EMS Nutrition 101 with Dr. Cubitt

[00:00:00] Lindsay: Oh, hey, it's me, the feed scoop that's at the bottom of the barrel just before you put in 200 pounds of fresh feed. And now you're like, do I dig for it or do I have to go buy another scoop? Lindsay LaBella, and today we're going to talk about fat pasture pets. Well, okay, we're going to talk about when does the fat pasture pet actually have a medical problem?

[00:00:21] What's it called? How do you diagnose it? Once you have a diagnosis, how are you supposed to feed it? We're going to bring in a professional to answer all of these questions for you. Why? Because you're listening to Rochester Trail Riders. I'm excited to have with us today, Dr. Cubitt, a powerhouse of the world of equine nutrition. Originally from Queensland, Australia, Dr. Cubitt has turned her passion for horses into a remarkable career, helping them thrive through the power of science based nutrition.

[00:00:56] Dr. Cubitt holds an impressive academic background with degrees from the University of Queensland, complemented by a PhD from right here in the United States at Virginia Tech. As a co founder of Performance Horse Nutrition, she has established herself as a renowned advisor and speaker, transforming complex nutritional science into actionable strategies for the average horse owner. Today, we're going to zone in on a topic that has challenged many, the nutritional challenges for horses diagnosed with equine metabolic syndrome, or EMS. It's a complex issue, but don't worry, Dr. Cubitt's here to break it down for us. share her insights and offer some practical tips on managing EMS through diet and nutrition.

[00:01:37] Dr. Cubitt, welcome, and thank you for joining us today.

[00:01:41] Dr. Cubitt: Thank you so much for having me. I am excited to be here,

[00:01:44] Lindsay: I love 

[00:01:45] Dr. Cubitt: and I'm really excited that spring is coming.

[00:01:47] Lindsay: Yeah, it's not fair. We were just discussing how you've got daffodils coming up and I have a snowstorm outside right now, so. Cheater.

[00:01:55] Dr. Cubitt: Oh, yeah. You know, the one thing that I have never gotten used to since moving to America, and I moved here in 2001, so it wasn't yesterday, is the smell of skunks. But the only thing a skunk tells me is that spring is coming. So I will tolerate that disgusting smell

[00:02:11] Lindsay: Well, you 

[00:02:12] Dr. Cubitt: it means spring is

[00:02:13] Lindsay: Do you know what other names that we tend to call skunks around here?

[00:02:16] Dr. Cubitt: No.

[00:02:16] Lindsay: We call them either the black and white kitty, or my personal favorite, fart squirrels. 

[00:02:21] Dr. Cubitt: Oh, gosh, I'm going to tell my kids that they will love it.

[00:02:24] Lindsay: There you go. There's my, you know, United States two bits American humor for you. But you have spring grasses coming up, and I have a couple of people that I've been talking to In our community, their horses have been recently diagnosed with, EMS and it's winter and which is crazy already the, the fact that they're having problems with this disease and, for those that might not be familiar, do you want to give us a little overview on what, EMS is and what we can look out for as a horse owner that might trigger us to say, Hey, I need to call a vet.

[00:02:59] Dr. Cubitt: absolutely. So equine metabolic syndrome kind of encompasses multiple different disorders really starts with obesity being one of the symptoms and then that can then lead to insulin resistance, can lead to having that cresty neck, kind of the regionalized adiposity, that can then lead to laminitis.

[00:03:22] Cushing's sometimes gets thrown in there. It's actually a separate disorder. You can have equine metabolic syndrome and not have Cushing's disease. And so whilst you do feed the horse with Cushing's or PPID the same way, so if you're listening to this and you think, well, my horse isn't fat, it doesn't have a crusty neck, but it has been diagnosed with PPID or, as we generically call it, Cushing's disease, then you can use the same feeding and management recommendations, but they do actually stand alone.

[00:03:51] So that's kind of a pretty broad and basic overview of equine metabolic syndrome. For most horses though, it starts with obesity. 

[00:03:59] Lindsay: The, The, person that, triggered me to thinking and switching to this topic, is the fact that she had, a low thyroid issue, was managing it just fine. And then poof, out of nowhere, she came out one day, her horse is four legged lame. And so that's what started this whole entire thing. And we were thinking, oh my gosh, maybe it is, it's like a, a winter lemonized thing and nope, it turned out to be.

[00:04:21] EMS. What are some things that your veterinarian is going to do? Like, how do we diagnose EMS and what are we targeting, through a diet?

[00:04:31] Dr. Cubitt: So your, your veterinarian is certainly going to look at characteristics of your horse, outward signs. They're going to look at their overall body condition. They're going to look at the condition of the neck, which we call the crest and the crestinex score. And then they're also going to be able to take certain blood parameters and based on those blood tests, be able to evaluate whether, you know, insulin is high or glucose is high.

[00:04:58] And if we get all the way deep into that kind of the most easy way to. Describe to people why your veterinarian would look at glucose or insulin in the bloodstream is when you eat food or your horse eats food, it gets broken down into the stomach, in the stomach, into different, you know, proteins or fats.

[00:05:17] Carbohydrates get broken down into their most simple form, your sugars and starches, right? And then sugar being a simple glucose being the simplest sugar is going to get absorbed out of the stomach into the bloodstream. But the bloodstream is just like a superhighway. The bloodstream is like any highway in our community.

[00:05:38] And we need to get that glucose out of the bloodstream and into the cell in order for it to have its effect, be the fuel for that cell. Insulin, that's where insulin comes along. Insulin is the driver to push glucose out of the cell, out of the bloodstream and into the cell. And with a horse with equine metabolic syndrome that has insulin resistance, that insulin function is broken.

[00:06:03] They still create insulin. So it's not like type 1 diabetes where your pancreas no longer creates insulin. They still create insulin, but it just can't do its job. So when your, when your veterinarian comes and takes a blood test and says, Oh, your horse's glucose and insulin values are very high. It's because Glucose isn't going anywhere.

[00:06:24] It's it's not being driven out of the bloodstream into the cell and insulin is not able to do its job. So it's still being created. And so you just research and a lot of kind of there's Lots of different theories of what's actually happening when it comes to laminitis or some of these different issues that occur with equine metabolic syndrome.

[00:06:47] But I think one of the general themes is this high level of glucose and insulin that floats around in the blood is actually damaging. It causes inflammation and we, we do not want that to happen. So, then your next question was about feeding management, and I think anybody who has heard the word insulin resistance, equine metabolic syndrome, crestinec, laminitis, any of those, knows we need to feed a low sugar and starch diet.

[00:07:13] Maybe they said low carb and I've tried to correct people to say actually, let's talk about low sugar and starch versus carb because carbohydrates actually include fiber and your horse will die if it doesn't eat fiber, so that's just a little soapbox that I get on. So, we, we talk about low sugars and starches and why do we do that?

[00:07:33] Because we know that if you feed a lot of sugars and starches, that's going to create, that's going to make a lot of glucose in that bloodstream that we know this horse cannot get rid of. So if we keep the sugars low in the diet, then we decrease that issue of having a lot of glucose that goes nowhere.

[00:07:52] Lindsay: So. It does. Before we jump into processed foods that we can buy at our food store, the number one intake that a horse has is hay. We need to understand what is in our hay to do that. And I'm going to go off a little tangent for those that are local because we are talking for our Rochester area.

[00:08:12] If you need to get your hay tested, you can do that through the Cornell Cooperative Extension. And our local rep is, Estes at, Go Joe Glenn farm. So I'll put links into there. You can put a so you guys can go and get your hate tested if you want. If you have the ability you and I are talking right now I can share a hay analysis with you of what the hay looks like in our region if that will give you any

[00:08:36] Dr. Cubitt: Well, I you can, you're more than welcome to share yours. I'm lucky enough that I work with a feed company in New England and they have their own forage testing lab. And one of the benefits to that is that annually we can kind of track hay trends and forage trends. And what I have seen in New England is that the. Nutritional value. I never liked to use the word quality because to me, quality, bad quality is dirt, dust, rats, rats, weeds, you know, whatever shouldn't be in it. That is bad quality and good quality is actually what's appropriate for your horse. But if we switch and we start to talk about nutritional value, what I've seen is the nutritional value of local Northeastern hays has gone down, down, down.

[00:09:20] But last year, randomly the sugar and starch content went way, way up. And I'm, I can't give you an example. Answer as to why I know in my area here in Virginia, we had a huge drought last year. And so that concentrated the sugars and starches. And, and that was the explanation for us. But in the Northeast, it didn't

[00:09:41] Lindsay: Yeah, it just rained all the 

[00:09:43] Dr. Cubitt: don't know why. There was high sugars in but we do know that that was the trend that we saw in 2023. So any hay that you were actually able to get off those fields before they were flooded yeah, they were higher in sugars and starches, but things like protein and calorie content have slowly been going down.

[00:10:01] You know, when I first started working in the northeast, an average or lower quality protein content would have been 8 to 10. And now you're like, Oh, this is great. If I've got a hay that's got eight to 10 percent protein, crude protein, this is good. Now we're seeing some averages anywhere between four and 6 percent crude protein on a, on a local kind of meadow grass

[00:10:24] Lindsay: yeah, the one I'm looking right now is at about a nine to ten percent for protein, which is great. I love it. But I know we're always talking about, was it NSCs is, is what we need to calculate from

[00:10:37] Dr. Cubitt: So the things that I look at when I look at hay and I evaluate, you know, is this going to be good or bad? I obviously do look at carbohydrates or the sugar and starch content, but I also look at the other carbohydrate, which is fiber. So I look first at crude protein. I will look at the digestible energy value.

[00:10:56] And I know digestible energy is a calculated value versus something like protein or zinc or copper. We actually analyze that, but I will look at the calorie content because that's going to tell us, you know, how fat your horse might get or not get on it. Then I'll look at the fiber fractions, which is ADF and NDF, acid detergent fiber and neutral detergent fiber, and really they are a measure of palatability and digestibility.

[00:11:21] So if the ADF number goes up, the digestibility goes down. If NDF goes up, the palatability goes down. Now one might say, oh, well, I don't want that. Well, if you have a fat pony that gorges its food as soon as it sees it, maybe a little higher ADF and NDF wouldn't be a bad thing. But if you have a lactating broodmare that needs every, you know, bit of nutrition she can get out of every mouthful, we want to make sure those numbers are actually lower.

[00:11:51] So I look at those. And then when it comes to the sugar and starch fraction, we should, we look at It used to be non structural carbohydrates, which is the NSC. But if you break that down a little further, you actually get multiple components. There's three numbers within that. There's WSC, water soluble carbohydrates, plus starch.

[00:12:19] equals non structural carbohydrates. But you can break that WSC down even further into ethanol soluble carbohydrates, which is ESC, straight up simple sugars, which you would get from things like corn or oats or barley, like straight sugar like that. And then fructan. So fructan is a rapidly fermentable carbohydrate that's usually digested very quickly in the large intestine.

[00:12:46] But we get that in cool season grasses. And a lot of the research has shown that fructan is, has a huge component in the kind of development of laminitis and things like that. So there is one train of thought. If you, if you. want to Google and go down a rabbit hole and, you know, get yourself completely lost and there, you know, there's a, there's a little line that says, well fructans are non digestible by the horse.

[00:13:14] And so we don't need to worry about fructans. I'm still in the camp that believes that we do need to worry about fructans because if I again, go out on a huge tangent, horses can't digest fiber anyway. The bugs that live in the horse's gut, they digest fiber and the bugs that live in the horse's gut can digest fructans.

[00:13:31] So again, that's my little side note.

[00:13:35] Lindsay: Once it's digested, it's easily transmitted through the intestinal 

[00:13:39] tract. 

[00:13:40] Dr. Cubitt: yes. So, cause that, that's for me, the my passion and what I am most interested in is the microbiome, the bugs that live in the hindgut. They are another organ. They're so, so important. And they themselves digest, communicate with the brain, do so many things. podcast.

[00:14:00] Lindsay: So a lot of times, like if you are sitting on there and you're talking to your, your hay analysis, you're talking to your vet, they always sit there and give you, well, you add the WSC plus your starch, which gives you a, a number if it's higher or lower than usually was it 10 or 12, then. Then you're going to need to soak it. What is, what is the total number that we're looking for? Hay plus feed per day, I guess, in a percentage 

[00:14:29] wise 

[00:14:30] Dr. Cubitt: so it really depends on where you are, where your horse is at in its journey. Okay. Do we know that this is a pony and we're just being proactive? He's a little overweight. I haven't been able to control that. He doesn't get a lot of exercise. I'm worried. He's got a bit of a crusty neck. He's never, he isn't, he equine metabolic syndrome yet, but I don't want him to.

[00:14:55] Then he's in my kind of at risk category, but not currently sick. And so I would be looking to keep his total diet 12 percent or less.

[00:15:06] Lindsay: that includes hay plus feed.

[00:15:09] Dr. Cubitt: Yes. Yes. Total diet, 12 percent or less. If your horse is currently actively sick has laminitis, has other issues that we're actively treating, then 10 percent or less is the number that we're looking at.

[00:15:23] And that is total diet, right? So this is where a lot of folks can get caught up get a little confused. The biggest thing you feed. the, the largest portion of your horse's diet is the hay, right? And so they'll come to me and say, well, I can't, a ration balancer, for example, one pound a day, generic, many companies have a ration balance so that you feed one pound a day, typical feed for a fat horse.

[00:15:51] But if the sugars and starches in that one pound, the non structural carbohydrate value on a lot of ration balances, maybe 15 to 20%. And they'll say to me, well, I can't feed that. The internet and my vet said less than 10 percent and I just said less than 10%, but it's one pound, right? And then I turn around and say, have you had your hay tested?

[00:16:11] No, didn't know I could do that. Well, that same horse is eating anywhere from 15 to 20, maybe even 25 pounds of hay. If we go back to high school and do some basic math, 

[00:16:24] even a pound, a hundred, if that one pound of ration balance, it was a hundred percent sugar.

[00:16:30] Lindsay: Percentage wise over the whole.

[00:16:32] Dr. Cubitt: percentage wise, I always say you've got to be careful.

[00:16:36] You have a percent means nothing unless it's attached to a number. And my, my joke when I give presentations is, I will give you a hundred percent or 1%. Which one do you want? And most people say, oh, a hundred percent. And then I say, well, I'll give you a hundred percent of my salary or 1% of Bill Gates's salary.

[00:16:54] Now which one you want? I guarantee you want 1% of Bill Gates's and not a hundred percent of mine. So you know, we need to, we need to take. look, step back and look at the whole, the whole thing. It's like, also if we're feeding a supplement and we're two ounces a day and they're calling me saying, well, what's the sugar and starch content?

[00:17:13] It's two ounces a day. And it's a thousand pound horse. It really doesn't matter. Focus on your hay, focus on your hay. You mentioned the soaking.

[00:17:22] Lindsay: does that actually work? Or if you have a hay that's net 12%, you want to be under 10, should I go look for another hay supplier or should I work on soaking my hay instead?

[00:17:34] Dr. Cubitt: Oh, there's so many answers there. There's so many answers and some of them come down to where you live and the fact that it's still freezing outside. And who really wants to soak their hay in the middle of winter when it's freezing and you don't have hot water in your barn? I mean, so the thing that I usually do is, okay, we start out with the hay.

[00:17:54] A lot of times there is no choice. This is just the hay that I have, right? And so I think that also some people get a bit nervous when I say, do a hay test. They're like, well, I can't change the hay. Why, why would I do a hay test? Because it's a good place to start. That's the base. I know you can't change it.

[00:18:09] I know you've been buying from the same guy for the last 50 years and he has great prizes and he delivers it and he stacks it and it's wonderful. But knowing the baseline is good and year to year, even though he cuts it from the exact same fields, the nutritional value and the carbohydrate value is going to change.

[00:18:26] So we get that hay test and let's say the hay was 12%. But we have a sick horse. I'm going to say soak it and you'll get it below, you'll get it below 10 percent easily. Let's say it was 16 or 17 percent though to start with. I'm not so sure. I'm not so sure. And so what we will do is we'll do a little bit of scientific experiment and I'll say, okay, soak the hay for an hour, drain the water out, freeze it, and that stops that, that reaction occurring.

[00:18:55] And then I'll get you to send it in. at that point. It's what we do with pasture as well. If you ever do a pasture sample, when you cut it, you want to freeze it immediately. So, and then we would see, okay, did we actually, were we able to leach out enough sugars and starches to get to below 10%. Sometimes the customer will say, or the client will say, look, I just don't have the ability to soak hay.

[00:19:21] So at that point, then we can do multiple things. We can say, okay, we're going to use a small amount of this hay, but then we're also going to either number one, find another hay that has a lower sugar and starch value that when we combine the two of them, we get, we do get below 10%. Or we're going to use a bagged forage product that we know comes with a guarantee and that guarantee means bag to bag to bag, it's going to be identical and it's, you know, the company is selling it to me with a guarantee that it's going to be less than 10%.

[00:19:55] I don't love to add 100 percent pelleted or cubed forage. I like to have the majority as long, as long stem hay, but you get to a point where it's like, what? actually is going to work.

[00:20:09] Lindsay: And then you have the complication of horses or herd animals. You have one horse at a herd 

[00:20:14] that needs, yeah. How do you manage that? Which is.

[00:20:20] Dr. Cubitt: And I would say that if finances were no option, which that's a dumb statement to even say, because they always are. It doesn't even matter if somebody comes to you and says, well, finances are no option. That always is. If you have a herd, it's, Unless you had one horse in the herd that was going to be, you know, a very high performing athlete or was super skinny and needed a bunch of calories, we always say you're going to have to take those off.

[00:20:44] But if you have your equine metabolic syndrome horse in a herd with others that are all still pretty easy keepers, but maybe haven't been diagnosed, feeding them a low calorie, low carb diet. isn't going to hurt them. feeding a high carb diet will hurt your horse. So, where, where possible, I like to group herds similarly.

[00:21:06] Where possible, if

[00:21:07] Lindsay: I totally get it. And the good news is the majority of the horses around here are a little 

[00:21:13] chunky. 

[00:21:14] Dr. Cubitt: are

[00:21:14] Lindsay: Yes. It's rare to get the hard keeper versus the easy keeper. You mentioned that you have spring grass coming up and dandelions. And I know you and I just met, but I am your proponent of horses are not meant to be on grass and to do everything possible to get them off it.

[00:21:33] We do track systems. Around here. I don't know if you do the paddock paradise kind of horse track systems, but we're, we got a lot of people in our area that are into it. I've had mine for over 10 years where I let them move and roam and they are on dirt and I feed hay 24, 7, 3 65. So.

[00:21:52] Dr. Cubitt: I would backtrack a little bit and I would say that there's a lot of things that horses do nowadays that they were never designed to do. And horses are grazing animals, straight up, they're grazing animals and they were meant to always graze grass. We have created grass that is, but okay, let's go back to the wild horse, for example, and the wild horse grazed a wide variety of grasses and forbs and legumes and things that we considered weeds.

[00:22:23] And they were all warm, mostly warm season local. But horses also moved. They moved long distances. So they never put a lot of grazing pressure in one area. Or if they did, then they moved on and that was able to regrow. We put horses in smaller confined areas. And when you use those more local warm season grasses, uh, or even, even just your local grasses, they may not have to be warm season grasses, those grasses are what we call clumping and they don't spread out.

[00:22:57] And so when the horse nips at them, it just rips it out of the ground. So those grasses do not withstand grazing pressure. So what we did as agronomists is we created grasses that were stronger. They could withstand grazing pressure. They could withstand trampling and hoof pressure. And what makes anything strong?

[00:23:19] Lindsay: Sugar. 

[00:23:20] Dr. Cubitt: makes energy in a grass is sugar, right? And so we also do less exercise with our horses. We don't allow horses to have seasonal fluctuations in weight. So we have created kind of the perfect storm. So I wouldn't go as far as to say horses shouldn't eat grass. Horses should exercise more. They shouldn't, some horses shouldn't have access to really high sugar grasses.

[00:23:49] And so how we get around the fact that we do have to confine horses in small spaces, we don't have kind of 45 acres for one horse to go and graze and roam is we have to then change our management strategies to the track like systems or to dry lot systems. Is that, is that the perfect world? The perfect world would be that I had local grasses and I allowed my horses to graze and they exercised enough and they, you know, their weight fluctuated and everything was fine.

[00:24:17] But the track system and the dry lot system really where it started from the track allows you to get the exercise as well that confined spaces didn't allow you to get kind of meets the needs of how we manage the horses today. That, that's, uh, what I say on that.

[00:24:39] Lindsay: All right. So moving on from grasses and from hay analysis our hay analysis is showing that we are deficient in some areas. We do need to feed a concentrate feed of some sort. What is the best, things to look for when you're shopping for a, a feed or even just a supplement? Or do you do both or?

[00:24:59] What should we think 

[00:24:59] Dr. Cubitt: And I love the word you use there. I love that you use the word concentrate. And because so many people use the word grain synonymously with what you feed a horse and grain to me is cereal grain, corn, oats, barley are grains, right? And we do have a lot of concentrates, which is something that comes in a bag that have none of those cereal grains in there or have such a small quantity that they're not really contributing to the sugar and starch.

[00:25:25] Maybe they're, uh, contributing to binding or protein, something like that. But I, I try to use the word concentrate, so I'm glad that you use that haze and pastures. Copper, zinc, selenium are always going to be deficient, right? Doesn't, you know, most people familiar with selenium, unless you live in the Dakotas, the soil is going to be deficient in selenium, but it's also going to be deficient in copper and zinc.

[00:25:48] Depending on what you do with your horse, you may get plenty of protein and calories out of your, your. hay or pasture. But your zinc, copper and selenium definitely we believe be deficient. What I'm noticing in the northeast more and more is also a deficiency in phosphorus in the hay that I'm having to work really hard to balance phosphorus in the diet.

[00:26:09] And that comes from the fact that environmentally we are not adding phosphorus to fertilizer because then it gets into the water stream and it's

[00:26:17] Lindsay: Blue algae. 

[00:26:18] Dr. Cubitt: So, so phosphorus is another thing that I've had to, to kind of. finagle a little bit. Most of the horses that we're discussing or that your listeners will have probably are on a ration balancer, very low intake, highly concentrated with those nutrients because you're only feeding one pound a day because what you're not getting out of it is the calories.

[00:26:41] When we design feeds, the more energy you have to provide a horse, the more actual pounds you'll have to feed. So you'll notice a racehorse feed is fed at, you know, anywhere from eight to 12 pounds a day. A easy keeper, we're looking at one pound a day and that's based on calories, that energy. I don't need to get any energy into my easy keeper.

[00:27:07] So I can concentrate all the copper, zinc, selenium, protein, all down into one pound. It's because I'm not having to dilute it to get a bunch of calories into that feed as well. So your ration balancer across the board is your best friend for a lot of these horses. That's going to be the most con, it can be the most convenient way to Add a little additional protein because as we've mentioned, uh, sometimes the hay quality, the nutritional value is lower and we're not getting enough protein.

[00:27:40] Also as some of these disorders progress, one of the issues is muscle wasting and so we're trying to combat that with good quality protein. So your ration balance is going to offer you that good quality protein. It's going to have your vitamins and minerals your horse needs as long as you're feeding that one pound a day or some of them may be balanced to two pounds a day.

[00:28:03] Without all the extra calories. Now, don't be concerned when you read the label and think, Oh my gosh, it's 25 percent crude protein. I can't feed that. That's one pound a day. And if we go back to what is a quarter of a pound, it's four ounces. That's not a lot of protein for a horse, right? So same thing with sugars and starches.

[00:28:22] If you look at a lot of them might run 16, even 20 percent non structural carbohydrates, it's one pound a day, right? So 16 to 20 percent of one pound, the actual amount of sugars and starches is very, very low. So,

[00:28:36] Lindsay: And actually that probably is a good point for people because, folks love their supplements. And, a lot of, you know, they want to add extra things on and those supplements, they do come with their own sugars and calories and everything in there as well to make them palatable. And so is that something they should be concerned with, to pay attention to, just don't care?

[00:28:58] Dr. Cubitt: Depends. If you're, if you're like a real happy camper and adding, adding, adding, adding, then of course, all of those are going to add up. If they all have a little bit of sugar, they're all, it's all going to add up. If you're adding an electrolyte. Now I prefer an electrolyte that doesn't have sugar in it for other reasons, but if your electrolyte has a little bit of sugar in it for palatability and you're feeding two ounces of your electrolyte and it's got a small amount of sugar in it, like that doesn't matter.

[00:29:26] It really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. You're going to get way more sugar out of your hay that's got five percent non structural carbohydrates than you're getting out of your two ounces of electrolyte that has a sprinkling of sugar in it. So sometimes you can just. Turn yourself inside out trying so hard to do the right thing that it becomes so impractical.

[00:29:48] The, uh, and again, off on a little tangent, one thing that I always have over the last couple of years have been asking my clients is the first question you have to ask yourself when managing or feeding horses is why do you have the horse to start with? Why do you own a horse? And maybe it's, you know, I work really hard.

[00:30:07] I wasn't able to have a pony when I was a child, and now I've got a good job, and I just want to have a horse. I want to go trail riding on the weekend. I want to enjoy owning a horse. Would you enjoy it if It took you three hours to mix its feed and it, you know, managing it was a nightmare. And you know, you just turned yourself inside out making every purchase for the horse, because you just were trying so hard to get it right.

[00:30:36] That you sit down at night every night with so much anxiety. You're like, I'm not doing anything right. And I'm reading another Facebook post. And they said, I shouldn't do this, but I should be doing this. And I should be buying that. And then you're like, I'm not enjoying this. I'm spending all my money and I'm not enjoying this.

[00:30:52] So we need to always remember, why do we have this creature in the first place? Let's keep it simple and, and get out of it what I wanted, right? Manage him as simply as possible.

[00:31:06] Lindsay: So, 

[00:31:06] Dr. Cubitt: Love him, brush him, walk him, do all those fun things, and don't get totally bent out of shape with feeding him.

[00:31:14] Lindsay: all right, 

[00:31:15] Dr. Cubitt: Even though I'm a nutritionist, I'm like,

[00:31:17] Lindsay: Now I want to spoil my pony. Are there treats that I should avoid? Ones that I should use? Maybe I am into trick training and want a pocket of something? What recommendations do you have for working with ponies that shouldn't have all that extra?

[00:31:33] Dr. Cubitt: You know, if you've got an actively sick horse and you're really trying to keep all of the sugar down, then no, I wouldn't say use carrots or anything like that. Uh, alfalfa cubes or a little handful of alfalfa pellets can be a good treat as well. I think if you go again, I can't keep up with everything that's available, but I do know that there are a lot of people that sell low carb horse treats.

[00:31:59] Maybe you have to find a few different ones to see what your horse actually is going to be motivated by, because I know that there's a lot of low carb kind of low sugar. Treat options on the market for us that I'm like, that's not motivating me to do anything And it's not motivating me to do anything, but I also know that nutrition It's not the only thing that we're focusing on with this equine metabolic syndrome horse.

[00:32:25] If you exercise, just like yourself, if you're trying to be healthy, it's not just your diet, it is, are you, are you doing other things to help? Are you exercising? Even if it's just walking, you know, maybe you don't have enough time to be riding your horse a lot. Well, what about There was a, I was working with a client at the end of last year and her horse had lost a little bit of weight.

[00:32:47] And, you know, again, all she wanted to do was be around her horse and work with it. And I was like, well, why don't you, there's a beautiful paddock at the barn she bought it at. Why don't you walk, hand walk the horse? You, there's a lot you can do on the ground, ground exercises even to improve that human animal bond.

[00:33:04] So I think that. If you do some other, other management exercise, you know, that kind of thing, then things like treats, maybe you can be a little bit

[00:33:17] Lindsay: More liberal. 

[00:33:19] Dr. Cubitt: tricked. But I always recommend alfalfa cubes.

[00:33:23] Lindsay: Yeah. 

[00:33:23] Dr. Cubitt: simple and easy to

[00:33:24] Lindsay: they're one of my favorites too, or hay pellets, but the hay pellets seem to have more molasses in them to hold them together than the alfalfa does.

[00:33:33] Dr. Cubitt: if you find one that doesn't. But again, it's a treat and the, if you're using molasses as a binder in a pellet, it's actually quite a small amount. And so a little, you can see my hand, your listeners can't but you can

[00:33:45] you 

[00:33:45] Lindsay: cup. know, a few little pellets that are going to be a treat. You know, I don't think you'd even be able to weigh the amount of molasses that was in that.

[00:33:53] You touched briefly on the fact that we want to. Keep these guys moving, you know, all right, inflammations down. They're finally up. We're not showing active signs of laminitis again. What would you suggest for getting these guys back and moving? You mentioned hand walking. Is that Daily, should we do this two or three times a week or just as we have the availability?

[00:34:19] Dr. Cubitt: You know, I managing feeding a horse is very easy. Managing the people that have the horses becomes more difficult. And I say that with the best, you know, I'm not saying that negatively we have jobs, we have, you know, financial constraints. So I would say, Oh, it'd be wonderful if you could hand walk your horse once or twice every single day.

[00:34:42] And they're like, well, I got to work. I got kids. I got my kids have soccer camp in the afternoon. What, what, how's that going to work? So you have to find the happy medium. So again, you're not so overwhelmed, but it can fit into. And so if that means that three days a week is all you can manage three days a week is better than no days a week.

[00:35:01] So whatever you can manage,

[00:35:03] Lindsay: I always thought of EMS kind of like the type two diabetes, you know, it's diet and exercise. And the same thing applies to our horses in my head. Is that kind of the same thing that I should be thinking of that way?

[00:35:17] Dr. Cubitt: diet and exercise, it's diet and exercise. Yes. And you can't out exercise a bad diet. But so it's, it's really a combination of the two. We really want to make sure now it's easier for a lot of people to control the diet and exercise. When I start talking about exercise, then it starts to be large into the time commitment.

[00:35:38] And, you know, maybe your horse is lame. You aren't able to. Maybe they're suffering from a little bout of laminitis or something. And so you have to be a little bit more cautious. But trying to exercise your horse doesn't necessarily mean riding it, hand walking it, lunging five minutes, 10 minutes once a week.

[00:35:57] three times a week, whatever. Something is better than

[00:36:00] Lindsay: I get laughed at by my neighbors because I hand walk my horses up and down my road like a dog and, sometimes with my dog and the number of times,

[00:36:08] Dr. Cubitt: sure it's great for you too.

[00:36:09] Lindsay: the number of times they stop, roll down there where they're going, you're supposed to be on it. I'm like, yeah, life is 

[00:36:17] good.

[00:36:18] Dr. Cubitt: Well, I mean some people have miniature horses and they don't ride them. It's all about that human animal bond and if you can't ride and you still want to build that bond, then that hand walking you, I mean, talk to your horse, your horse's therapy, you talking to him, you're telling him all your secrets, whatever bad happened that day after you have come back from being with your horse, you feel better.

[00:36:42] Lindsay: To mention that little extra walk is not so bad for us either.

[00:36:46] Dr. Cubitt: Exactly.

[00:36:47] Lindsay: for one. You get to be with your horse and get exercise.

[00:36:52] Dr. Cubitt: Yes. You don't have to pay for

[00:36:54] Lindsay: And I have been really enjoying our conversation, uh, as we work on wrapping this one up, do you have any recommendations on, you know, maybe some books or podcasts or any, any websites, anything that folks might want to go to, to learn more about this or

[00:37:13] Dr. Cubitt: Oh, there is so much stuff out there. And unfortunately there's a lot of stuff that looks good. That is terrible. I would say form a good relationship with your feed company, whoever you're working with and your veterinarian. Ask questions and a good feed company is going to be transparent and they're going to answer your questions Honestly, if you don't feel like they're helping you long term Then you know look around and find one that you feel like is listening to your, what you want to get out of the relationship.

[00:37:47] University of Minnesota, if you, if you do follow social media and you're on those platforms and University of Minnesota has some excellent one, it has an excellent thing to follow. I can send you the link. You can share it with your

[00:38:01] Lindsay: that'd be awesome. 

[00:38:02] Dr. Cubitt: Yeah. And there are, they do free webinars. I know that they have a free webinar series coming up with veterinarians that are just talking about horse ownership or different disorders, but there's always free things.

[00:38:16] There, there's a lot of one thing that I, I caution people against because there is a lot of information out there is that your horse is unique horses. That that's what we love about horses. Horses aren't like other livestock. Like if I have a herd of dairy cows, I, they have been genetically bred to be.

[00:38:34] feed them all exactly the same. I can house them exactly the same and they're all going to do the same thing. They're all going to produce the same amount of milk with the same amount of input. Horses are like people. Every single horse is different. So I know we want to ask our friends and we want to get on social media and say, Hey, my horse has this problem.

[00:38:51] What should I do? Be careful doing that. because nobody has your horse. Nobody has your financial situation, your management situation, your, even your kind of beliefs in what you, some people believe that they don't want to feed this or that. And so I think working directly with an expert and an actual equine nutritionist that has a PhD Or your veterinarian, if they have, you know, kind of focused or enjoy nutrition, that's a good place to start getting, listening to podcasts like this that have experts on that are going to kind of point you in direction of good resources.

[00:39:31] But look, I do it myself to my kid. Has some kind of allergy on its skin. And immediately I go to Google and what's going on, what's going on. But you got to be careful doing that because not every, not every, not everybody else's situation is going to match yours. And then I think you just bury yourself in anxiety, 

[00:39:50] worrying about what you've done wrong.

[00:39:52] And it's a spiral then like anything, get a good veterinarian, get a good farrier, get a good, you know, if you want to do buddy work with your horse, get a good buddy worker or whatever, and have a team. Stick with your team. Trust your team. Trust that they're going to tell you the right thing. If you don't trust them, get somebody else on your team.

[00:40:11] Lindsay: You've covered so much and I think that everything that you just went through is Hits on my last question, but I'll ask it anyways Which is if you're a horse owner, this is your first time ever dealing with EMS What is the one piece of advice you would like to give them from a nutritional standpoint?

[00:40:34] Dr. Cubitt: Oh my gosh, one, there's so many. Work very closely with your veterinarian, right? Because there are other, we haven't even touched on the kind of medical therapies that are all going to be used in conjunction with nutrition and management. Don't get hyper focused on one particular thing. That would be, that would be my, my one caution or recommendation is you can get hyper focused on one particular supplement or one particular feed and forget about the hay or forget about exercising your horse.

[00:41:09] Take a step back, look at all the things, get your veterinarian. Okay. Tell me all the things that I need to address here. When I'm going on a diet to lose weight, I'm not, you know, I'm not just going to cut out butter. I'm going to exercise. I'm going to drink more. I'm going to make sure I sleep more. Like there's so many more things involved.

[00:41:34] Don't get overwhelmed. It can be scary. You know, the, the repercussions of not handling it, not being proactive can be, Devastating. So I think that really scares people. But yeah, get a good team. Listen. Don't stress out. It'll be fine.

[00:41:52] Lindsay: Thank you so much for taking time out today. I really appreciate it. Hopefully this helped a lot of, our listeners in the local area to understand what's going on and how to prepare for it as we come into, spring seasons and the starts flaring up for many, many people.

[00:42:07] Dr. Cubitt: Yes.

[00:42:08] Lindsay: Thank you very much. You have a great day.

[00:42:10] Dr. Cubitt: Thank you. Bye. 

[00:42:11] Lindsay: I know that was a ton of information and we only touch the tip of the iceberg when it comes to EMS and IR in your horses. There's so much more you can do for them through medications and supplementations. If you have any questions or concerns or you're like, Hmm, is my pony really that fat that it might be an issue?

[00:42:34] Talk to your vet. They know a lot more than Google, and will be happy to help you out. And on a side note, just after I hung up the phone with Dr. Cubitt, I had a goat go into labor, and gave me a little boy and a little girl, and I Contact her and just let her know. I'm like, Oh my gosh, this happened because we were discussing all the fun, cool things that we do on our farm outside of horses.

[00:42:53] She loves her cows. I love my goats. And she suggested that I name them Sugar and Starch in honor of today's show. So, welcome to the world, Sugar and Starch. And you can see some photos of the cute little goat kids in the show notes. Speaking of show notes, If you listen on like Apple Podcast, Spotify, or an app like that, please leave me a, you know, a star review, follow the show, write an actual review.

[00:43:18] It helps so much get the podcast out and in front of other folks so they also can get this cool information. Like, subscribe, share anywhere, please. It helps, it really does, and it keeps me motivated doing this.

[00:43:32] And with that, we're gonna wrap it up. So as always, respect the trail, wear a fashionable helmet, and leave no trace at your trailer site. Happy Trails!