Whether you're a health conscious individual, or watching your weight, fat is something you want to avoid in your diet. The media warns us that excessive fat intake has been linked with everything from heart disease to cancer. Therefore, the trend in human nutrition is a low fat lifestyle.

Ironically enough, “fat is where it's at”, in equine nutrition. What may be bad for you, turns out to be a great alternative energy source for the horse. Fat is very energy dense and supplies 2.5 times more digestible energy than an equal weight of cereal grains (corn, oats, barley). Even though horses do not have gall bladders, they digest fat very well.

In most feeding situations, horseman try to increase calories (energy) to the horse by feeding more grain (carbohydrates) or protein. However, increasing the grain portion of the diet has its physiological limitations. Exceeding the intestinal tract's capacity to digest grain, leads to colic, laminitis or founder, diarrhea, and exertional myopathy (tying-up syndrome). For these reasons, it is recommended that a grain or concentrate, not make up more than fifty percent of the total diet.

Although increasing protein is not as dangerous as exceeding carbohydrates, protein is not an efficient energy source. Proteins consist of amino acids, which are used as structural building blocks for tissues, organs, muscles, and bones. Only when there is an inadequate intake of the other two sources of energy, carbohydrates and fats, is protein used for energy.

There are distinct benefits to adding fat in the diet, thereby increasing the diet's energy density or calories. The added calories allow you to feed less grain in order to meet the energy demands for athletic performance, milk production, reproductive efficiency, growth, or to maintain or increase body condition. Fat or oils may be added to commercially prepared horse feeds or supplemented to the horse's diet.

There are a number of different sources of fat or oil on the market today. Although different fats and oil vary in their degree of saturation, they are all readily utilized by the horse to provide the same amount of energy. However, animal fats tend to not be as pure as vegetable oils, which is the reason for their slightly lower energy density. Also, animal fat is not as palatable to horses, which is why both the Legends line and Triple Crown line of horse feeds only use vegetable oils.

Another alternative fat source is rice bran. Rice bran is a highly digestible vegetable fat, which is stabilized through an extrusion process. This extrusion stabilizes the fat, increases digestibility, and reduces the potential for rancidity common in some other fat sources. Triple Crown provides Rice Bran in a 50 pound bag which can be used to top-dress or supplement fat to the diet, as well as incorporating rice bran as a portion of the fat in the Triple Crown Performance Formulas.

Another new product to the market is called Triple Crown Conditioning Chaff. Conditioning Chaff is a high quality oat hay with added vegetable oil, to raise the fat guarantee to 10%. This product is ideal for Endurance horses and for horses with a history of colic or laminitis (Founder) because it provides significant calories, however it is low in carbohydrates.

Generally, fats and oils cost more per unit of weight than cereal grains, but since they provide 2.5 to 3 times more energy or calories, it may be more cost effective to feed a higher fat diet. Remind customers to figure out their cost per day, not their cost per bag, since higher fat feeds provide more calories, less feed is needed to provide the same amount of calories. Most common horse feeds on the market today are only 2-3% fat. Agway's lines of horse feeds provide elevated fat levels. The Legends lines of horse feeds now provide 6% fat, while the Equitech textured feed provides 10% fat. Likewise, Triple Crown's lines of Performance feeds provide 10% fat.

Although the results of feeding additional fat is a fairly slow process which can take at least six to eight weeks, it is a safe way to provide additional calories. For horses under intense work or horses that are generally hard to keep weight on, high fat diets provide a safe way of meeting their energy/calorie requirements without exceeding their starch (carbohydrate) limits. Remember, fat supplementation can alleviate the detrimental effects of excess grain, yet accomplish the needed and beneficial increase in the diet's energy density.