When prairie oat growers first started investigating their loss of the U.S. horse feed market, they thought there was a simple explanation: cost.
After 18 months of research, they have discovered the collapse is mainly due to a more profound problem: myth.
As a result, the Prairie Oat Growers Association has launched a web campaign at equineoats.org to combat the widespread idea that oats are bad for horses.
“There’s been no voice to speak up for oats,” said industry analyst Randy Strychar, who helped produce the Equine Feed Oat Project.
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“Enough of the rubbish. Let’s get to the facts.”
Strychar said he and others in the project were surprised to find that price was not the main cause of Canadian oats’ slump in the U.S. horse feed market to 200,000 to 300,000 tonnes this year from 1.1 million tonnes in 1991-92.
The droughts of 2001 and 2002 increased oat prices and prompted buyers to look for alternatives, but Strychar said a longer-term problem began developing in the 1990s and 2000s with a growing belief that oats were bad for horses.
Studies in the late 1990s found that old horses and those with metabolic problems required less cereal starch than they were often getting from sources such as oats, which could cause health problems.
However, Strychar said this limited finding for a small minority of horses was exaggerated in the minds of thousands of veterinarians and horse owners to mean that oats were bad for all horses.
“It was coming from the veterinarians.”
However, he said veterinarians are not nutritional experts, and nutritionists and nutritional researchers overwhelmingly support the use of oats as a horse feed, including nine of the United States’ 10 horse nutrition research centres.
Leading private equine nutrition consultants also support oats, as do the two leading horse feed manufacturing companies.
“The science tells us, the (feed) industry tells us, that oats are still one of the best feeds for horses,” said Strychar.
He said it is important to ensure that information from the research centres is passed onto veterinarians because horse owners rely greatly on veterinarian recommendations when making feed decisions.
Strychar said getting more comprehensive oat health information to vets is a good way of getting to the horse owner.
“We need to convince the owner.”
