Carrots Versus Manufactured Treats

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Hello everybody, this is Leslie today talking to you about feeding carrots to horses in comparison to manufactured horse treats. So once upon a time, you may have heard that carrots were too high in sugar to feed to horses. You should stop feeding your horses so many carrots. And I did hear someone say that again just recently. Yet on the other hand, there are so many manufactured horsey treats available that are apparently not high in sugar compared to carrots. However, the ingredients in the processed flavoured treats are exactly that. They are processed ingredients to become a treat. Therefore, the aspect of nutritional goodness of a treat is questionable. And so I thought I'm going to discuss the nutrient compounds of the humble carrot. Alright, so the vibrant orange colour of carrots comes from beta carotene, a powerful antioxidant

Beta-Carotene And Vitamin A Value

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that the horse's intestinal wool naturally converts into active vitamin A. Feeding just two medium to large sized carrots daily delivers twenty percent of a resting horse's daily vitamin A requirement. A single raw carrot provides about one point seven grams of fiber, heavily consisting of insoluble fibre. Biologically, all herbivores, which are our horses, are designed to eat plant life, which is insoluble fiber. This type of fiber acts like a broom for the horse's digestive tract, promoting and nourishing the horse's beneficial bacteria in the small intestine by acting as a natural digestive cleanse. When we talk about a raw carrot acting as a natural

The Fibre Broom In Action

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digestive cleanse, it has nothing to do with humans and their you know juice detox type cleansing things that you may have done or you've heard about. Please know it's not about that. Instead, we are explaining the nutrient aspects of carrots for a horse's digestive processes, and how the carrot can support the body's built-in detoxification system as raw carrots are already made of perfectly structurally intact plant components that the herbivorous horse is designed to eat. The mechanism of eating a carrot relies heavily on a unique interplay between specific fibre types and plant compounds that only function this way when the carrot is eaten completely raw by the horse. Digestively, there is this broom effect, like a sweeping broom. These mechanics occur due to the dense insoluble fibre within raw carrots, specifically cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. Unlike soluble fibre, which absorbs moisture and turns into a gel-like consistency in the small intestines, the insoluble fibre of a carrot remains structurally intact until it reaches the horse's cecum and large intestines. This alone makes a carrot a far greater nutrient compound than a gel-like soluble fibre. So once the carrot is on its journey to the cecum, these insoluble fibers work like a gentle, flexible kind of microscopic broom. As the rigid raw carrot fibers move through the small intestines, they sweep the intestinal walls, preventing waste buildup and pulling along stagnant debris. This then gives extra food to the bacterial microbes living in the cecum and the large intestines to eat and ferment the debris along with the insoluble fibre brooms doing their job too. Carrots being highly nutritious as a food contain prebiotic qualities for the horse's good gut bacteria. Thriving good bacteria naturally crowd out harmful microbes, reduces gas, bloating, and systemic inflammation that can be linked to colic. One of the most unique properties of raw carrot fibre is its ability to bind to unneeded substances in the bough. The horse's liver is constantly processing

Binding Toxins Before Reabsorption

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toxins and hormones and dumping them into the intestines via bile to be excreted. However, if the horse's digestion is sluggish due to too many starches like processed horse pellets that have tiny amounts of enzymes to feed the colonies of bacteria living in the intestines, unfortunately, then the horse's body can accidentally reabsorb these toxins right back into the bloodstream. Whereas the insoluble raw carrot fibres they act like a sponge, tightly binding to free endotoxins and excess estrogen in the gut, so that they are successfully carried to the hind gut fermentation tank and then out of the body as manure rather than being reabsorbed. Raw carrots contain roughly 10% carbohydrates, but because a third of that is complex dietary fibre, they are remarkably low glycemic index.

Sugar, Low GI, Insulin Support

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When horses are chomping them raw, this means the natural tiny amounts of sugars are released slowly into the bloodstream. Furthermore, the active beta-carotene in a carrot has been linked to improve insulin sensitivity in horses, providing the diet of that horse has been cleaned up somewhat. There are two really important nutrient compounds that carrots can also provide to horses when the body converts the ingested carrot into the active vitamin

Vision, Skin, Coat, Arteries

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A. So one is the essential creation of rhodopsin, a pigment in the eyes that aids in their vision in low light environments, effectively warding off night blindness, which is extremely important for prey animal herds. The second is asperrogen. This facilitates anti-inflammatory processes by attaching itself to the converted vitamin A. This particularly assists in the health of the horse's skin and of course their coat or you know their hair. Another important note is vitamin A will also help as a vasodilator in the health of the horse's arteries. So when we put carrots into this perspective as a treat or as an additive to their hard feed, it is easy to see how a carrot is not high in sugar, it's not processed, and is far more nutritionally appropriate than a highly processed handful of horse pellets or the processed flavoured treats. So please don't ever be afraid of feeding some carrots to your horses. And I'm gonna say long live the carrot

Practical Takeaway And Sign-Off

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and long live your beautiful horses. Thanks for listening, everyone, and I'll catch you next time. Bye for now.