Working on the premise that most horse owners are only able to feed average quality hay and the fact that such hay can be variable in its digestibility, research into forage digestion conducted by Prof Manfred Coenen at the Leipzig University Veterinary School on behalf of Dodson & Horrell has led to the development of fibre+.
Everyone knows that fibre is an incredibly important part of the horse’s diet – it provides calories for energy for one and plays a key role in digestion for another – so it’s important to try to get the most out of all the dietary fibre sources in your horse’s diet – hard feed, grass, hay and/or haylage.
The package of highly digestible fibre ingredients that make up fibre+ are of real value to your horse as they work in a way that helps him get the most out of his entire diet – both his Dodson & Horrell hard feed and any additional forage you feed.
In general terms, good quality dietary fibre helps to promote a healthy hind gut environment. The healthier the hind gut, the more efficiently food is digested and therefore utilised by the horse. However fibre+ takes it one step further. As the beneficial bacteria flourish in the gut, not only is digestion of your scoop of Dodson & Horrell feed optimised, but fibre+ also works to get more out of your hay by stimulating the rate of its breakdown by these very bacteria.
So a bag of Dodson & Horrell not only provides your horse with a balanced diet, but it also improves your forage value. By increasing the rate of fibre digestion in the gut by 11%, a horse will reap more of the benefits of its forage before it passes out in its droppings undigested. This is a real coup for horse owners especially when it comes to compensating for poorer quality forage – be it because the weather has spoilt hay making or because owner’s are simply forced to pay less/bale because of financial constraints.
In developing fibre+, Dodson & Horrell has found a way to draw together 2 individual components of the horse’s diet and exploit the nutritional goodness of them both for less.
How fibre+ improves the digestibility of forage