of questions and I'm like, Hey, fill these out for me. And then I normally schedule a zoom unless they're in town or something and then I go, I actually go to the farm. Because I also like to see the environment that is stalled and where they're turned out and all that stuff. Because sometimes owners don't really think about all of the different components. And I'll never forget an example, actually it was Dr. Hoffman's, she said that she got and asked for a consult and she this something along the lines of the horse wasn't doing well, was being fed a decent concentrate and forage but just seemed to not be performing well. And she went out and she went and looked at where the horse was and it was in a dry lot that had a bunch of trees on it. And she's like, well I think that this might have a play here as to why maybe he's not all that happy because he is not having any access to pasture forage and what you are feeding him isn't meeting his nutritional requirements, and you wouldn't know that unless you went out there and actually looked. So, I do ask those questions now just because of some of the experiences of things that I've heard and stuff like that. I'm sorry, I'm on a tangent now.

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (20:31):

No, but no amount of information is too much and it's the random little things that a lot of horse owners just don't think might be important. So, you know, when I say tell me what you feed your horse, I say, tell me everything that goes in that horse's mouth, supplements, treats, whatever. Because it all makes a difference. When I was in grad school, we had a person contact us and say, I rescued a shire and it's urine is orange. And immediately we're like, oh my god, it's tying up and tell us about the diet and blah blah blah. And eventually after multiple consults we're like, okay, something else is going on here. Tell us everything that goes into the horse's mouth. Well she fed it 10 pounds of carrots a day because it was a rescue horse and she felt sorry for it. So.

 

Katy Starr (21:15):

,

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (21:16):

That was the answer.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (21:16):

Yep. That'll do it. .

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (21:19):

So, sometimes it's the silly little things, maybe it's stress, maybe stress is causing some issue and they're like, well why would that be affecting the nutrition? Because everything is connected. Everything is connected.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (21:32):

Yeah, absolutely. Especially when you're doing something so fundamental like nutrition. It affects every aspect of the body. So, yeah.

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (21:40):

Sorry Katy, we're derailing you ask a question.

 

Katy Starr (21:43):

No, I think this is so great and honestly like going through some of my questions, I feel like we've answered a good bit of them. And so in my mind I have a couple closeout questions, but is there anything that you can think of either of you, Dr. Macon or Dr. Cubitt on this topic that we haven't talked about that you feel like we haven't quite touched on this, this is a great chance I think for us to make sure that we bring it up because I want to make sure that we don't miss anything. But we've just had such good discussion on your experiences with the studies that you've done, but also all of these other studies that you have kind of integrated into your own research to be able to move forward and know what you wanted to look at and research.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (22:26):

Yeah, if I think about just like general comments for people, every horse is an individual and I believe we've touched on that a little bit. But whenever I'm doing any type of consult work with a metabolic horse, my big thing is I want to see how they respond to their normal feedstuffs and I want to make sure that those responses are okay because if they're not then we might need to go back to the drawing board a little bit because I can easily a hundred percent say that I get consults from metabolic horses quite a bit and I don't tell the same instructions for each of those owners. Every single one is different and every single one is tailored to that horse and that owner's either wherever their barn is or you know the pasture and all that stuff. Just the other day I got a call from a very sweet man and he had Paso Finos.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (23:28):

I see Dr. Cubitt's face just like, oh . Because you know some breeds are predisposed to metabolic syndrome and you have your thrifty breeds like Mustangs. I have quite a few of my metabolic actually your gaited breeds. We actually had fun fact, we had a horse, her name was rightfully, Trouble and she was very lean. You could see a couple ribs. I look at her body condition, I'm like hey, she looks pretty good. She, at one point on the farm I was doing some resting insulins. I actually did a seasonal study characterizing insulin concentrations over two years and she had her insulin level resting insulin level was over 800. And I called the farm manager and I said, Hey, is this horse alive? Is she down on the ground? And he looked out and he's like, oh yeah, she's eating grass. I'm like, take her off grass, take her off grass now .

 

Dr. Erica Macon (24:23):

So, she was really, really unique. But that just goes to show that, oh that's where that was coming from. She was Tennessee Walker and she was just different. But if you go back to individual horses and the Paso Finos I was talking about, he kept these horses out on the field. He had been feeding them a low NSC feed, but one of them, so one of his mares that he had a lot of concern, she was 10 years old and she's already had a laminitic event and he is wanting to try to keep her from having another one. And I talked to him on the phone, I was actually sitting on my back porch trying to tan a little bit. I know it's random, but I'm sitting there and he says her mom was actually our horse too and she, we had to put her down because of laminitis.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (25:12):

And I'm like, oh this is a good piece of information to know. So, I gave him, because of the predisposition and all of the back history, I'm like okay, we really need to be careful for this mare because I have an inkling she's not going to be all that different from her mom. So, talking to people and getting those types of information is super helpful. But if we think about general comments, different breeds are really predisposed to metabolic syndrome. And for those individual breeds, I'm a little bit more extreme when I come to my recommendations because they're already predisposed. And then horses that aren't doing very much, that are sedentary, maybe they are pasture pets that maybe they've got something wrong. An old injury that makes them unrideable or something like that. It's almost the way my big thoroughbred is at this point. But you're still feeding them like you were when you were riding them.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (26:10):

That is a big red flag for me. I'm like, they don't need all this. And maybe where you are like maybe you're in the bluegrass and you've got some great grass available to you. Versus down here in Texas where it's kind of crunchy and just mostly fiber. I'm not as concerned. But there's all these little things that I, I see as a flag. I'm like we really need to take this into consideration. But when we think about individual horses, I ask all these questions and, and the owners are sometimes really surprised when I start asking them some of the questions. They're like, why does that matter? And I'm like, oh it everything matters. And I'm just trying to paint a picture. For other little things that we haven't maybe touched on as much. If you have a lean metabolic horse, how do you feed that horse?

 

Dr. Erica Macon (26:56):

Because a ration balancer and low NSC feed may not be the right program for that type of horse. And I recently had another person reach out with a metabolic horse that was on the lean side, maybe a body condition of a four, maybe projected down a little bit more. And she's like, I really need to put weight on her, I just don't know how to do it safely. You know, she's had laminitis before and I'm like, okay, this is something that no one's looked at yet. There's no research study that I can go back and be like this was safe. Because most of these studies that have been done haven't been in metabolic horses. And we can say from healthy horse studies that maybe this will be okay. But we now know on some of the projects that I've done, that healthy horses' responses are nowhere near the responses of metabolic horses.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (27:50):

So, at this point what the recommendations I give for people are just based off of the literature that I've read and maybe some positive experiences with previous owners. So, again, we don't know everything but we're going to do our best in the moment to try to help. So, right now I like to try to put weight on those guys with some type of oil fat supplement because I want to try to stay away from high sugar NSC levels because that's not going to be very helpful for that animal. But Dr. Cubitt, do you have any other recommendations for that?

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (28:27):

You should ask Dr. Hoffman.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (28:29):

I know ,

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (28:30):

That was the fat and fiber research. I mean that was all the original fat and fiber research, which really came a funny story of course where Queens of going off topic. But Dr. Kronfeld, who was our major professor who was a veterinarian, very science, came to America all the way from New Zealand. But he was the one who really got a lot of the nutritionist involved in feeding the Iditarod dogs and the races and feeding a lot of high fat diets to those dogs.And you'll see there's actually quite a few equine nutritionists that still do that research every year. But yeah, I feed a lot of high fat feed, a lot of oil, you know, steer away from corn oil because of the omega sixes. But I think that the other part to that is another industry issue that some researchers are, are heavily focused on is public perception of actual body weight or body condition.

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (29:25):

You know, I am a proponent of having a horse a little leaner. There are so many reasons why a little bit leaner in a lot of situations is actually a whole lot better off. You know, a lot of our horses are aging and so having obesity as they're aging, just as the weight on those four sticks and those four horrible little feet, you know, so yeah, I think I get people to try and understand what an ideal body condition score for their horse is. And it may be completely different from what your horse looked like when you were showing, but here's what I want your horse to look like. And I don't want you to be concerned when he is now for now and forever going to be a little leaner than his competition or show day. So, so I think that's something that I throw in there.

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (30:10):

But I certainly lean on high fat, high low carb fiber sources in those cases. And I would've said that they were few and far between. Obviously I, I deal more with the fat metabolic horse, but you're right, they are becoming more and more prevalent dealing with these horses. The other point that I would throw in there, you're kind of adding, you know, changing the diet because you're changing what you're doing with him. I commonly get, I've had this horse since birth, he's 25 years old and I fed him the same thing every year. He is been on the same fields every year, done all the same things. Why now has he changed - because he's aging. And there are so many things that happen as a natural function of aging. One of those is decreased insulin sensitivity. And so, you know, when horses get older you have to be very savvy because every year you might have to change. Either they kind of lull you into a false sense of security, of thinking I don't what I'm doing, I'm a great horse owner. And then bam 25 something still, it could be 20, it could be any age. But you know, I think as horses get older, be prepared for making changes because there are naturally things that happen when horses get older.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (31:26):

Yeah. And also to add onto that, insulin dysregulation can happen at any age and I'm seeing a lot more younger animals developing it when we, maybe we weren't looking for it back then, but maybe it has always been there. But I see many, many, many cases now where horses are 6, 7, 8 and I'm like, you shouldn't, you're performing, you know, you're doing all these things and you don't, you don't look that bad in terms of your body condition. But we still have it at a very young age. And then also, I touched on this at AAEP (Association of Equine Practitioners), but you think of PPID as a geriatric horse disease and horses are considered senior at roughly about 15. But you know, because it's not perfect, we don't know everything that's happening when it comes to PPID that adenoma has to form at some point in the pituitary that might happen younger than 15, you may not see clinical signs of PPID until they turn or until they get older because that adenomas been growing and growing and growing. And then you start seeing these symptoms as that horse ages. Which is why if you don't, oh you know, a horse is 15 doesn't mean that at 20 he might not develop like he will develop PPID that it just depends. I've talked to a few clinicians that have seen PPID and as young as horses is five years old. Which is very extreme. And I don't, I'm not saying that that's the normal, those are very rare cases, but when it comes to endocrine disease in horses, nothing is going to be the same. Yeah.

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (33:10):

And nothing's off the table. Yeah,

 

Dr. Erica Macon (33:11):

Yeah. Something will surprise you with every new case that comes along, you're like, oh this is new. And then you have to try to balance out and make sense of what that means. Like the five-year-old case that I had not too long ago, we tried everything. So, yeah. Just a tack on to some years. I don't know if you have another question.

 

Katy Starr (33:29):

Yeah, well honestly I feel like this could be a good point for us to kind of start to, to wrap things up and you've touched on some different ways of understanding that we need to look at horses as individuals. They're not all be able to be fed the same way to most benefit them and their health. But from all of the research that you've done and all of this that you've kind of been involved with, what would you say might be some of your key takeaways that you would like to leave our listeners with today? That they can go kind of maybe apply to their real life situation or even just know the right questions to ask their team to kind of get them, you know, set up the most successfully for their, you know, care for their horse.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (34:16):

Yeah. Throughout all the research, what was always very, it always showed, it came it up in every single study that every horse is an individual and if the owner is trying to figure out what works for their horse, they may not get it on the first try and maybe you won't see an immediate change. Because you know, I'm not a patient person myself and I like to see results rather quickly so I know if I'm doing something right. But when it comes to nutrition, it's a medicine all by itself. You have to be patient with it. I tell owners I'll give them some recommendations and I'm like, talk to me in two months. Let me see where you're at. You can give me an update at month one or something like that, but I need you to really try this for a little bit.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (35:07):

So, I always tell the owner, be patient with the process because we're just trying to figure out what works for that horse for any metabolic horse that is on the severe spectrum. Maybe they're going through a bout of laminitis or they're just coming off of a bout of laminitis and maybe they're just coming sound again. Now at that point is where we need to really monitor and keep those insulin levels low because you don't want to trigger another event. And that's where the, these, I say extreme, they're not extreme but they're just, they're kind of heavy handed when it comes to the recommendations. This is when I would take that ration balancer if it's possible, which is, not many people can do this but feed it in four events, like feed it in four feedings or something. Maybe put that horse if they're in a stall because they're, you know, they're in soft ride boots or something at the time.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (36:01):

I've seen a lot of owners doing this. They'll put a muzzle on their horse and then they'll put a slow feeder hay bag in there and it, it slows them down even further and it increases the time they have with that forage. But maybe it's, maybe it's lowering that insulin response after eating that. So, maybe you have to get strict for a little bit. And I know it's hard, it's so hard for these owners because they feel, they feel so bad that this is where their horse is and they just want to help them. Because remember we all do this for a reason - we love horses and it's hard to watch our favorite creatures in pain and the things that we have to do for them. But remember it's temporary and to be patient with some of the process and I think, you know, we're all human.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (36:52):

We get really emotional. I really get emotional when it comes to my own creatures. And I'm sometimes my partner will say, why are you doing these things when it comes to the horses? I'm like, because they're my babies. You know, I'm going to give them the best things, and it doesn't make sense to everybody. But for us horse owners it makes perfect sense. So, be patient with yourself and be patient with the horse because it's hard to get a horse through a laminitic event. So, maybe be more severe in those times if they're coming out of a laminitic event or if they're currently in a laminitic event. And that's where your team like Dr. Cubitt was saying, is so important. Your farrier, your veterinarian. If you have a nutritionist or a sales rep or from a feed company, that's when you need your whole team because that's going to give your horse the best chance or your pony because that's more common to make it through and to and to have a successful recovery and go back to maybe whatever they were doing before. So, Dr. Cubitt, do you have any, any thoughts in that area?

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (37:59):

I don't, Katy, find out when we can have her back so we can continue to talk. Because there's so much more that we could talk about. But I, I know I think that you've hit the nail on the head. You know, oftentimes we want things to happen overnight as educators, we need to be more realistic and honest about timelines. I do it often when I talk about putting weight on a horse or taking weight off a horse. Look, if someone tells you they've got the magic cure and they can put a hundred pounds on your horse overnight run because it's not happening. Like realistically we've got 45 to 50 pounds that we can put on or take off in about two months. And so I just think that if it sounds too good to be true, it is. I hate that in some of these situations I do have to, you know, kind of scare people to show them what it could turn into if they didn't, you know, kind of employ some of these really intensive management protocols for the short term. You're right, it is short term, 2, 3, 4 months, even up to six months is really short term in the grand scheme of your horse living a lot longer. So, I think we as educators need to do better with being very really realistic as well.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (39:13):

Yeah. And that's a big one that I try to touch on and I really try to emphasize it when it comes to my consults with different owners. Another thing, whileyou said that, it made me think one thing we didn't touch on it was seasonal insulin responses and, and what that looks like. I can touch on it quickly. I did a couple studies and we looked at the same horses, metabolic horses that were managed the same way for two years. And we looked at resting insulin concentrations and then we looked at challenged insulin and what we say some normal sugar test and basically that mimics a carbohydrate rich meal. So, that kind of gives us an idea of what the body is going to do if they were presented with such meal. And it gives us the ability to look at those insulins and see if they're out of range of a healthy horse.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (40:02):

So, for that, when I looked at, and this is in Kentucky, it might be different other places. I'm working on a study, I'll fill you in whenever it gets done. And what we found was that horses had higher insulin responses in the winter and the spring compared to the summer and the fall. Which you would probably think to yourself, I see fall laminitis and of course we think of spring laminitis because we have all these nutrients in the grass. And that's so very true. But I also want to think about when we have fall laminitis, I wonder if we see it more at the end of fall, beginning of winter. Because if you think about what horses are naturally meant to do in that timeframe, they need to start putting on some extra energy reserves to get them through the winter. So, they might get fluffy, but they're going to burn through them as maybe, you know, because they don't know that they're domesticated and they'll have a blanket or you know, all these things. So, they start putting on some fat reserves. Well you know, you can't do that without the help of insulin. So, insulin will go, will increase during these periods. And I think that's why we see fall laminitis. I can't scientifically say that exactly.

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (41:13):

You know, that's super interesting because I work a lot in New England and I have a lot of horses in New England that will develop laminitis standing in the snow.

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (41:27):

I have no idea what is and you know, they have these colloquial terms and this ice laminitis, snow laminitis, whatever. But that makes a lot of sense knowing that seasonally in the wintertime. So, when we did that research was Dr. Mcintosh and yeah, we were out in the field, and we were looking at seasonal changes in posture as it affected to those horses. We weren't necessarily just looking at the season itself. Without the pasture. That definitely makes sense. I have a, like I said, I have a lot of horses that are in the snow and they get laminitis. For no reason. Nothing changes except the snow.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (42:06):

And that was one of my theories in that seasonal paper in the discussion, you know, I thought to myself, why, why do we see this? And I think there, I can't remember, because this was a minute ago I found a paper, maybe it was in bears or something, I don't remember. But it gave me a reason to think that way because it's something in hibernating bears. And of course that was, you know, it happens in the wintertime and right before. So, season is super important. And I always tell, I gave a, I gave a talk for our local equine community about how to prepare your horse for winter. And I said that if you need to, if you see your horse lose a lot of weight over the winter, like my really hard keeping 17.3, off the track thoroughbred, like if I don't start prepping him a little bit in like right in the fall time, he'll lose a crap ton of weight in the winter, even though I'm still feeding him all the things he himself has so...

 

Dr. Erica Macon (43:02):

His energy metabolism is so high that he's just burning through it and he's not able to, I don't know what it is, but he's, he's a bougie thoroughbred. But that, I digress. And I think if you want to see those changes and that goes back, if you want to see a change in your horse, you're going to wait two to three months to see something. And that's why I say you need to start prepping or preparing your animal two to three months out, before something like this happens. And I tell owners that, especially for that one young five-year-old, she would have laminitis every year since she turned two and it was at the same time every year. So, we try to get ahead of it and she had fall laminitis. So, we would start working in the summertime to try to get her insulins down, get them down, get them down, get them down in hopes that it wouldn't be that severe of a laminitic event. So, sometimes prevention, actually no, all the time prevention is the best medicine. It's better.

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (44:03):

Then you're, and if you think about wild horses and not really suffering from laminitis, maybe they do and they just get eaten. But you know, they have these seasonal fluctuations in insulin and it doesn't affect them because they also live through a season. In the summertime, the forage is less available, in the wintertime, it's much less available and they're walking more and they're exercising. And we take a lot of the seasonal aspect, like we don't change the weather, the weather still change, still changes. So, they have these hormonal fluctuations or changes. But we take season out of it because we continue to feed them the same level of nutrition is consistent. It doesn't go up and down. Right. Right. Our horse's body conditions stay stagnant throughout the year in most horses. You know, we talk often about a horse that loses weight over the wintertime.

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (44:55):

And I will do the same thing. I will prime them, prior to winter. Because I don't want you to get to the end of the winter and think, oh my gosh, what's happened? But the flip side is also true. In a fat horse, it is okay for them to lose some weight going into the wintertime, use the season. And especially if I don't have enough time to ride him, I don't have, I can't exercise him, I can't feed him any less or I'll be starving him. Use the environment to your advantage. Don't put a cover on him. Do whatever you can. It's normal for horses to have that seasonal fluctuation in weight. And we have taken a lot of that out of their just normal.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (45:32):

Yeah. We take it out of the equation. Right. We just expect them to be at this. But they were meant to do this. And the same for humans. Like we, there's a reason obesity is rising in humans and the levels of diabetes and all this stuff is happening is because of the availability of nutrition and what we do now. We were meant to be walking about walking off our energy reserves and, you know, hunting for our food . Yeah. Most, most horses are either going to be in a stall 12 hours a day and maybe they have turnout for another, you know, another 12 hours. But that isn't what they were meant to do. And I always go back when I tell my students, especially in graduate level nutrition class, go back to what the horse was meant to do. Go back to what the horse, their GI track was meant to do and you'll know what to do for them.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (46:23):

But since we, we take them out of what's normal, we have to remember we need to alter our thinking for that too. And that sometimes is the biggest hurdle I face with any owner is trying to get them to think about this is what you see, but we need to see some type of alteration in their weight because of the season. And my horse's diet changes over the, my thoroughbreds diet changes over the year because of the season. I mean, I live in Texas now, it's very hot here. I miss Kentucky sometimes when we have really hot summers down here. I know he's going to be trying to keep himself cool and I need to try to help him do that or else he's going to lose a little bit more weight. But for horses that have EMS, one of the things I do and try to help owners with is try to increase their, I say their Fitbit , I'm like, you really need to make them walk a little bit more.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (47:21):

So, I'll put their feed way over here, their water way over there, and then their hay in a different corner because I want them to walk around and work for it. Of course, this isn't set up for everybody, but if I have a chance to do something like that at an owner's place, I try. So, if there's any way you can increase your horses Fitbit steps a day. Yeah. You know, try to do that. And then if you can't do that, then we talk about slow net, like slow feeding hay nets and muzzles and stuff like that. I get off on a tangent, I'm sorry.

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (47:57):

Well, I think that's definitely why we need to have you come back on, because I feel like the whole second part to this conversation is management to get to, you know, the target of what we're trying to get to decreasing insulin or whatever. There's so many different ways to do it and it can become overwhelming. But there's, you know, medicinal therapies, there's nutritional therapies, there's management, just actual physical management. The more you know, the more empowered you are because then you can use a combination that worked for you at your facility.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (48:31):

Yeah. And it's definitely, I want to emphasize that nutrition is the best option for these horses right now because we don't have the perfect medication that's going to help them. There are some really helpful things called SGLT2 inhibitors that were talked a lot about at AAEP and Rendal and Sandra who are doing this work, they're doing a great job. This is really, really helpful for horses that are in a laminitic event. And we need to get their insulins down, but it's not meant for horses to stay on these all the time. So, the best thing we can do is to learn the best nutritional management for these horses. Because right now, medications, while they may be able to help these SGLT2 inhibitors, it's for a very specific timeframe and not all the time. And we are moving away from, you know, the use of metformin, why people put horses on Thyro-L. You know, that's another, we could do another talk about that.

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (49:32):

That's a whole other conversation.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (49:34):

Yeah, it is. But I, I'll say that nutrition is the best medicine and the more you understand about equine nutrition and your individual horse's needs, the better you're going to be able to take care of that horse. So, I'm happy to come back if you guys actually want to talk about ID and stuff like that.

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (49:54):

Oh, there's so much more we can talk about. Yeah.

 

Katy Starr (49:56):

Yeah. I feel

 

Dr. Erica Macon (49:57):

Bad. I don't think I stuck to the script at all. I'm sorry.

 

Katy Starr (50:01):

I think there was a lot of great discussion. And honestly, I think listeners will really appreciate a lot of the questions coming up in the moment because it's what you get to thinking about as you're having these conversations. And that's how a lot of this research is kind of put together in the first place anyway, is by having conversations, listening and taking advice and, you know, so I think that today's conversation was really, really great. And I think it'll be helpful for our listeners just to kind of get a better grasp on what all this means and, you know, the more research that you guys are putting together to kind of get more questions answered and to benefit their horses. And so it's, it's been really good today, so.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (50:43):

Yeah. Thank you guys again for the invitation. I love when I get to talk horse and be a nerd, especially when it comes to, if you have other nerds amongst you, it's like, oh, I've, I'm with my people.

 

Katy Starr (50:55):

 

Dr. Tania Cubitt (50:57):

Well, we appreciate you coming on. Thank you so much.

 

Katy Starr (50:58):

Yeah

 

Dr. Erica Macon (51:00):

Yeah. Absolutely.

 

Katy Starr (51:00):

And just a reminder to our listeners, if you have any podcast topics that you would like to hear more about on the Beyond the Barn podcast, please reach out to us at podcast@standlee.com. We'd love to hear from you guys and get your ideas and even feedback on what you like and don't like. That's what we're here for, is to provide you guys with the information that is going to be most valuable to you and your horse ownership journey. And so again, Dr. Macon and Dr. Cubitt, thanks for being here with us today.

 

Dr. Erica Macon (51:31):

Thank you. I really enjoyed it.

 

Katy Starr (51:34):

We hope you enjoyed these two episodes with Dr. Erica Macon on the Beyond the Barn podcast about her research on PPID and Insulin dysregulation in horses. Feel free to reach out and connect with her at her email address, erica.macon@ag.tamu.edu. We'll link her email in our show notes as well. 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.