Non-Structural Carbohydrate (NSC)
Referring to common ingredients found in commercial horse feed, starch, and sugars. When starch is raw it is not water-soluble and the small intestine of a horse has great trouble trying to digest it. If you go online and research the effects of eating raw starch you will find out that there are many countries that have warning labels fixed to flour stating that raw starch is not suitable for consumption unless it is cooked.
Thrive Feed contains no raw starch at all, and a negligible amount of sugar. Direct comparison with normal horse feed based on raw starch is not possible, the digestive process and outcomes are very different. The cooked or gelatinized starch in Thrive Feed is easily digested in the small intestine with enzymes, leaving the cecum to only ferment forage, just like nature intended. When a horse consumes normal horse feed containing starch the feed is mostly undigested in the small intestine and swept through and dumped into the cecum, just before the large intestine. The cecum easily forments starch in a warm wet environment, if you want to see what happens to your favourite normal horse feed in your horses cecum, place 5 pound of feed and 5 pounds of warm water into a large bucket with a sealing lid, leave in a warm place for 3 or 4 days and then take the lid off. You will be able to easily smell the alcohol that’s been formed. Your horse litterally becomes a fermantation vat on four legs. The alcohol spikes blood sugar and destabizes a horses health. The cecum is a large fermentation vat with it’s inlet and outlet at the top, it is not a tube like the small intestine and small and large bowel, it’s job is to ferment the different types of fiber and horse consumes. The cecum is the energy engine room of horses, it’s ability to ferment forage does not diminish with age, it diminishes with the suppression of the strong, powerful energy producing bacteria over years of being fed inappropriate diets.
If your horse has been diagosed with metabolic disorders, they are a response, not a disease. The feeding of low starch feeds containing a high oil content is not good horsekeeping. Horses have never been oil and fat eaters. If your horse is obese, please do not feed this product. Exercise, low quality forage and a low stress life, will place your horse on the road to recovery. Once your horse is at an ideal weight you can start on a new and correct feeding protocol that may or may not inclued complimentary feed. Forage is always the default diet for horses, and exercise is mandatory for their health.
