So way back at the end of January, I meant to buy some beet pulp and force my horse to learn to eat the stuff, but I was busy fixing the kitchen and I forgot until "too late." It takes horses a while to develop the right gut flora to properly digest beet pulp (and sometimes, the taste buds to appreciate it), so it's not something I wanted to start feeding a couple weeks before a big ride. Toward the end of February, I remembered, but it was too late!
I've offered her BP a couple times before - when I first got her, and again when we first moved to Nevada, and both times she was like "ugh this sucks" whether I gave it to her soaked or dry. (Please go read this whole article before you tell me that dry beet pulp causes choke/dehydration/stomach explosions.) But she's an endurance horse now, and she's learned to eat wet hay and wet mashes and by god she can learn to eat wet BP!
Yesterday, the titanic struggle began. I offered her the usual one pound of LMF ration balancer, Vitamin E, and salt, with about a cup of BP and a splash of water. She was mad. I tossed in some carrots too. She was mad and stomped and pawed and glared at me and ate about 3/4 of her meal.
Today, I gave her the exact same thing as yesterday. After I threw her hay and fed the chickens, I went and checked and she'd eaten every single molecule in her bucket and licked it clean. Well. That was easy.
I've been thinking about two other nutriton topics, too: calcium and fat.
Distance horses use a lot of calcium (you run the risk of thumps or tying-up if the horse doesn't have enough calcium available), but paradoxically, if you feed a lot of calcium in the diet on a regular basis, the levels of blood calcium drop and the horse is at a greater risk of tie-up. The ideal is to feed a pound of alfalfa a day, but not "a couple flakes." The problem for me is that I can't even feed a pound of alfalfa a day, but I would like to supplement calcium just a tiny bit.
Fat is also important. Mel has a good post about the nutrition/fat talk at the convention. I can do a one-paragraph summary of alfalfa, but I'm having a hard time summarizing fat metabolism without misrepresenting it. Let's just skip the why and assume that distance riders should be feeding fat before a ride, then omitting it on ride day. Like BP, it takes a while for the horse to be able to properly utilize the feed, so you gradually ramp it up over a couple of months.
Endurance riders who feed fat (and not everyone does) often use rice bran OR liquid oil (vegetable oil, corn oil, peanut oil, etc.) top-dressed on soaked beet pulp. The problem with feeding rice bran is that the calcium/phosphorus ratio is naturally extremely inverted - so rice bran pellet manufacturers "fix" that by heavily supplementing calcium to bring the ratio back. But the pellets have a high % of calcium then.
Maybe that's what I need? I'd like the alfalfa benefits (increased calcium plasma concentrations) without the drawbacks (high protein, miserably itchy sunburn-y horse). If I start feeding pelleted rice bran, working up to maybe a pound a day, I'll get some of the fat-burning metabolic benefits, and some of the calcium benefits.
Errata:
So I made a scrapbook of sorts for Dixie. It's a scrapbook only in the technical sense of the term - a purple binder, with photos glued in it - but there's no glitter or doo-dads. Here, look:
Anyway, I went back through my blog and got all the distances, times, finishes, etc., and I realized I actually do top-ten LD's, all the time. The 6th place at Rides of March was just surprising because I actually got an award. Rides don't usually give out top-ten prizes for LDs. So I guess it's "Squee I won a thing!" rather than "Squee I top-tenned!" I'm still squee about it.
And it's not like we're very fast on LDs, it's just that not many people deliberately/exclusively ride LDs out here. Some regions have hard-core LD racers, and tons of people entered in the LD, but not so much in Nevada.
My running muscles are very very sore, but my riding muscles and my joints are A-ok today. I gotta get my shit together and as soon as I get un-sore, go out and slowly jog like a half a mile or something and get MYSELF fitted up to run a bit and help Dixie. My dad was like "you have a perfectly good horse, why the hell did you get off it and run down a hill?!" and the answer is that it's almost more comfortable for me to run down hill than to ride down hill, PLUS my horse noticeably recovers better if she's only hauling herself along.
My warranty-replacement Kindle is on the way and should be here Wednesday and not a moment too soon. I had a physical book laying around, and I've read most of it, and while I'm enjoying the story I am just outdone with the method of delivery. It's so awkward to hold a paperback open! And if I just let it shut it doesn't automatically open to the page I was on! I feel like a savage 20th century human. I got the oil changed in the truck today and I had to read (gasp!) a women's magazine in the waiting room and that suuuucked. Trendy kitchens are all ugly and bleak and modernist. Yuck.
