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Omega-3 and Omega-6 are essential fatty acids, while Omega-9 is not an essential fatty acid as it is made in the body. It’s important to have the right balance between Omega-3 and Omega-6, with not too much Omega-6.
• Omega-3’s are less inflammatory and help reduce inflammation, support immune function, reduce skin irritations, help with allergies, and are beneficial for fertility, reproduction, colostrum quality and respiratory health.
• Omega-6 fatty acids are pro-inflammatory and help the body’s response to injury and infection as part of the healing process, but there are indications that these oils can adversely affect performance.
ANTIOXIDANTS
“Vitamin E and the other fat-soluble vita- mins are antioxidants,” says Crandell. “If you are feeding a lot of fat in the diet, you should also increase the amount of vitamin E in the diet as well. This is not just to preserve the fat you are feeding (so it won’t become rancid), but mainly to act as an antioxidant in the body. Fats in the body oxidize also, especially when they are being burned as fuel for energy with the help of oxygen. This process pro- duces free-radicals. Antioxidants, like vitamin E, can help minimize the damage they might cause. The current recommendation is that for every milliliter of oil you feed, you should also give 1 to 1.5 IU of vitamin E.”
the chemicals. By contrast, the cold-pressed material, since the oil is simply squeezed out, leaves a few other nutrients intact within
the oil, like vitamin E. There are also some other nutritional factors remaining, so cold- pressed oils are the healthiest. With solvent- extraction you get more oil, but you lose a lot of the other nutrients, including most of the vitamin E. Because the cold-pressed oil con- tains all these other components, it is more susceptible to rancidity, however, so it may
not keep as well. You need to keep it cool and in the dark, and use it up fairly quickly. Don’t buy larger amounts than you can use within a reasonable time. The solvent-extracted oils have longer shelf life,” says Crandell.
Some people use recycled frying oil, like you can get inexpensively from a restaurant or fast- food business. “This is sometimes fed to cows, but not a good thing to feed horses. It may be cheap, or free, but once the oil has been heated repeatedly, there are some chemical changes that make the oil less healthy,” she says.
Options for vegetable oils are many, and in- clude soybean oil, corn oil, sunflower, safflower, peanut, olive oil, cottonseed, linseed, coconut, palm, rice, camelina, hemp, chia, etc. “If you buy vegetable oil in the store, it’s usually a mix of soy and canola oil,” she explains. “Mineral oil is not digested and has no nutritional qualities; it is simply given as a treatment to horses with colic or impaction as a lubricant to help move the contents on through the digestive tract.
“There are some high-fat ingredients and byproducts you can get for horses, rather
than just adding oil to a feed. These high-fat products may include ingredients like rice bran, wheat germ, coconut meal, flaxseed, sunflower seed, etc.” she says.
If you are feeding a high-fat product like linseed meal or coconut meal, there often will be some protein as well as fat. “Flax/linseed
meal and coconut meal is what’s left after the oil is extracted, but some fat remains. It is dif- ferent from ground or whole flax, which would contain more fat (about 40%),” she says. Rice bran is just the outer layer of the rice grain, but that’s where all the fat is located; the center of the rice grain is mostly starch.
“Rice oil is often fed because it is high in gamma oryzanol, which is thought of as a muscle builder because it is an antioxidant. It is the main ingredient in body builder supple- ments, but it is expensive,” she says. Olive oil is also expensive to feed to horses.
A few people feed fish oil (which is actually an animal fat), but it also is expensive. “If a person feeds fish oil, it’s not for the energy, but for the Omega-3 fatty acids. The interesting thing about the Omega-3 fatty acids in fish oil is that they are in a more available form. The Omega-3 fatty acid found in flax is alpha- linolenic acid (ALA) and it is converted by an enzyme into DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) and EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid), which are two anti-inflammatories. The step from ALA to the DHA and EPA is rate-limited by that enzyme, so the conversion rate may be fairly low. If you feed fish oil, however, the form of the fatty acid in the fish oil is already DHA and EPA; it doesn’t have to be converted. It is right there, for the body to use,” says Crandell.
Research on the effects of DHA and EPA
in the horse – studies that have been done with fish oil versus flax – has shown more positive results with the fish oil because of the form
of the fatty acids. “Even though it sounds contrary to feed fish oil to horses, people in Iceland feed fish (salt herring) to their horses in the wintertime. This is actually the best type
of oil if you are feeding for the Omega 3 fatty acids. There are also some marine sources of DHA (from algae), which may also give those same benefits,” she says.
OMEGA-3 FATTY ACIDS VS. OMEGA-6 FATTY ACIDS
Some fats have a healthier Omega-3/Ome- ga-6 ratio than others. “If you are feeding just for energy, it doesn’t really matter. Oil is oil, and they all have the same amount of calories,” Crandell explains. “Corn oil is by far the most palatable (in all the studies that have been done), but horses will eat the other oils; they tend to like soy oil, coconut oil, and sunflower oil. Some of the oils like linseed/flaxseed oil, rice oil, hemp oil, etc., won’t be used in large quantities; you would feed them for their other nutritional benefits rather than just energy. You’d generally select those because they are high in Omega-3 fatty acids or have a nice bal- ance of both fatty acids.
“Omega-3 and Omega-6 are both essen- tial fatty acids, which means that the horse can’t produce these in the body and has to get them from the diet,” she says. “The Omega-6 fatty acids are pro-inflammatory. The body needs some inflammatory response to injury, infection, etc., as part of the healing process, but if there is too much of this inflammatory response it can be damaging.
“Omega-3 fatty acids are less inflammatory and they help reduce inflammation. You need a proper balance between these two kinds of fat- ty acids. Some benefits of Omega-3 fatty acids include support of the immune function, and some of the specific results from supplementa- tion of Omega-3’s are improvement in skin conditions, as it helps reduce reactions to skin irritations. It also helps horses with allergies, and is beneficial for fertility (sperm concen- tration, motility and viability), reproduction, colostrum quality, passive transfer of antibod- ies to the foal from colostrum, and respira-
tory health. Horses with inflammation in the respiratory tract can be helped with Omega-3 supplementation. There are also indications
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EQUINE HEALTH