Horses and Flaxseed: Why is it a Good Idea to Supplement your Horse with Flaxseed?
Echo, tack lead from the Great Falls store had this to say: "Grass is the only natural source of omega 3s that a horse will get when out grazing or out at pasture. And our grass here isn't the highest quality and can lack the necessary omega 3s a horse needs to stay in top condition. Flaxseed is one of the safest supplements you can add to a horse's diet and has a very high concentration of omega 3s. Add it for weight gain or to improve your horse's coat and skin condition."
Full equine nutritional article from Nutrena available here.
Ahhhhh- flaxseed, my old friend. Really quick: linseed and flaxseed are the same thing, so if you use linseed oil for anything, you're already on the flax bandwagon. Welcome.
So, flaxseed is a good addition to your horse's diet? Established. How much? In what form? If you boil it does it really produce cyanide? (Yes, it does.)
The best way to insure you have the most bioavailable form of the flaxseed is to grind about 8 oz. fresh each day. Why grind it fresh? Once the seed is ground, it begins to degrade immediately when exposed to oxygen and sunlight. That means if you grind a fifty pound bag and then leave it out to be fed over the course of a couple months, you will essentially be adding nothing but fiber after 24 hours of the seed being ground. Plus there is an increased risk of hydrogen cyanide forming after being ground. So- don't do that.
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If I don't grind it, will the horse still process any of the seed? Yes. Studies on equine health have shown that while full seeds will appear in the horse's stool, a good proportion of the nutrients are broken down in the digestion process. Not as much as ground flaxseed, but still a great way to add omega 3s to your feed regiment.
Cyanide and Flaxseed
Can cyanide kill a horse? Of course. Can ground flaxseed in appropriate amounts kill a horse? No.
In fact, according to equinenews.com:
Even though there can be cyanide production when soaking or grinding flaxseeds, the total amounts are not very high... a horse would have to eat more than a couple pounds of raw ground flax that had been standing around awhile (or soaked in cold water) to ingest the amount of cyanide to approach having toxic effects.
Still scared? Don't be.
"A study published in the Canadian Journal of Veterinary Research in 2002 looking at the ability of flaxseed to reduce the inflammation associated with culicoides hypersensitivity (sweet itch or Queensland itch) reported that they fed 1 lb of flaxseed per 1000 lb of bodyweight to horses (or 0.5 kg per 500 kg bodyweight) over a period of 42 days with no negative side effects being observed. With this dose rate being much higher than the normal 1 to 2 cups fed per day it can be concluded that flaxseed is safe to feed to horses without cooking it first." --Dr. Nerida Richards, 2011
So buy, grind it, feed it and enjoy how your horse responds to the additional omega 3s- better coat, and maybe you'll even be able to reduce the amount of inflammation associated with sweet itch- another purported benefit of adding flaxseed to your horse's diet.
We've got an entire portion of our online store dedicated to equine health. Check it out here.
Word Fact Extra #2: Flaxseed comes to our language from Old English fleax meaning "cloth made with flax or linen," and before that Proto-Germanic flakhsan [that means it's over 2500 years old]- civilization, farmers and seeds... there's a long history there.