Low Starch Diets: Manage Carbohydrates to Your Horse's Best Advantage

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Is starch always bad?
Both starch and sugar are important energy sources for the high performance equine athlete and when fed appropriately they are not dangerous or bad for your horse assuming that he is otherwise healthy. Carbohydrates such as starch should be fed in small amounts per meal so that the starch is digested before it moves out of the foregut. Excessive starch fermentation in the hindgut can cause deleterious changes in hindgut bacterial populations potentially resulting in health problems such as gas colic chronic andor acute laminitic episodes and hindgut ulcers to name a few. Small meals ensure that starch is more likely to be digested in the small intestine and that fluctuations in blood glucose as a result of starch digestion are smaller and more efficiently regulated by the insulin secreted by the pancreas.
Starch processing can also have a significant impact on how well your horse handles starch in the diet. Processed starch whatever the processing method cooking steam flaking pelleting grinding or extruding can result in starch being broken down to glucose more readily in the stomach and small intestine.
The potential outcome of feeding processed feeds is a more rapid increase in blood glucose levels reinforcing the need to feed your horse small meals but it can also result in greatly reduced risk of undigested starch being pushing out of the stomach and into the hindgut where it can cause other problems. Processing methods such as extrusion that change the physical form of the feed can actually slow intake down thereby reducing the risk of spikes in blood glucose from starch digestion.
Do growing horses need low starch diets?
Regardless of breed growing horses have very clearly defined requirements for protein and energy as well as a number of other nutrients. The risks of Developmental Orthopedic Disease DOD are frightening for horse owners raising young horses especially in some breeds where there is strong genetic predilection for stature and frame.
It is important to ensure that young growing horses get sufficient protein vitamins and minerals in their daily feed intake without overfeeding energy. This can often be accomplished by offering young horses good quality hay however sometimes it is necessary to make up for a shortfall in the hay quality with a grower ration. Young horses are at some disadvantage once weaned as they have small body capacity and so cant always eat enough forage to supply their nutrient
needs unless offered sufficient good quality forage. Weanlings on a strictly hay diet should always be provided with a vitamin and mineral supplement formulated for growth.