[Music] really pleased to be starting the day discussing nutrition. As many of you know, I'm a veterinarian by training and a nutritionist by passion. And for me, feeding is both an art and a science. And we have three great practitioners here to hear from today. So our first presentation is what goes into making your feed as safe as possible. And Ruth Bishop, who is the chair of the feed committee for the British Equestrian Trade Association, will be highlighting the key responsibilities of reputable brands in providing safe, nutritious products that are fit for the purpose for the horses they serve. So Ruth, if you can come up, could I ask you to please put questions into Slido as we go along? We'll take questions at the end. Uh, and we will also take questions from the auditorium as well. Thank you, Pat. Um, thank you to the organizing committee for inviting uh me to speak today. Um any of you with um children of school age in your life as children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews will know it's World Book Day today. And I'm looking to the audience to see how you've all come dressed. As you can see, I've come as the charge of the light brigade. Um but I'm actually here um representing, as Pat said, the uh 170 or so members of the Beta Feed Community. Beta is the British equestrian trade association although our membership goes beyond the British Isles. Um so it's the forage, the feed, the supplement manufacturers and marketers all subscribe to um to beta and we set standards and we encourage good practice and um so I'm going to share some of that with you today. But in fact, it's probably fair to say that all of us here um like to see a well-fed horse. And um we could probably debate all day what we all mean by a well-fed horse. But one thing is for sure, horses don't eat scientific papers, do they? They eat don't eat percentages, but what they do eat is real feed made by real people. And that's the people that I'm representing today. So um and obviously with horses we've got a long heritage of um of feeding horses. I think it stems from the bronze age that ecuan health and welfare through feeding has been really important. And um behind my behind my work for beta I work for a tremendous business that's um 350 years old this year started manufacturing in 1675. And I think this picture from the company um archives shows a more circular time when the horses brought the food. They created to the mill. The mill created the food for humans and for the and for the animals. And so we carried on. And in a nod to world book day, we have here um a book from 1852 when this picture was taken, the stable book by an August Scottish vet, Mr. John Stewart and um he he I'd recommend you go and look this one up on the internet. some really really interesting insights about how the horses kept in those times and and in amongst it all was some diet some diets and I thought oh as a little adjunct for you today I just profile then and now dietary wise and back in the day 170 years ago this and these are both diets for high hardworking high energy diets and um back in the day 10 to 12 m pounds of hay and a mixture of oats and beans plus chaft like we do today and roots and um the mixture of beans is given in the book and I actually calculated what that was and that was a 16% protein 48% starch diet but significantly they knew how to feed it. They did it in five feeds a day whereas now not wrong really good technical racehorse feeds or high energy feeds for competition horses you might feed up to five to seven kilos a day with chaff and we feed generally three to four feeds a day. So let's have a look at what that looks like in the feed bucket. Unsurprisingly, the energy and protein are about the same because effect these are hard hard working horses and those hardworking horses um need that same amount of energy and protein. The starch is interesting because many people in the room are probably quite fixated on starch and quite rightly it's associated with some um some conditions we're trying to avoid. But when you feed a 48% starch feed, the total grams per day 3 3,400. But actually in the moors of today, you're quite close to the recommended limit per meal because we're feeding well in that time they knew to feed five. They knew to manage the horses in more feeds per day. And on the right hand side, we're comfortably within that because we can now make really great feeds with controlled starch content. But for me the big difference is or another big difference should I say is what we know now about the the other stuff the glue the micronutrients the the energ the vitamin E the copper um far better supplied in in modern diets and just an interesting insight and I think the truth is things are now a little bit more complicated and this is a sort of a model of kind of what goes into the hor's mouths now the forage and the main meals and the balancers and and it's um it's It's it's complex but it's not bad and there's lots of responsibility behind there and um I think some of this complexity breeds mistrust and I think the work that we try to do as beta is to try and give that trust back to you know and how to spot good manufacturer and good responsible behaviors in the sector but let's face it there's a lot of variables aren't there lots of variables in our our world of the horse you know the horse itself is very variable the um every horse is an individual how many times times do we get told that our forage is variable and Mariel is going to speak about that next and and and forage and its quality but it is the cornerstone of the diet and I draw your attention to the ch top right there the agriculture horse to culture development board monitor grass growth and grass nutritional quality through the year not for horses for the ruminant side of things but you know that's last five years data and you can see how it it varies and we've got to manage that as horse owners and then how we feed our hay and how we feed our feed We as feeders of horses vary that. So I would say that feeding is actually a team sport. Now back in 1852 most of the team were here on the left hand left hand side um and more now we're in the middle and on the left hand side but somebody's got to actually feed the horse and they've got to work out what that horse is and with their staff or their non staff themselves they've got to work out what's the right thing to do. Um, and there's plenty of advice about how to feed horses, both good advice and bad advice. And in our session this morning, we're going to talk about how you can find that good advice. And the advice can be variable, but that person that can help you, the horse feeder, recommend or choose what to put in your feed room. And the the group that I'm representing here, the manufacturers are often unseen and assumed to be good. And I sometimes feel feed orders go in and the feed is delivered. and manufacturer is a bit of a black box but it's not it's a really highly complex and um expert very expert very specialist way and because it can go badly wrong and it can go badly wrong and I think all of us our hearts will go out to the Belgian Olympic rider who who lost her position and the team lost their position because of a a prohibited substance in a supplement and it was one of 14 supplements if any of you read the tribune funeral, but the news headlines were that all supplements are bad. And in my view, all supplements aren't bad. It's there's a huge amount of attention to detail in putting together feed products that you are trusting us, the manufacturers, to to do day in day out. And we're doing it in a very large and complex world of which horse is a very small part of the feed community out there. So this is a chart that shows horse feed production. That's horse feed and supplement production um as a proportion of the total animal feed production in the in the UK and you can add on another 100,000 and another sort of 30,000 or 40,000 if you want to have in the Irish community as well. And then of course you've got human nutrition as well with and a lot of animal the animal feed produced here is designed to uh produce food for animals that we then eat. So we're small and that means we are using ingredients whether it's for human nutrition or animal you know big animal nutrition if you like being bought for another reason and being bought in large quantities for other reasons. So our promise to you as a feed community is that we we give you that specialist knowledge know that the horse stuff is is looked upon very very um carefully. And so what does that mean? That means we've got macro responsibilities in in regulatory frameworks. And it's often put to me that we are unregulated and then and we are but we are hugely regulated. Those nine pieces of major legislation which are UK and Europe and they are no longer the same. They are divergent. So we have to dance between UK and EU regs all the time and but our fundamental our fundamental promise and our promise fundamental responsibility is making safe products and talk about that in a second and is it legal and is it truthful and that adage does actually stand true that if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. uh we need as a feed feed community and a supplement community to be able to um be able to justify what we say. And because a horse is classed as a food producing animal, we've got to be able to trace it and get it off the market if there is indeed a feed calamity. And what does that mean for us? That means we've got to have all these sets of expertise. And thinking about the team vet who recommended the supplement to Tina Magnus in in Belgium in recommending that supplement they were assuming all this knowledge all this knowledge was was in that tub that said no banned substances which in itself is a red flag. And you know what do we bring? We bring complete supply chain knowledge and we bring sustainability credentials sust sustainability responsibilities as well. We've got an eye on emerging risks and any of you with feet or contact in farming you will know that there's changing in farming policies, cropping policies to do with the environment that presents as a risk especially with prohibited substances. You take it as read that we've got high quality well-invested manufacturing and that our people are highly trained and that's something we spend a lot of time back in my business doing. But sometimes with with with the knowledge that you might receive in the press, you hear about nutrients and key nutrients. It's our job to find them and find them safely and and find them find them um responsibly, find them consistently, know ingredients that supply them consistently and adapt to that. And then this other area, we've got to know where the problems lurk. And that also touches on supply chains. You know, herbs, great many of you probably use them. But if that herb is dried in a factory that dries tea, you've got a potential caffeine contamination and that's the sort of stuff that we are spending a lot of time doing day in day out. So how do you spot how do you spot the good ones? And um in the UK and in the EU especially from a feed safety point of view, we've got EUAS. It's a feed safety scheme that members sign up to and the set of protocols that we need to follow to deliver feed safety. in the in Europe it's m mirrored by GMP plus and task because everything comes in on a vehicle. Task is the quality scheme for road hage. So we're very careful about how we how we carry things and what's in those lries before they arrive at our factories. And then in terms of prohibited substances, the gold standard is this beta not scheme which is something that's been on the plate now since 2009 and is just having a refresh in a world post zilateral. If you remember in 2020, Zil Patrol entered molasses and entered horses which failed races and it was a major trauma to to many people and this is the gold standard and it reduces the set of good practices that our members do to reduce the risk of prohibited substances entering feed stuff. It's an international scheme. It's open to all and um and it's what I would say is the benchmark. So without further ado, I will stop there and hand over onto our next speaker. We do now move on to our next presentation and this is from Professor Mariel Mo Collier who's professor of equin science at Hartbury University. She's going to talk about finding the best forage for your horse. And this means that she needs to just remind everyone what forage is, why it's important to get it right, and making the good choices for your horse. Again, please, if you do have questions, do put them into slido so that we have them ready at the end. Thank you, Mariel. Thank you, Pat. Um, and thank you to the committee for allowing me to talk about my passion today. So I could have entitled this talk fantastic forage. Forage first, forage for health. So why am I so enthusiastic about forage? Well, forage is the very foundation of the diet. And a good diet is the foundation of good behavior, health, and welfare in our horses. Forage feeds the gut that evolution has given us. So the seeum and the large intestine make up the hind gut and that makes up over 60% of the horse's gut. So that's the bit that we should be concentrating on when we're feeding our horses. Fiber, provided you feed at the recommended minimum of 1.5% of body weight per day, promotes good time budgets in horses. When they trickle feed, they chew. When they chew, they salivate. Saliva has a very important role in the stomach. it actually buffers this the uh acid in the bottom region of the stomach and then the forage and the and the um saliva together form a fiber mat and that prevents the splashing of acid during the exercise from the acid region up into the a glandular mucosa. So we find that we get less gastric ulcers when we feed high forage diets. But forage nurtures the hind gut microbiome. And in fact, we find that on a a good forage diet, you have a more stable and diverse microbiome. And that means less collic for horses. And as collic is still the biggest cause of death of horses in the UK, it's very important to get that right. But forage is more than just ballast. It's a really valuable nutrient supply. And in fact that nutrient supply is slow release energy. So that gives the horse a nice even supply of energy to sustain the activities throughout the day. And hopefully it gets you off that I want to buck you off in the five minutes and then half an hour down the road he's dragging his feet. So in terms of energy supply, can we can we expect good energy levels from forage? Well, research has shown us that if you feed quality Timothy halage plus a balancer, you can actually maintain work in high performing horses. These were we were racing trotters. We also find that actually feeding young thoroughbred fos a a a balanced high quality halage total mixed ration actually sustained really quality growth in these animals and also promoted good high gut microp um metabic metabolic profiles. We also know from Proudman's work that the a healthy microbiome in FO protects against later life gut issues, orthopedic issues, and respiratory disorders. So, how do we choose the best forage for our horse? Well, first of all, we've all got to be a little bit more honest with ourselves. What are the energy requirements of our horse? And does your horse actually carry a few more kilos than than it should do? So you need to assess that properly and categorize your horse as a leisure, a light working horse, a performance horse, is he really working hard or have you got a horse with clinical issues. So looking at that fiber, we want all of them to be fed a hygienic palatable fiber. For our leisure horses, then what they want is a nice continuous supply of fiber and it's better to feed them a higher fiber, so higher stem to leaf content. If you know the nutritional value of that forage, well that will make ration formulation much easier for you. If however you're feeding a performance horse which is working on the edge o of its ability, then you need consistent forage. So you need a consistent nutrient supply that you can rely on. So we're looking there at much higher quality fiber and you probably do need to know the nutritional value. In fact, I would suggest that's quite important. But when it's critical is when actually you've got a horse with clinical issues, particularly those that have got insulin dysregulation um or laminitis. You really need to know what the water soluble carbohydrate content and indeed the digestibility of that fiber is so that you don't push the horse over into a clinical episode. So looking at the three most common forages that we have here in the UK, grass, hay, and halage. Well, they're all really quite variable. Grass varies from um day to night and it also varies seasonally. In terms of our forage though, one of the biggest um issues in in feeding forage and the variability is the physiological age, the age at which that was actually harvested. So, harvesting conditions, physiological age, dry matter, hygienic content will all have an impact on the nutrient content of the forage. We're also finding actually now that halage is even more variable than than we thought and certainly more variable than hay. So we can get um a very wet halage as it were down at 65% dry matter up to an 80% dry matter halage and that can have quite an impact in nutritional value and we're finding quite an impact on dry matter digestibility. I if you do any of these prefeeding treatments such as soaking and steaming which you might want to do to get rid of dust or indeed to reduce water soluble carbohydrates just be aware that that treatment will actually alter the forage. So you will alter the forage um biome and you will alter the forage nutrient content. Forage is not regulated. You can just see why um because it it doesn't carry any nutritional analysis. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't have a quality assessment and some sort of quality assessment is necessary particularly because we now know that high quality forages talking about the high leaf to stem they seem to be more evenly digested by most horses and quite consistently digested. But the issue comes when we're feeding more mature foragers, those with higher acid detergent fiber, which is the less degradable part of the cell wall. And you might find that within a stable you've got two horses eating the same hay. one will do quite well on it and one won't and that's because of their ability to digest the fiber. We also know now that most UK hays are low in digestible protein and we also know that the mineral and the trace element level can be really quite variable. So I would say in 99.9% of cases you are looking at feeding a balancer to make sure you're meeting nutritional requirements. So making the best choice well if you can possibly get some nutritional um uh value analysis done on it. So know the the um uh soluble side of it the water soluble carbohydrate and crude protein but also look at the fiber how digestible potentially digestible is that looking at the neutral detergent fiber and acid detergent fiber and of course assess it for dust content. If you can't get that, and I appreciate some owners don't have access to that, then if you can get some information from the grower to enable you to do some sort of quality assessment, because as we've just seen, it can be quite variable. Feeding high performance horses, you can rely on forage giving you a lot more energy than we previously thought. So, a high leaf to stem um forage, you will actually meet more of the animals crude protein and energy requirements. That means you can actually afford to feed less cereals and that means you get a better microbiome profile and so you'll have a healthier horse. If you want to feed ad libertim then ask yourself is the forage suitable for doing that or if you allow free access is he going to get overweight. Probably best though to know your horse's intake behavior. So we now suggest that it's better to feed to appetite so that you can actually um allow the horse to eat not waste the food and he gets what he wants without wasting a lot. If you're feeding halage check your management system is it suitable for you that you can use that halage up within the recommended 5 days because if not you start to get aerobic spoilage and then the nutritional quality drops down. So dealing with this variability and change can be a bit challenging. But we do know that the hind gut microbiome is similar on horses fed quite a wide variety of forages. In fact, more recent work has shown that even on hay and grass, they can be quite similar. And most horses are quite robust at dealing with with some changes. But change can have a negative impact on the on the microbiome. So it's best to actually change from one forage to the next gradually so that you don't cause any problems. So thank you for your attention and I'm happy to answer any [Applause] questions. So we now move into our final presentation in this series and this is from Dr. Katie Williams who is chair of the equin nutrition and feed advisor register working group which is part of the British Equestrian trade association and she's going to talk about food fights and finding a way through the soup of misinformation and the talk is going to look at how you can locate reliable and trustworthy sources of advice and information as well as the importance of choosing equi nutritionists and feed advisors who conduct themselves professionally and engage in CPD. All that in eight minutes. So um Ruth has already highlighted this morning that um the feed industry is actually very highly regulated but what about the people working within it? Well, the profession of nutritionist doesn't have protected status. So whether you're advising on dogs, cats, humans or horses as a nutritionist, there is no sort of protected status for for that profession. And what that basically means is that anyone can call themselves a n a nutritionist and they do. So there is a reason for that. It is a great career. It's a job, a profession that's taken me all around the world, and I've met some wonderful horses and some interesting people along the way. You got the joke. Um, but what does that look like in in practice? Well, I think these two quotes or proverbs, whatever you want to call them, albe it slightly cliched, they do sum up succinctly the sort of situation we find ourselves in. The more you know, the more you know you don't know. And therefore, you tend to become a little bit more nuanced in the advice you give. And it may be harder to give definitive, clear-cut guidance. And yet those perhaps with less knowledge tend to try to cut through all the noise, cut to the chase and give a perhaps more definitive answer. And you can imagine when you're bombarded with millions of um bits of information every single day in every part of your life that actually having someone say, "Well, this is what I did for me and my horse and it worked is very powerful and you can understand why people buy into that and and go along with it. Now where does that confidence or should I say overconfidence come from? Now you may not be familiar with the names of the of the psychologists that developed this or characterized this phenomenon but there is a lot of consensus around the fact that we all tend to overestimate our own abilities and the example given most frequently is that of driving and if there's any husbands and wives I can see the knowing looks between you about this in that we always tend to overestimate our own ability. Now I think there's a little bit of a humility involved in this. We don't tend to think that we're the best at everything or we perhaps might be thinking that we're going to be accused of being bragging if we're if we're suggesting we're better than everybody else. But I think also we don't want to admit to being average. You know, to protect our own ego, we're generally going to put ourselves in that slightly above average but maybe not perfect category. There is much more debate as to the cause of this phenomenon. And I think the takeaway from it really needs to be that just because you know more than the person asking you, it doesn't mean that you have the right answer. And I think that is very um evident in the equestrian industry. I think a lot of the advice or the sort of giving of information comes from a good place. I think we want to try and be helpful. We want to impart our knowledge and and share what we know. But as I say, if you think that you know more than the person that you're giving advice to, there is a tendency to impart your advice whether it's actually correct and upto-date or or not. And somewhat uniquely, I think in the equestrian industry, there are very many stakeholders involved and very many factors involved in determining what you're going to feed your animal. You may be having a really tough time riding. You may not be able to handle your horse on the ground, but the one time you get some positive interaction is very often when you feed them. And nutrition and feeding generally is not a functional act anymore. Or not simply functional. It is a social, emotional, and habitual um sort of experience. You actually express your love and affection for those around you, including your horses, when you feed them or offer them a meal. And we need to bear all of those things in mind when we're trying to give advice and and guide people. And you think about all the different places where people get information. There may be several professionals advising a horse owner. It could be their vet, their trainer, their farrier, their nutritionist. Never mind the people that they're interacting with online. And of course, we shouldn't forget the yard matriarch who will be imparting everything she knows to you. So, we need to think about all of those complex relationships. um when we're advising horse owners, what can we do to try and increase the trust in our profession? Well, in the human nutrition profession, dietitionian does actually have protected status. So, the association for nutrition represents those people who aren't dieticians but have working in the nutrition industry. Did anyone notice the ratra letters after my name on the first slide? No. Had anyone come across of the the Association for Nutrition previously? One or two? Unfortunately, because it's an um an organization that really represents um human nutritionists, although they do have some animal nutritionists on their register, it doesn't really resonate in our industry. And I think to get our house in order, we are looking to try and develop our own version, our own register, which I'll come to in a minute. But I think we need to define what we're doing as nutritionists and what our role actually is in order to develop trust in our profession. And this is my attempt and sorry it's coming up line by line um at a definition for an equin nutritionist. So that interpreting all of that legislation and ensuring compliance that Ruth alluded to earlier is key. We're obviously providing information to others, but we're formulating rations and feeding programs. And I think increasingly so sustainability of those diets needs to be uppermost in our thoughts. And I think that was something that was highlighted at the National Equin Forum last year. So we we are mindful of this that we've got to be able to feed horses sustainably through in the field and the forage as well as the package feed as well. So it's a really diverse role and it's again one of the reasons I enjoy working as a equin nutritionist learning from other sectors. So the association for nutrition it was a huge achievement for them to actually have a nutrition module embedded into the medical curriculum and that's in well a significant difference to the veterary curriculum where there's hardly any nutrition training provided and still less specifically on equin and this was an area I actually researched for my PhD a few years ago and it's not a criticism because they have a very crowded curriculum there's a lot that they've got to fit into five six seven years but we need to do more to help um vets and other allied professionals to identify issues such as obesity and then refer to specialists which is the model that the association for nutrition have embedded into this um module for doctors and if we can offer support these professions particularly veterary and obviously medics doctors they're under huge amounts of pressure um there's a lot of um case load that they're trying to get through and if we work collaboratively as professionals, then it's going to be mutually beneficial. But we've got to gain the trust of those allied professionals as well as the horse owners so that they seek support from the right people. And that's why it's my pleasure to be here this morning as the the sort of chair of the working party to introduce the beta equin nutritionist and feed advisor register. There are many of the working party in the room. So before I forget, thank you very much for all your support and help. Um, this register is trying to showcase nutritionists and feed advisers who keep up to date by doing their CPD and offer a good standard of evidence-based advice. So I've tried to define nutritionists. We're also including feed advisers because we're very aware that they are often the people giving advice on a regular basis. those people working in feed rate retailers um weighing service providers industry personnel who who aren't necessarily nutritionists there will be an entry exam and assessment and this annual requirement to complete CPD which is going to be reasonably ownorous most importantly from my perspective is that there will be a code of best practice and that's going to ensure that or recognize those people who are working responsibly um and and professionally I do want to emphasize that all are welcome. This is not a closed shop. Everyone, anyone that wants to call themselves nutritionist or a feed adviser is very welcome to join the register as long as you undertake those obligations. We need your help. And again, I like taking quotations and citations from other places to illustrate my points succinctly. Um this was a report from a few years ago in the US recognizing that nutritional prof nutrition professionals have a key role to play in trying to overcome some of the health challenges but collaboration is key and that's why it's fantastic to be here this morning to talk about this register more widely and to ask for your support. you know, we are trying to get our own house in order and raise standards, but we need your help in signposting people to this register timings. Um, so we're launching it officially at the B2V conference. Then the applications will open and we very much hope to have the register live in the autumn subject to the number of um applications that we have. But if anyone has any questions, I appreciate it's a very short presentation. Very happy to answer questions now or or over lunch. Thank you very [Applause] much. Thanks, Katie, and everybody else involved. There's been a lot of work to try and get this to this stage and to be able to report here. So, Katie, if you can join and um Ruth and Mariel, um please, we would like to open this up to questions from both the auditorium and Slido. If you are in the auditorium and I'd like to take a question first if possible from there please can you stand to say your questions and say who are so does anybody have any questions to start us off if not I will start with one um which is from it's it's a question from Slido and it says it's to you Mariel I think how long do you recommend soaking hay and I'm going going to now emphasize who you'll answer this part as well to reduce starch levels. Okay. Um well, hay actually contains very little starch. So um it's the water-soluble carbohydrate level. If you're soaking that is um probably what you're aiming to reduce and um unfortunately I wish I could say oh it's 3 hours and that's it. But unfortunately it very much depends on the type of hay. Um and as yet we haven't been able to um find what it is in hay that causes losses. So unfortunately we can get losses highly variable from 2% up to about 52%. So it really is a case of so it seems. Um yes. What about could just following that up Mariel? What about temperature and time of year? Do you have anything on that? Well, I mean, if if you if you um want to boil that amount of water and put on very hot water to soak a big hay net, then you will probably speed up um loss of water-soluble carbohydrate and in the time of year it's a bit colder. Um it you will maybe leech a little bit different, but it's it's again it's just hard to predict because some horse some um hayes will lose a lot of WSC in in uh 8 to 12 hours and others won't. So unfortunately it's hard to predict. Yes. So just an advice is to start off with as low as possible. So going back to Mariel's comment, if you've got a clinical problem, you need to try and make sure you know your haze low and then use soaking as an adjunct. Just don't rely on it. I think that's the conclusion. And then do we have any other questions in the hall at the moment? If not, I'll continue. And and Katie, I think picking up with you, compared to the livestock nutritionists, why do you think there does seem to be a little bit um the equines are viewed a bit differently than our livestock nutritionists? Um I think with the livestock it's a it's quite easy to measure results. Um you know your productivity from your animal is is there. So I think you know you get the value you understand if you're given good advice you can see the effects of that advice. Um I suppose well maybe with um equa I think there's a lot of experience and knowledge that people want to um impart. So everyone gives advice and it perhaps devalues the advice of the professional. And do you also think that part of the issue with the livestock may be that we can measure like milk production, egg and with the hor's performance has so many other factors. Yes, exactly that. So the productivity output you can actually measure much more easily with a with a livestock animal compared to to a horse. Um I think there's probably, you know, generally more research in livestock nutrition, so it's probably a little bit more nuanced. So you want to seek professional advice. Um, and I think the the professionals tend to work much more collaboratively. I don't necessarily think vets would be commenting on nutrition for livestock animals. They would see the specialisms um and recognize their their allied professionals. Thank you. And then oh down at the front, can you stand and wait for the mic? They're they're enjoying the exercise. Hi Siobhan Dylan applied equin podiatry. Um how does modern farming methods affect the nutritional values of your forages and your concentrates? Um and how does that affect the kind of advice that you are able to give to people? Is it making a big difference? I mean personally my personal experience back in the day if I needed a protein kit because I've got an old horse that would just waste I'd use soya. But now because of the modern farming practices, although it's a good protein source, the agrochemical load associated with it could be causing problems with with metabolic horses and certainly horses that I've seen have problems in terms of their feet. Agrochemicals is a significant factor. Thank you. I'm going to go Ruth to you to because it's sourcing ingredients. What a fantastic question and a very big question. Um Pat, can I have another 13 minutes? Um so I mean oh modern farming practices for a start I think the primary the primary role of farming practices to grow food for humans and so um and farming these farming practices take place all over the world. And with regard to soya um soya is a legume just the same as peas and beans and the rest. And it just happens to be a an interesting ingredient in so far the quality of the protein that is very good. And so it has become the predominant protein source. Um but soy the soy that comes into our feeding our feed mills if you like is processed. It's it's had the oil removed for human food production and it's the soybean meal. And that processing involves heat treatment which in relation to some of the um comments made against averse to soil like phytoistrogens they they are generally cooked out. And in fact when I began my career as a nutritionist um all all the protein sources have what we would call anti-nutritional factors associated with them. Um peas beans especially um soy is no no different loopins as well. And so um the process by which they are they are they arrive at our factories heat treated is taken to um to to remove those. And I think the horse a horse feed formulation even a high energy high protein formulation is probably about 8% of a protein ingredient maybe 10. And um but and that's quite different to say pigs and poultry where the soy would be a much higher proportion or the protein ingredients would be a higher proportion and so these allegations of or suggestions that there might be phytoistrogens. Um we as beta and as equin nutritionists took took this very seriously because we thought hang on you know is this harming the horses? So we looked to the pig and poultry community to see whether this was an issue in pigs and obviously pigs produce 11 piglets at a time and they produce them very well on soybased diet. So agri practices per se I don't think are affecting the ingredients we have but in terms of our responsibilities is we've really got to keep tabs on what's coming in and the trends within that. I need sorry microphone. Can we have the microphone? If we can continue just quickly then we need to move on. But it is an important point. I I think it's actually the application of the preh harvest desicant practice through glyphosate. Um and the glyphosate content. Um I I do see that horses in fields that are next door to sprayed fields that yeah they've inhaled it almost or it's had a small contamination on the grass. I re I quite often can see a laminitis issue because they've been contaminated with agrochemicals and the question is is that kind of contamination affecting the horse feeds as well and is that causing some of the health issues that you might see? We are by law um set to man monitor pesticide residues in feeds but to very low levels. So it's an important part of our program of of manufacturer to have QCQA practices that take ingredients and and look for not only pesticides actually things like dioxins all these sort of back to the undesirable substances I talked about and but actually you make a wider actually a point that's actually worth making wider if I've got time which is agricultural practices are changing and herbicides are herbicide um availability is changing species being grown are changing Um the sustainable farming incentive is in is in farming is bringing huge amounts of new seed mixtures and we don't know the impact of those yet in terms of what that what goes into the feed bucket and that is something that we spend a lot of time in sort of beta community thinking about what that what that's going to mean. So yeah, Mariel, in in terms of the forage in modern agricultural practices, certainly the nutritional value of the grasses which have been grown for um beef and and and milk production are higher and we get what we call high sugar grasses, higher water soluble carbohydrate. And so actually I would suggest maybe that part of the laminitis issue you have is that maybe that the um horses um are actually grazing sugar grasses that are very high in sugar that um is actually they haven't really evolved to deal with. So in terms of our our forage we get quite higher um protein levels but also remember that the protein isn't always available from the um for the horse because it's it's locked up in the cell wall. So it's the it's the um the very the leaf to stem area um thing that you need to concentrate on looking at the nutritional profile. But certainly modern agricultural practices will give you much higher nutritional value grasses and forages that many of our horses don't actually need and therefore it can tip them over into metabolic disorders. Um very quick then we've got a a very highly rated on our um slide in. Yeah, I just think from the advisory point of view, I think that's exactly why it's important to go to the people that are testing the ingredients, doing the the residues and getting it from the hor's mouth rather than just listening to some of the stuff that's shared on social media. We have a question and a lot of people have been interested in the answer. Dentally challenged veterans are increasing in number each year. Are hay replacer cubes, nuts, mashes literally like for like or do they always have a higher nutritional value? Thank you. Do you want to just start? Um I think it's asking about the replacers for veterans and are they all the same? Are hay replacers all the same? Mash is all the same? Gosh. Um, I think the simple answer is they're probably not because they're probably individually designed to have a have a um a specific uh functionality to do with that product in that claim. But the general design is for the horse to be able to chew on fiber. So that would be a common common theme of all Mariel quickly. Yes. I mean um many of these are actually very good for old horses that can't chew and that but and they give the necessary fiber. So that's forage chopped up. So it's fiber and fiber does the same thing in the gut. But you need to look at look at the bag and see what it what it contains and um be a little bit more critical about whether it's this one or that one that would be best for your horse. It really is listening to the horse. And if I could add, you know, in your presentation, Mariel, you said that forage is unregulated, which it is. It grows out the ground and but these as soon as you go to a purchase feed, it's highly regulated and highly consistent. So when you've looked on the bag and it says it's 8% protein, it is. And if it's 20% fiber, it is because that's the world that we responsibly behave in live in to create consistent products. So it's quite a good consistent option if you've got a metabolic animal or an old animal. Okay. Um I had one final question. Um Ruth is if you are a vet or a farmer and want to put a feed on the market, can you just do that? That's a great question. So there's a low barrier to entry of calling yourself a nutritionist, but equally there are organizations out there where you can have somebody make your feed or supplement and but actually if you place a product on the market in the UK or the EU, you um there's a registration required um to be a feed business operator and with it brings that raft of regulation that you saw me put up the nine the nine pieces that are beholden on you to make safe feed and um traceable feed and use prescribed lists of ingredients. ience make legal claims and a point actually earlier perhaps you know when you asked about agricultural nutrition versus horse nutrition a horse is generally either healthy or it's not or it's um performing or it's not. And so the territory for advice and the the you know functionality is a nectar to us all isn't it? We want our horses to be better in whichever way better means. And um often times that takes us across the line into med veterary medicine regs if we promise a a health benefits health benefits you know um you for improving joint function say that's a medicine not a feed feed support so all those rules are wrapped up in being a feed business operator per thank you thank you very much to the panelists there are lots more questions apologies to those of you on slido but we've come to our end of our session and I now pass it Tom, thank you very [Applause] [Music] much. [Music] Hey, hey, hey.