Beasley Equine Podcast
Welcome to the Beasley Equine Podcast, where horse lovers, riders, and industry experts come together to explore the fascinating world of equine care, training, and culture. Hosted by passionate equine Veterinarian Dr. Travis Beasley, each episode dives into the latest trends in horse health, innovative techniques, and inspiring stories from the saddle. Whether you're a seasoned competitor, a backyard horse owner, or simply captivated by these majestic animals, join us for practical tips, expert interviews, and a celebration of all things equine. Saddle up and tune in—your next great ride starts here! New episodes every Tuesday!
Beasley Equine Podcast
Beyond the Feed Bag: Dr. Masa Williams from Purina Mills on Equine Nutrition Science
Ever wonder what's really happening inside your horse's digestive system? Dr. Masa Williams, PhD equine nutritionist at Purina, takes us on a fascinating journey through the cutting-edge science behind modern horse nutrition in this information-packed episode.
With a background in rodeo and growing up on a multi-species farm, Dr. Williams brings both practical experience and scientific expertise to the table. She breaks down the critical difference between prebiotics and probiotics, explaining how Purina's new Systemic supplement containing Bacillus coagulans GBI 30 underwent ten years of research to ensure it actually survives the journey through the horse's digestive tract—unlike many probiotics on the market. This specialized probiotic has shown remarkable results in reducing inflammation markers and improving digestive health.
The conversation explores Purina's innovative approach to common equine health challenges. We learn about Outlast, a unique calcium-magnesium honeycomb complex derived from seaweed that buffers stomach acid within minutes and protects against ulcers for up to four hours—perfect for performance horses or during stressful situations like trailering. Dr. Williams also guides us through feeding options for developing foals, explaining how different growth feeds (Impact Mare in Foal, Omolene 300, and Ultium Growth) match various genetic predispositions and growth rates.
For senior horse owners, you'll discover why Equine Senior has become such a trusted complete feed, containing both nutrients and forage in a form that dissolves quickly to prevent choking in older horses with dental issues. The ActiveAge technology included in senior feeds enhances immune function and reduces inflammatory markers, with research showing improved vaccine response in aging horses.
Perhaps most exciting is the glimpse into the future of equine nutrition through microbiome science. Purina's Microbiome Quotient platform allows owners to submit fecal samples for analysis, receiving personalized feeding recommendations based on their horse's unique gut bacterial profile. Dr. Williams explains how diet dramatically influences the microbial ecosystem in the hindgut, which in turn affects everything from nutrient absorption to immune function.
Connect with Dr. Williams and the Purina team through your local dealer or veterinarian to tap into their wealth of nutrition knowledge and discover research-backed solutions for your horse's specific needs.
Thank you.
Speaker 1:All right. Dr Mesa Williams, thanks for joining us today. We just had a great breakfast and discussion with the team here, and now you're gracious to give us your time to sit down for a podcast. So thank you very much for coming.
Speaker 2:I'm glad to be here. Travis, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:So if you want to give us a little bit of your background you're a PhD nutritionist and you're working for Purina right now If you want to just kind of tell us what you've done in your career and how you landed at Purina, that would be great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I grew up in north central Arkansas on a multi-species farm cattle, goats, chickens, horses, you name it. We kind of had it. And that's kind of where my love for animal science started. And I grew up rodeoing, riding horses, all things rodeo, all things horses. And I thought that that's what I wanted to do with my life, that I was gonna, you know, ride horses the rest of my life.
Speaker 2:And uh, ended up getting a scholarship to the University of Arkansas and went for animal science, because that's where my, my passion was at. And and while I was there, uh, I took a class called feeds and feeding and the guy that taught the class was really an interesting guy. He was a small ruminant nutritionist and he asked me one day after class hey, would you be interested in doing some research? I'm like, well, I don't even know what research is. And I ended up doing some undergraduate research and that led me to talking with him about going to graduate school. He said, hey, have you ever considered going to graduate school? And I'm like I don't really even know what graduate school is. Can you tell me more about it?
Speaker 2:And so I ended up going to the University of Kentucky, actually in ruminant nutrition for my master's and learned a whole lot while I was there and then ended up working for Ohio, the Ohio State University, and while I was there, got my PhD in equine nutrition, and not just, you know, not just looking at at parts and pieces, but but trying to do some applied nutrition research, which is kind of where my passion lies. And then, after finishing up at the Ohio State, I moved back to Arkansas with my husband and my daughter and ended up getting this position with Purina, and I've been with Purina a little over two years.
Speaker 1:So you were teaching at the Ohio State Taught at the Ohio State.
Speaker 2:I taught at the Ohio State. Yes, Okay.
Speaker 1:How has that helped you? Because this morning you basically came in and taught us about all these Purina products. How has that helped you with the Purina position?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so part of my appointment is giving talks to horse owners and also talking with veterinarians, and we have an equine professional horseman's conference that we do twice a year at the research farm for Purina and we also have an annual veterinary conference that we do. And having to teach students about nutrition, equine feeds and feeding specifically right after lunch for an hour and a half, uh gets you really excited about nutrition and you know you, you learn some tools to excite other people about nutrition and and keep those people awake. And I love college students, uh, but it's tough on a Friday after they've been out Thursday night for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thirsty Thursdays, yes. And then when David Williams, our Purina guy, told us you were coming, I just did a quick Google search and one of the first things that popped up was thehorsecom. I send horse owners there a lot because the articles are all reviewed. It's written by people that know what they're doing and what they're talking about. So how long have you been writing and answering questions on thehorsecom?
Speaker 2:So thehorsecom has a great relationship with Purina and all of the PhDs on my team write articles for them and I have been involved with that since joining the Purina team. Oh, okay, so that's a recent, yes, recent thing.
Speaker 2:Well, thank, you for all that, because I was reading the magnesium one the other day and that was that couldn't have been easy to yeah, yeah yeah, and and sometimes you get you get into to spots that you're like, okay, I don't, I'm not the the expert on this, and so then you do a deep dive through the literature and you learn so much Like in my job, I learn every day from someone or something, and that's one of the things that I love the most about this position.
Speaker 1:Yeah, same with my profession, Especially when our farrier comes here. I learn so much from him and, like you guys stopping by, there's never-ending knowledge and stuff is changing so fast yes and a lot of that is thanks to purina. As far as the nutrition and supplements go, one of your newest ones is the systemic, which is a prebiotic it's. It's a probiotic probiotic you want to? Obviously I'm confused on that. You want to explain the difference between pre or pro or post or whatever?
Speaker 2:yeah, the nomenclature there for a minute yeah, so it is pretty confusing because it's so close and basically a prebiotic is, um something that microbes utilize to grow, and so prebiotics, um we we like to think about.
Speaker 2:If we have some, some microbes that are beneficial to the horse and we want to encourage that growth of already established microbes in the in the gut, uh, then that's, that's what they are.
Speaker 2:So think about, like pectin that you would find in beet pulp or soy holes or alfalfa, um are prebiotics for some of the microbes that produce good volatile fatty acids for that horse. A probiotic is actually a live microorganism, so it is the microbe itself, and probiotics are interesting because something that's alive when we have it, it still has to be utilized in the horse, and so we want to make sure that it's alive when it gets to the place that we need it to work, and so probiotics tend to be a little tougher to you know, know, deal with or utilize. Because if it's alive when we feed it to the horse, is it alive after the gastric stomach? Is it alive in the, in the gi tract, and where is it working out? In the gi tract? Is it necessarily establishing or not in the gi tract? Uh, so all of those questions are important when we think about probiotics so a a lot of the probiotics.
Speaker 1:Even though the label says this is in there, a lot of them probably get destroyed by the stomach acid. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's exactly right. Travis and supplements are strange in that they're not as regulated as horse feed, and so claims can be made a little bit willy nilly on on what is really happening. The cool thing about our probiotic, our systemic, is that we put the research in. We said, okay, is this alive through the pelleting process? And so we wanted to feed our probiotic as a pellet because it's easy to do so. Like it's, it's a small amount that we can dump on top of their meal and they're going to consume it where a powder is a little bit tougher or a liquid is even tougher than that sometimes, to ensure consumption.
Speaker 2:And so we did the research that looked at whether our probiotics survived the pelleting process, which takes heat and pressure, looked at whether our probiotics survived the pelleting process, which takes heat and pressure. And then we did the research to look to see if our probiotics survived the gauntlet of the gastric stomach. So, um, um, you know, looked at that to make sure that it was. It was alive and survived that, and it does. And so that's. You know, that's the true definition of a probiotic is a live microorganism that is benefiting the host in some way.
Speaker 1:And I read it was how long was the research? It was like 10 years or something crazy like that right.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So Purina has put a lot of faith and time and money into this project. That started really and truly about 10 years ago where a bunch of really smart people across species, a bunch of PhDs, got together and said, hey, where's the future of nutrition heading? And everybody kind of came to the consensus that it was through the microbiome. And we know that because we look at human research or research in other animals and we see that that's kind of the frontier right now as far far as nutrition goes. So Purina invested in an emerging technology center. They put a lot of time and money into hiring the right scientists and putting the right equipment in place where we could actually test some of this, this research out, to know yes or no, this works or this doesn't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's one active ingredient in there, which is bacillus coagulans, and then there's a number after it.
Speaker 2:GBI 30. Yeah, how many times have you said that? A bunch, a whole bunch.
Speaker 1:Is that just a subclass of the bacillus?
Speaker 2:Yes, that's exactly what it is, and so you know. Another tough thing about probiotic research is that microorganisms there's a bunch of them, and so how do you even begin to identify that? And kind of back to that research, that previous research that started 10 years ago. One of the things that they did is they started searching through papers and cataloging those papers and looking at different species and how probiotics have worked in different species and what the outcomes were. And we identified three different things that we might want to look at, and that is probiotics that helped with digestibility, which is how we traditionally think of probiotics, or probiotics that maybe helps with disease state or tamping down disease.
Speaker 2:And the last one was probiotics that affected inflammation, because we see inflammation happening every day in horses If you're using them, riding them, so through exercise or through stress, like if we put them on a trailer, or even stress that the gastrointestinal tract might go through when we feed them or we have feed changes, etc might go through when we feed them or we have feed changes, et cetera.
Speaker 2:And so we decided that we were going to focus on inflammation first, and so that's where we said, okay, let's go back to that library, let's see what type of microbes have aided in tamping down inflammation in other species, and so that kind of narrowed and filtered out several of those microbes. And then from there we, you know, did some more digging into the data and identified a few that we wanted to try, and so we got it down to the bacillus coagulans you know genus and species and then from there we looked at different strains. And it's funny because the first research that we did actually was on looking at inflammation before we did any of the research, looking at, hey, did this survive? Or the pelleting process or you know, through the gastric stomach, because we needed to know, does it even work? So awesome, if you have a probiotic that's tough, that you can feed an animal and it will survive, but what's it doing in the animal? So it was a long process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then the Mark you were talking about inflammation. You were looking at SAA. Yeah, and then the Mark you were talking about inflammation, you were looking at SAA, prostaglandin and IL-6. Is that kind of the main ones?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we chose those because they're non-specific markers of inflammation that we could get out of the blood, and those are the ones we looked at.
Speaker 1:Yeah, anybody that's been here with a horse, that's other than routine. We run a lot of SAAs in clinic, which is serum amyloid, a acute phase protein made by the liver. I think it's real similar to like the c-reactive protein in people, but the other one, the, the prostaglandin and the il-6, um, we don't really look at those, but how did you guys kind of measure those? Because some of it was um specific to the intestine, or we use that kind of measure those because some of it was specific to the intestine, or we use that kind of as a guide for intestinal inflammation too.
Speaker 2:We got those out of the blood as well, so they were markers that we could get out of the blood as well. I think maybe what you're referring to is that we did two different types of studies that investigated those, um, those inflammatory markers uh, and so we we did a, an exercise trial uh, where we took horses novel to exercise and we uh exercise the heck out of them. So we walk uh, walk trot um, um, walk trot, walk trot for two hours uh, when we started this, this trial, and then the second part of uh, the, you know, the investigation, was then to to induce we actually induced uh ulcers in these horses, um, using a, a, a scientific protocol, and then we measured those inflammation markers as well and from there we then un-gave them ulcers without using any other type of medication. So we did it all based on how we managed those horses and how we fed them, and then how we managed them and how we fed them to resolve those ulcers, and so we used the blood measurement.
Speaker 1:Okay, and let's talk about fecal consistency with this stuff, because I told somebody the other day with a colic the amount of time we spend waiting on poop and looking at poop. If somebody wasn't familiar with horses they'd probably think we're crazy, but this did help fecal consistency when fed properly, correct.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So in the study where we induced ulcers in these horses, we weren't looking at if systemic could resolve ulcers, we were trying to inflame the gut and a few things that we did aside from measure those inflammatory markers is we also blinded the farm crew to what the treatments were.
Speaker 2:And then we had them. We trained them to look at poop scores, which nutrition ends up being looking at a lot of what comes out, not just what goes in. And so they were trained to these poop scores, looking at what normal poop looks like, dry poop, looks like really runny poop and kind of everything in between. And again, they were blinded to the treatment so they didn't know. And what we found is that the horses that were on the systemic product versus those horses that were not, even though all fecal consistency scores were lowered during the time that they had ulcers, since these scores were lowered during the time that they had ulcers, those that were on the systemic treatment had higher fecal scores, so they didn't get as runny, more diarrhea-y type of poop than the horses that were on control treatment.
Speaker 1:Do you think that had to do with the anti-inflammatory properties of this in the intestine, or do we know yet?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's a lot we still need to elucidate, to know why, but definitely consider that you know a protective property of the systemic bacillus coagulans. Gbi 30 microbe.
Speaker 1:I think, talking about stomach ulcers, you guys also have a great product called Outlast, which is a supplement. We recommend it almost every horse, especially the performance horses. You want to talk a little bit about that and what's in it and why that specific ingredient is so different than other similar products yeah, so outlast has probably been our uh most successful supplement because it just has has changed horses.
Speaker 2:Uh, it's, it's basically, uh, this little calcium magnesium honeycomb complex derived from seaweed and, uh, because of that honeycomb structure, it, the surface area of that molecule is increased. And so when we, when we did the research and again you know, we looked at several different types of of, um, uh, stomach buffering ingredients, but when we, when we found out, last, what we saw was that it buffered quicker and for longer than other other similar types of products and it's because of that honeycomb structure that it that it does so. And again, purina, um, you know, we, we have this proprietary product, we, we have this, this uh agreement with Kalman that that we get to use it and and we feel very lucky because it it's really changed horses lives, it's really helped a lot.
Speaker 1:So not all calcium is the same not all calcium is the same. That's right, yeah, and I had no idea until you guys came out with us and showed us the electron microscope images of these calcium and it is. It looks like honeycomb yes how quick does it buffer after you feed it? And by buffer we mean decreasing the acidity, correct?
Speaker 2:correct. Yeah, we're actually, yes, decreasing the acidity, so we're making the pH rise in the gastric stomach and so we consider a pH of four to be buffered. And so when you feed outlast, you're going to see differences in the pH of the gastric stomach in minutes. And so what I do is I recommend for folks hey, while you're saddling, give outlast. Give that outlast while you're saddling up, and by the time you go to ride, then it's working for you. So it works very quickly and it's going to buffer. A full serving is going to buffer about four hours. And again, when we say buffer, we mean maintain that pH of four.
Speaker 1:Okay, how does it compare to alfalfa? Because alfalfa will buffer the stomach too and it's got a lot of calcium. But how is Outlast different than just giving some alfalfa pellets or alfalfa hay?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question. You know, alfalfa has quite a bit of calcium in it, but it's going to buffer quicker and it's going to buffer longer, definitely than than alfalfa. And and we didn't just look, we, we did look at alfalfa and compared it to alfalfa. We also compared it to several of the other products that are on the market and saw the same thing that it buffers faster and it buffers longer.
Speaker 1:Um, in, in every situation because there's other products now that have maybe copied you guys, but yours probably buffers longer, yeah, and quicker yes, and so again, that's a proprietary product that um other other companies do not have the rights to at this time right, and I'm assuming you guys put more research in to this. I've read something like 10,000 feedings.
Speaker 2:Yes, there's countless hours in Outlast research and countless feedings and trials that have been run on this particular product and again it's been incredibly successful and folks have seen great results by feeding it. And we recommend feeding this before you ride, especially if you feed Purina products. There's a lot of products that have Outlast in it and as long as you're feeding around that four pounds, you're getting a full serving of Outlast. But if you ride outside of that four-hour window, we want you to give Outlast again, and then other times that people don't think about giving Outlast is before you trailer. So you fed them that morning. You're going to go to the show that evening or that afternoon. Put it, give it to them before you, before you get on the trailer, and then, depending on how long that horse stands at the trailer, if you're showing all day, you're showing in the evening. Uh, don't be afraid to give them another dose of it. It's literally just that that uh calmin ingredient and some alfalfa as a carrier.
Speaker 1:so it's a very, very simple supplement, but it it definitely works and the the pellet you can top dress and you can feed it just like snacks. My experience most horses will just just eat it. Some of the colics here that we keep off have to keep off forage. We'll give them a little bit of that and if they have an appetite they they usually eat it pretty good and you also have out outlast treats yes, yeah, the supplement.
Speaker 2:Again, it's just a little. It looks like a little alfalfa pellet and horses readily eat it. It's very palatable. Uh, you can also give it in the form of treats. Uh, it's, you know it's. It's more cost-effective to give the supplement, uh, but, but, uh, yeah, depending on how your, your horse is or or what you like to do, uh, you can definitely give the treats as well. Yeah, we have a lot of.
Speaker 1:We work on a lot of sport horses and performance horses, but we also have, with the Shawnee National Forest, in our backyard, a lot of trail riders. And some of these trail riders I mean they may be these little old ladies, but they're tough as nails. They'll go out and ride all day. So that may mean their horse gets breakfast, but it may be dinner time before they come back.
Speaker 1:So we'll recommend the outlast treats or little ziploc baggies that they can feed with them too, because once that stomach gets empty and that acid rises up to that sensitive part of the stomach, it's important that it's buffered and we get the the ph high or the acidity low same thing. That way we're not burning holes in that squamous mucosa and getting getting ulcers. So that's been kind of a game changer for the people that are following. Following that, I think they've noticed a big attitude change in their horses not as irritable and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:We've had really good luck with it yeah, that's awesome, I love that yeah, and then another question we get a lot in fact autumn asked you this this morning. Is we get a lot in fact Autumn asked you this this morning is we've got a lot of babies on the ground now. They're getting old enough, maybe close to weaning. Can we talk a little bit about your feeds for mares and foals and kind of controlling the growth rate in these guys, because we know that's pretty important for their bone development?
Speaker 2:Yeah, how we feed those babies are important, and really to kind of back up a little bit Travis and talk about how we feed that mare is important. So that third trimester, when that foal is literally going from looking like the shape of a little horse to elongating those bones and putting on muscle and hide and hair and really growing in that third trimester, that's really where we we need to start. That's when we're feeding the foal more so than the mare at that time and we're setting that mare up for success when she goes to produce milk for that foal when it's on the outside. So we want to start, definitely want to start feeding that growth feed in that in that last trimester and feed that full. And we have three different growth feeds. We have an impact Marin full, we have an Omeline 300, and we have an Ultium growth and all of them have their place, whether they're pellets or textured feeds. And, as I was telling Autumn earlier, you know, we want to think about the genetics that we have and feed to those genetics a little bit. And when we think about issues that can come with growth, it's not just about the feed, it's also about the environment and it's about the genetics. But that feed is a complement to ensure that we're not causing issues from the feed.
Speaker 2:So start third, third trimester, when that, when that mare is is carrying that full for sure, and then, um, you know, feed that that mare, uh, for for milk production and and make sure that that baby starting to to eat as early as it wants to, um, to ensure that we're we're getting proper growth.
Speaker 2:And so those feeds have been well thought out. A lot of hours, a lot of smart people have worked on them when it comes to the right balance of calories, to protein, to vitamins and minerals. And you should feed to the back of the bag, like those recommendations aren't on there, uh, in passing, they're, they're there for a reason to make sure that that foal is getting the right amount of all of those nutrients I just I just talked about. And so if, if you're feeding that baby and and you're not feeding to the back of the bag, so you're not feeding enough because, say, that foal is getting, you know, fatter than you want it to look, then then let's talk about maybe a different, a different tier of growth feed. So, um, that's, that's something to consider, and there's a reason we have three and not just one. And uh, um, you know, we, we want to do that, to set that horse up for the rest of its life, and that's basically what we're doing.
Speaker 1:Can you break those three down a little bit more? Say, a um a quarter horse and a lot of our quarter horse populations can stay fat on air versus a thoroughbred that may have a higher metabolic rate and require some more calories.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So of our three feeds, our Impact Marin Foal is going to be the lowest calorie or close to an omeline 300 with calories. And then our Ultium Growth is going to be a little higher calorie and it's really about where those calories are coming from. So Ultium Growth is going to be a little higher calorie and it's really about where those calories are coming from. So ultium growth is going to have a lot of fat and fiber. That's where those calories are being sourced from. Omeline 300 is going to have some more coming from our carbohydrates and same goes for the impact maranfol.
Speaker 2:And when we have these little, these little quarter ponies, that their genetics say, okay, you know we're, it's dictating them to grow at a certain rate versus, say, a thoroughbred that might grow a little bit faster than um we and depending on what we're wanting to do with them.
Speaker 2:So if we're fitting them for sale or if we're, we're just trying to get them to two years old, where we want to, you know, we want to race them or whatever we're wanting to do with them kind of dictates on how we want to feed them.
Speaker 2:So our little quarter ponies may or may not need the Ultium growth or do the best on the Ultium growth. They may do better on the Omeline 300 or the Impact Marin foal, based on what their genetics say. Or if we've got some really fast know, some really fast growing foals that we kind of want to slow down, we can even use a ration balancer on those because again, it's about it's about the ratio of energy to protein and vitamins and minerals, and so our ration balancers are real high in high quality protein, aka that amino acid profile is really nice in there with vitamins and minerals, and if we're wanting a slow growth rate, we might feed those, those fast-growing babies that are maybe even prone to some some, um, growth issues. Uh, we can, we can feed them that ration balancer and feel good about making sure or ensuring that they're getting the proper nutrition. We might just be slowing them down a little bit on how they grow with lowering that energy level and Outlast is in a lot of your products.
Speaker 1:Which of those three you were talking about? Do they all have Outlast?
Speaker 2:The Omeline 300 and the Ultium Growth will have Outlast in them as far as the ration balancers go, have outlast in them um as far as the ration balancers go um the the enrich plus senior is going to have um uh outlast in it. Uh, the regular enrich plus does not and the uh impact marion fold is not. However, you absolutely can.
Speaker 1:Top dress that's what I was gonna say. You can just get a bag of it and yep, and it's not very much. What do you? What's a dose of the outlast for a thousand pound horse?
Speaker 2:um, off the top of my head, I don't. I don't know. I'm thinking about our supplement cups and what they look like, but it's, you know it's not much. Yeah, it's a very small amount. It's pretty easy just to throw it on there when I'm cup or so, yeah, when I'm feeding my horses grain, I always throw a little bit in there.
Speaker 1:And then the other product we use a lot is the Purina Equine Senior which has been a game changer for a lot of these senior horses for a lot of reasons. One of the reasons is we do work on a lot of geriatric horses. Some of their teeth have expired. They may be smooth, they may be missing a bunch. And what I love about senior is it dissolves so quick. If we get we see some chokes, a lot of older horses. That's one of the first thing I ask them you know, what'd they choke on? What do you feed? And if they tell me equine senior, I usually breathe a sigh of relief and a lot of those are fixed before they even get there their own saliva is dissolving them, and if they're not, it takes me no time with the stomach to dissolve that senior and get that choke resolved.
Speaker 1:Senior came out in the early 90s.
Speaker 2:I think yeah, yeah, it's been out a while.
Speaker 1:And I'm sure how long was the research on that, Because that was pretty impressive research, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been kind of ongoing too, and there's a lot of hours in that research.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's forage in it, correct?
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, it's what we would call a complete feed.
Speaker 2:So the forage is built into that feed, which means that you know, horses have a fiber requirement and that fiber is important to maintain gastric motility, function, health, and so if you were to look at equine senior, you're going to see the first ingredient and that's going to be alfalfa, because we need that, that NDF in there.
Speaker 2:And complete feeds mean that those horses don't necessarily have to consume other forms of roughage in order to maintain that gastric health, and that's that's so important, for those horses that you mentioned do not have good dentition, so whether they're, they're missing all their teeth or close to it, uh, or you know, or when horses get old, just like us, they start to wear out, and so they wear out on the inside, just like the outside, and so it's not just about their ability to intake roughage, it's also about their ability to utilize what's in it, and so the equine senior has been thoughtfully formulated where it's got a good mix of not just roughage but high quality protein sources, vitamins and minerals, in addition to some technologies the outlast and also active age that help that aging horse to be able to continue to stay healthy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so in theory a senior horse could live on appearing a senior alone.
Speaker 2:Yes, and this is a near and dear topic for me, because I have two 27-year-old horses that are freeloaders at my house and they both eat 13-ish pounds of equine senior a day, and that's another one of those. You know, equine senior is our most popular feed, for for good reason, but it's also one of our most misfed feed because it is a complete feed, and so read the back of the bag to know what that, to know what that horse needs. If it's's complete forage replacement, then a thousand pound horse should be eating 13 pounds of that a day. Uh, something that I do with my horses, that you know, you you kind of grow up feeding horses, or or your you feed horses and you would never, you would never think about doing it is I feed them twice a day, they get fed twice a day, and so I feed them six and a half pounds at a time, and because they're old, picky men, they walk away from it and I soak I use hot water soaks immediately, I'm lazy, I mix it up, throw it out there, walk away and they'll eat some, and then they'll walk away and then they'll come back and I don't worry about it, because that's the utility of that feed. It's a complete feed.
Speaker 2:Would I ever do that with a true quote-unquote concentrate feed? No Right, but for that feed I have no qualms about doing that, and that's how I can get 13 pounds in them. Because senior horses tend to be picky from time to time and I always tell people when they're feeding senior horses or we're talking about senior horses always feed suspiciously. What changed today? Are you eating the same amount that you did? Are you eating differently? Is your head turned? Are you? You know what does your poop look like? All the things. So I'm making sure that we're doing all the right things for them, or if we need to change something up, or you know where they've got another loose tooth which happens all the stinking time with old horses Right and figuring out what's going on to make sure that we're maintaining body condition on them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's the importance of actually weighing the feed too, because we get some people in here, maybe for weight loss issues or other, and we ask them you know how many pounds you're feeding? Well, it's a one pound scoop or a big scoop, but a lot of these feeds don't weigh the same. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:that's right and and that's that's happens all the time. How much are you feeding? I'm feeding a scoop. What's your scoop look like? And your scoop might be a very different than my scoop. And that's not the end of the story, though. Even if you know you know that my three quart scoop of strategy weighs this many pounds might be very different than my three quart scoop of um. You know, uh, ultium growth, right, so it quart weights are important, uh, and knowing what each feed weighs in that scoop is important, and you know you don't have to weigh every day. If you know what it weighs in that scoop, then you know you can say, okay, I know this weighs this, and then you can utilize. This will really save on your feed bill if you're overfeeding, or save on your horse's health if you're underfeeding or even overfeeding and they're continuing to gain weight and you're like I don't know why, and you thought you were feeding three pounds and you really were feeding five pounds at a feeding. That makes a difference over time.
Speaker 1:Right, and the senior is great as far as the nutrition goes, but you guys also have the Outlast in it. And you also have a prebiotic called ActiveAge which we learned about this morning. It's been around for a long time and, like David was talking about, we've kind of put it on the back burner. But it is really fascinating what this prebiotic does. I mean it supports their immune system, their metabolic response, it supports their joints and mobility.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Can you tell us how that works?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, honestly I don't know exactly how all that works. We just know that it does work. So the research that we did looked at, like you said, the immune response, did looked at, uh, like you said, the the immune response. And so horses that were um, that were consuming equine senior that contained active age uh, had a higher uh antibody titer response uh to vaccines uh and and again, this research was done in old horses and so that's why we put it in our old horse uh feeds.
Speaker 2:Now that doesn't mean that senior feeds can't be used for other horses, because that absolutely can. Other things that we saw is that we had a better or we had a decreased inflammatory markers when we fed our active age Like we talked about the serum amyloid A earlier, the serum amyloid a earlier, and so we also measured serum amyloid a in these horses and and horses consuming at active age had uh lower serum amyloid a levels than those that were not. Uh in addition to um, you know, a a greater or a better response to um meal feeding uh in terms of of insulin and glucose clearance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's amazing. The graphs you showed on the titers after the vaccines was pretty impressive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, really neat stuff and that was before my time. But Purina partnered with Amanda Adams at UK on that work and was some really neat, elegant work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because we still don't know much about titers in horses as far as protective. I think the closest thing we got is what's protective in a hamster for West Nile virus. So the higher we can get those titers, the better. So I'm going to start some of these horses that may have some conditions where they may not respond well to the vaccine, maybe start and make sure they've got that prebiotic in them through this feed to really make sure our vaccines are doing what we want them to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and as I mentioned earlier, the microbiome is kind of the next frontier of nutrition and I think we're going to continue to learn about how different uh different prebiotics and probiotics work. You know, and and something I didn't mention earlier is like the bacillus coagulans, gbi 30, it doesn't populate in the gut and and if you quit feeding it it, it will go away. Uh, so how? I think it's so interesting how some of um you know some of these little microbes, or um food for microbes affects either the, the gut lining or competitive inhibition of pathogens or the hormonal cascade in these in in animals and mammals in general. Uh, and I think it's. I think we're going to continue to learn more and more and it's an exciting time nutritionally to be involved.
Speaker 1:Do you think over time the microbiome will change, or we can change it through diet to where maybe this becomes a normal bacteria in the gut.
Speaker 2:You know I'm not a microbiome scientist, but I would say that, no, I don't think that Bacillus coagulans GBI 30 is actually a soil bacteria, so I don't necessarily know that it ever will live in the gut, just based on different environments that microbes like to live.
Speaker 2:However, I do think that we and we know this actually through our research and our microbiome project that diet is a huge effector of what that microbial profile looks like in the GI tract. So something we've not talked about at all is we also have a microbiome kit where you can look at the top 10 bacteria that inhabit your horse's hindgut or as close as we can get. So we use a fecal sample and we have thousands of samples that we've crowdsourced that people have sent in of their, their horses fecal sample and they had to fill out a really involved um uh questionnaire about what they're eating and how, their house and their age and any, any diseases that they have, and what we found is you know that that diet is a huge uh indicator of of kind of what that microbial profile is going to look like. So diet diet definitely affects it and, um, yeah, really, really neat stuff so those kits is that those are available for horse owners.
Speaker 2:So if anybody listening wants to do that on their horse, that's available for them yeah, so from this microbiome uh project, uh, and it's called the MQ platform, they can order a kit on mqpurinamillscom and that's the only way that you can get it right now and send it off and have your horse's microbiome looked at and then we'll come back with again, again that top 10 bacteria that are there.
Speaker 2:And not only that, but you're assigned what we call an MQ score, which is basically looks kind of like a fuel tank, so it's either stable, which would be kind of full, or green, and then you've got variability, which would be in the yellow, and then you've got variable and deficient, which would be in the yellow, and then you've got variable and deficient, which would be in the red, like a low fuel tank.
Speaker 2:And we we do that based on a few different things what microbes are there, uh, the diversity of those microbes, disease state, uh, of that horse, because you're also filling out a pretty involved questionnaire.
Speaker 2:And then the last part of it, and probably the most powerful part of the kit, is that a PhD nutritionist, one of my team members, or I are going to look at that overall, look at the MQ score of your horse and what your horse is eating, and then make recommendations based off of that to either maintain or improve that, that MQ score. So some really really neat stuff coming out of that. And and the fun part is is that we we kind of know, based on again all these samples that have been sent in, what we we consider a healthy uh microbiome looks like in the horse and that is that's kind of like a living thing, because the more samples that we get in uh, that will that will shift things slightly on what we consider healthy or, um, you know, good uh versus unhealthy or maybe variable in horses. So we're continuing to learn and there's a lot of science coming out of that.
Speaker 1:So the new samples you're getting in that people submit, you're not just reporting and sending back, you're keeping those for further research and development right.
Speaker 2:Not the samples themselves but the output. So that goes into the microbiome quotient database and I think originally you know people were sending in very healthy horses. But the people that are buying these kits you know they're buying them because sometimes it's because they're curious and want to know and sometimes it's because, hey, I know something's not quite right with my horse, or I've got this horse that's got this disease state and kind of know where he's going to stand, and so I think we're getting a better cross-reference of what's truly out there with horses, with disease states, age, breed, sex. That tells us more about the true slice of horses that are there across the United States.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really cool. So we're helping the horses with this and the horses are helping you guys. And they not only get the kit and the report, but they get basically a consultation from a PhD nutritionist on this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right, and so there's a write-up. But then also you can request a 20-minute consultation with that phd. That that did the review of your, your, uh, horse's microbiome. So some really neat stuff, uh, that you get out of it yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 1:We'll put the link in the show notes that way you guys can scroll down and click on it if you're interested in getting a kit. Um, I don't know what it's like in arkansas, but it is hot and humid in southern Illinois right now. One of the biggest things we deal with this time of year is horses not drinking enough, getting dehydrated, and then we deal with a lot of impaction colics yeah and what I'll recommend to people is supplementing salt yeah so if, from a nutritionist standpoint, can we talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 1:I know you had a thing on the horsecom about salt, so yeah, is there too much, is there not enough?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, salt, salt. We tend to overlook salt sometimes because we're so focused on on everything else, but especially during these really hot, humid, terrible times, which is basically Arkansas in the summer every year, but also for our, our performance horses that were were riding hard, you know, and they're they're sweating and so they're hypertonic sweaters, so they're sweating out a lot of electrolytes and we need to replace that. And salt, sodium chloride is the major one there and we want to make sure that horses are getting enough. And, just like you recommending salt, I recommend salt, just plain white. Table salt works great, not designer, necessarily. They don't need designer salt, and sometimes table salt works great, not not designer. I don't necessarily. They don't need designer salt, and sometimes designer salt is not the answer. It should be sodium chloride, and not always.
Speaker 2:You know, I always tell people I, anytime I go to a farm visit, I'm looking for a salt block out there. However, salt blocks, um, they don't. Horses have to lick a lot of it, especially if they're hardworking horses. So, top dressing with table salt on the feed and usually for just a regular horse, a heaping tablespoon full. If you've got a hardworking horse, a couple tablespoons full, you know we'll do the trick. They need about 28 grams I uh of salt today to replenish, uh their electrolytes, and this is going to be for, just like a regular maintenance horse, to replenish their salt. If you've got a performance horse, you're, you're exponentially um uh, adding to that like somewhere up into 200 grams even, depending on how much you're sweating.
Speaker 2:So it's a lot. And, uh, yeah, table salt does a great, a great job. Now, if you've got a horse that that will not consume electrolytes, there's a. You know, there's a few other things that you can do, a few different uh tools in your toolbox. If you're going to feed a commercial electrolyte, look for one that has salt, though, listed first, not one that has sugar listed first, and, and you'll see a lot of supplements out there that do and, and we don't want to see dextrose, we want to see, you know, salt, uh, as the first ingredient, because that's what we're trying to put in them.
Speaker 2:Purina also has a really cool little electrolyte mash. That uh is is really palatable, so it's not truly salty, but it will replenish enough electrolyte for a horse that's been sweating hard for 30 minutes, and you can add it to the water. You want to make it a mash either way, so you can make it real wet. It's super, super palatable, but you can also add it to the water and people will make it just super wet, so it's more like a soup and horses love it, and even we saw some cool stuff from it, because even people that will take their horse to a show in town where the horse is used to drinking well water and they go and drink city water and they don't want to drink. It will encourage drinking. So yeah, salt is super important, electrolytes are super important, especially right now when we're, when we're um, um in these, these really hot, humid months.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that product you're talking about is appropriately named replenish replenish, replenish, yeah, yeah, clever yeah yeah, we'll use that on a lot of um colics too yeah afterwards.
Speaker 1:Try to get them consuming stuff yeah um, and talking about dextrose and the sugar, one thing I struggle with reading some of these feed labels that people bring in products I'm not familiar with is breaking down the carbohydrates on the bag, the sugar starches, the ndf and and all that. Could you give us just like an elevator pitch of what those are and and what horse owners should look for in those?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, uh, when we think about carbohydrates, we we have to think about our simple carbohydrates and we think about our, our, you know, our, our fibrous type of carbohydrates. So on bags you will see a lot. You'll just see fiber or crude fiber, and we know that fiber doesn't tell us a whole lot anymore because it's this bench top, you know thing that we're doing, where we're measuring fiber, but it doesn't tell a lot about what type of fiber is in there. So it's been broke out further into NDF, or neutral detergent fiber, and ADF, which is acid detergent fiber. And again, these are things we do on a benchtop to measure chemically what that means. And we're getting closer, with NDF and ADF, of knowing what those fibers are. So it has to do with where it's digestible at, so whether it's digestible in the foregut or the hindgut, but really and truly, those were developed for ruminants as well. But what, what we do know about NDF that's good is that we, we need that NDF to maintain gut health and so there's a certain amount of fiber and we talked about this a little bit with complete feeds that horses need. That NDF, uh, that, that that tells us. Okay, you know, there's a certain level and really and truly we don't know the exact level of that in horse research, uh, but but we know around what they need.
Speaker 2:Now, um, as we've started using more by-product feeds like beet pulp and soy hulls, what we found is that there's some fibers that get captured in that NDF. That's not truly NDF, so they're actually more fermentable fibers, and you hear that a lot over. This has a lot of fermentable fibers, and so we're talking about like pectins that you find in beet pulp, and so they go to the hindgut the same way that most NDF or hemicellulose does as well, but microbes break it down quicker and there's different volatile fatty acids that come out of those. So you know, there's some interesting stuff that we're still teasing out as far as what fibers are there. So that's kind of going down the line. But you know, people love beet pulp and, again, soy hulls full of pectins too, so we need to live on soy hulls a little bit as well. But as far as the back of the feed tag, you're never going to find pectins or inulins on there.
Speaker 2:You're going to find NDFs. So, yeah, ndf is important. The thing about NDF is, you know, depending on what ingredients are there, though, that NDF might be pretty high, and so when you do have high NDF, that's an indicator that the calories that that feed provides is usually a little lower. But it depends again, complete feeds we want some of that NDF, but a complete feed has lower calories than a concentrate feed does by design, because we're feeding more of it, or we should be feeding more of it. As far as starch and sugar goes, you know those are simple carbohydrates and so they're going to be digested and absorbed in the foregut, or we want them to be. We don't want starches going to the hindgut, and you know, then they're going to be broken down into glucose, and so then that glucose can be used for immediate basically used for immediate energy, or it can go and be made into fat, and you know all kinds of things happening with it.
Speaker 2:And, um, people, you know we get, we get tore up on starch and sugars a little bit because we think, oh my gosh, we can't feed high starch and sugar to these horses. Well, yeah, and no, like there's, we know that there's a level of starch that we don't want to get over, which is about two grams of starch per kilogram of body weight, per meal, and so that's important because we don't want starch going to the hindgut. However, if your horse is not metabolic, they absolutely can and should use some starch and sugar. And so there's also, you know, this kind of level this around 10% to 12% that we don't ever want to feed over starch and sugar. Well, if we've got metabolic horses, yeah, maybe we should talk about that a little bit more, but for our non-metabolic horses we definitely can feed more than that.
Speaker 2:And then what people need to also recognize is that on a feed tag, those, those things are in percentages and so, uh, a, a 10% starch feed, uh, if you're feeding five pounds of it is more than a 15% starch feed if you're feeding one pound of it, kind of thing. So you know you always have to think about how much am I feeding? Times that by the percentage, uh to, to kind of figure out how much you're you're feeding. So we get a little horse owners. As horse owners, you know we want to do the best for our horses, but we also get a little. Uh, two, I think two tore up about starches and sugars sometime.
Speaker 1:Why don't we want sugar going to the hindgut?
Speaker 2:So you know, most sugars don't, it's usually starch, and so when we get a lot of starch to the hindgut, what happens is the microbes that want to utilize that starch produce this little volatile fatty acid called lactic acid. That can cause hindgut acidosis and we don't want that to happen. But again, you've got to feed quite a bit to get there and so recognize. Again, the feeding directions on the back of the bag have been thoughtfully calculated to ensure that's not happening.
Speaker 2:And if you're having to feed more than than you think you should, or or outside of those feeding directions, get in touch with a nutritionist or a veterinarian and and find out you know what it is that you need to be doing. And if you do have a metabolic horse, then then we definitely want to feed them, especially an insulin resistant horse. Ppid horses are a little bit different animal, for sure, depending on how we're treating them, but we want to feed them based on their metabolic state. But we should not be afraid of starches and sugars. They definitely have their place, especially in the performance horse realm.
Speaker 1:And what is the difference between starch and sugar?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so starches are made up of sugars, so sugars tend to be simpler, you know simpler molecules, so it's like one molecule or it's two molecules put together, whereas starch is going to be several put together by different types of bonds, and that's you know, that's the, the main, the main differences. That that we see and and how that's analyzed on a benchtop is, um, you know we're, we're using different, different types of analysis to get there, and so, uh, you, you don't see, for the most part, you see more starches in, like grains and not as much sugars, and you know you're going to have starch and sugars in hay as well, right, so it's not just about the grain, it's also about hay and really, if you or forage, because we're grazing right now so if you truly want to know how much starch and sugar, uh, your horse is taking in, you've also got to do an analysis on that.
Speaker 1:So it's always interesting to talk to folks that they're real worried about the starch and sugar in the feed, but they have no idea what their starch and sugar content of their, their forage yeah, and it's hard to look at it and say because we get some that we may think is appropriate by looks and they send it off and it's got starch and sugars through the roof. Um, if, if we do have hay, that how is there any way to decrease the starch and sugar in hay like soaking?
Speaker 2:yeah, so with with metabolic horses, a lot of times you know we have to. We have to utilize the hay that that they have, or the hay that's available in your area, and so soaking definitely will um help to decrease starch and sugar in in that, in that hay. What we don't want to do, uh, when you soak, there's a couple things you don't want to do. One is you don't want to soak too long, because it's not just starch and sugar that's leaching out of that hay, it's also other nutrients.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So we literally can render pretty decent hay not decent hay by over soaking. So you know, a good rule of thumb is about 30 minutes for most hays. We also don't want to pour that water out where those horses can get to it, because that's, that's where all that starts to sugar with sugar water.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when you, when you do it, you know, don't, don't soak it overnight, don't uh, don't soak it for hours at a time, don't soak it in the sun. It's, it's labor intensive to have to soak hay, but in some cases it's what we have to do. Another option, you know, if you can't soak hay, is you can look at other types of hay and we can come up with an appropriate level of starch and sugar for that metabolic course. And I love to champion alfalfa here, because alfalfa is a legume and it actually does not contain high levels of starch and sugar by and large. You know, again, always test, but it tends to run around 10%. And that's where we kind we've got metabolic horses, especially insulin resistant horses that we're wanting to put some weight on, which sometimes we have those. Uh, alfalfa is a great option. Uh, in in for for those horses in that realm yeah, which?
Speaker 1:which type of hay is typically highest in in sugar and starch?
Speaker 2:yeah. So normally it tends to be the cool season types. So orchard grass fescue, trying to think what we feed the horses Not so much Timothy, even though we will put him in the cool season or put it in the cool season realm. Timothy kind of shuts off and says, nope, I'm done. But cool season grasses and this is without getting too nerdy on forage stuff the way that they uh store starches they don't have the same kind of regulation that a legume or a warm season grass like bermuda grass has, and so they will accumulate more starch and sugar and and at certain times a year they will also do that.
Speaker 2:So really, really nice high quality orchard grass which I see and I look at I'm like, oh my gosh, do I really need that for my horses? Maybe, maybe not, you know, depending on what I'm doing with those horses. So so I always talk about with horse owners how to match your hay up with the horse that you have, and so if you've got a little fat pasture puff, like I do, she's not needing a whole lot of um, he's not needing, she doesn't need to eat alfalfa, you know. She just uh, just a run of the mill. Uh, common Bermuda grass hay does wonders for her with a ration balancer. Now, if I start riding her harder, then maybe she needs a little bit more, but I doubt it.
Speaker 1:I think, at least on your website, the senior I know breaks it down to how much hay they're getting versus how much senior to feed. Is that on the label too, or yes?
Speaker 2:yeah, that's. You can find that on the either the back of the bag or on the tag. And so for horses, again, senior feed is it's made for horses that can't, uh, consume long stem roughage, but it's also made for those horses that can't digest necessarily, what's happening with long stem roughage, and again things are wearing out on the inside and so if they can eat some hay, there's a, there's a equivalency of how much that horse can eat and then how much the feed of equine senior. And you know if you've got a, a senior that maintains on equine senior, and again it's going to be lower calorie than some of our other concentrate feeds, great, awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And then, talking about these fat horses are metabolic, we get a lot of questions Well, how much weight does he need to lose? I'm not a very good judge at these. Some of the horses will refer to the referral hospitals. I'll think they may be 1,000 pounds. Then they have a scale there and we get the report and they may be closer to 1300 pounds. So what is a good way for horse owners to kind of track their horse's body weight or condition, and especially those and I'm guilty of this with my dog you see him every day. You don't quite notice.
Speaker 1:Oh my god, he's gotten fat yeah so what are some resources or tools people can use to to kind of know their horses aren't getting too skinny or too fat as they're feeding stuff?
Speaker 2:yeah. So really the the best tool out there for veterinarians, nutritionists, lay folks, everybody is to body condition score, and so the one that we use primarily here in the United States is the Henneke body condition score, which is a one to nine system, and it's it's awesome because, first of all, it's backed by science. So Don Henneke that was his PhD work at A&M and it's it basically looks at fat cover. So horses accrete fat primarily on the outside of their body, right underneath their skin, over their muscle, right. All breeds of horses accrete fat that way, and so you can use it across all ages and all breeds and all confirmations to look at body condition score. And so it's our best tool to say, okay, this is kind of the health status of this horse, which can mean a whole lot of things, but if a horse has pain or GI issues or something, they're more likely going to lose weight than gain weight. And so a body condition score of five is about where we want most horses, whether that's a maintenance horse that's out living its best life, or that's a maintenance horse that's out living its best life, or that's a performance horse. Uh, in some cases, you know, with our like a elite thoroughbred racehorses. You know we'll see a four and a half, and that's great, um, but. But usually five, five to six is where we want those horses to be, uh, to kind of dependent on what they're doing. When they carry more weight than that, uh, it can affect their metabolic health. It can affect their metabolic health, it can affect their joint health, it can just overall affect their health and how they feel when you ride them. If they carry less weight than that, it can definitely affect performance, how their saddle fits, et cetera as well.
Speaker 2:And the cool thing is is that it's where we can do this assessment. We do it through palpation and visually and look at how fat is accreted over the ribs, over the neck and the wither and over the tail, head and the loin. And we can do that without necessarily a lot of bias. So you can say, okay, can I feel their ribs? And if I can feel their ribs, is there any fat filling in between those kind of things? And so it doesn't take very long to kind of get good at knowing what a body condition score of five or six or seven feels like, and so once you do, you should be the person that is consistently body condition score of five or six or seven, feels like. And so once you do, you should be the person that is consistently body condition scoring your own horse. But you can do it without a lot of bias associated because you can say, okay, what is, what is the fat cover that I can feel and see here?
Speaker 1:What? What is? What's the typical ribs look like on a body condition score of five.
Speaker 2:With a body condition score of five. You can't see ribs. But you can feel ribs, but there's no noticeable fat filling in between those ribs. So that's you know. That's one of the things that I tell people. Okay, this is can you see ribs yes or no? If you can't see ribs, can you feel ribs yes or no? If you can feel ribs, is you feel ribs yes or no? If you can't, if you can feel ribs, is there any fat filling in between? So that means that you're at a body condition score five or above.
Speaker 1:Or, if you can see ribs, you're below a body condition score five, yeah, so, um, you've been purina for a couple years and you guys are always researching, do you is there? You know what's what's next for you guys, because it's always when david calls me about something I always get excited because I know it's not just some fad that's going around facebook with these barrel racers, there's, it's something that's going to help horses, yeah, and there's research and quality control behind it. So, if you can, can you tell us kind of what direction you guys are, are thinking?
Speaker 2:yes. So this is an interesting question because when I came on to the purina team, I I just like had to do a dance and kind of squeal, because I'm working with these, these team members, these other phds that are as passionate about equine nutrition as I am, and they're super busy bodies and go-getters and you know and, and so there's always something in the pipeline with that said. Uh, earlier this year we did have a tornado come through the gray summit research farm and did did a number on the equine unit. So, uh, right now we're, we're focused on getting that equine unit back to you know where it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1:And that's by St Louis, that's in St.
Speaker 2:Louis, yep, at our research farm there. And once that's kind of up and going again, I would say that you know I've talked quite a bit about our microbiome quotient and microbiome platform and so you know, I think that there might be some stuff on the horizon in in that realm, or I would, would fully expect that, uh, so yeah, yeah, that's about all I can say now.
Speaker 1:So if anybody's listening out there, I mean, veterinarians are great resources. A lot of us we're definitely not phd nutritionist, so my knowledge of nutrition, I'll be the first to admit, is nowhere close to yours. But I will give people David's number, our Purina guy. How can people get a hold of somebody like you about specific Purina products or forage in general, like what? Where can they go for this info?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's a few places and it's okay to start with you and it's okay for you to call david and in fact you know we want that to happen and and david has a direct line to me or one of my team members and so, uh, the the great thing about our sales force that's that's out there is that they are are very trained nutritional consultants and if they don't know the answer, they know that they can go up the pipeline. Um, we, we want to partner with veterinarians, we want to partner with industry professionals to to make sure that that our pulse is is correct and how we're, you, we're thinking about and approaching nutrition. So, um, it's okay to to talk to trainers and veterinarians and it's also okay to to get in touch with those, those sales folks. And and we want you to, you can also go to, you know, purina millscom and there's a customer service line there, and that customer service line, uh, has also a direct, has also a direct report to the PhD nutritionist there.
Speaker 2:My team is small but mighty and we work hard and we play hard and we want to answer those questions and it's not just about and I think what I love most about this company is.
Speaker 2:It's not just about pushing Purina feed, it's about doing the right thing for those animals, and I love to see success happen. And that's what part of being a science-backed company is about is we have that ability to go out and say, okay, this happened in a controlled environment and these are the differences that we saw, and then we can take it out to the people and have have those differences. So do, do I want you to contact me? Heck, yeah, I want you to contact me and so do all my, all my co-workers. So, however, you can get a hold a dealer, a veterinarian, uh, going straight through the sales salesperson in your area. If you go into any purina dealer, you can say, hey, I want a line to your salesperson, and that salesperson is going to be more than happy to talk to you and I'm going to be more than happy to talk to you if it, if it continues to go up the line.
Speaker 1:Awesome, yeah Well, thank you so much for coming to our clinic and teaching us this morning before we did this podcast. And thanks for taking your time to sit down and talk to us. We sure appreciate it and we'll put a link to sit down and talk to us. We sure appreciate it and we'll put a link to the kits they can order in there and we'll probably put a link to the body condition score and a link to that your website on there.
Speaker 1:So, if anybody needs to, you can go down in the show notes and click on those, and I've learned so much this morning. And thank you so much again. Dr Williams, you're welcome. I'm more than happy to be here, all right? Well, hopefully you'll come back. Thank you All right. Thanks for tuning in and until next time, take care of your horses and yourself.