Probiotics Are Important All The Time, Not Just When There’s A Problem
Posted | Tags: digestive health, Health, horse care, probiotics
How Probiotics Help The Gut
You’ve probably heard lots of buzz about whether to feed your horse probiotics as part of his regular diet. Before we talk about why we think it’s a good idea, let’s first take a look at how probiotics work.
The intestine naturally contains beneficial microorganisms that are essential to the digestion process. In horses, these microorganisms work to break down components of forage and feed as they pass through the digestive tract. This process releases nutrients that are then absorbed through the intestines into the bloodstream, where they become available to cells in the body to support basic maintenance, growth and activity.
Adding probiotics to your horse’s diet means adding more of these beneficial microorganisms to his gut. Probiotics work with the naturally occurring microorganism population to maximize nutrient absorption while reducing the colonization of harmful bacteria.
Stress Can Cause Digestive Upset
When this microbial population is out of whack due to stress or changes in feeding, horses can experience a wide variety of unpleasant symptoms. And because you can’t always predict when or what stressors will affect your horse, feeding probiotics continuously can help keep the good bacteria plentiful and the bad bacteria at bay.
Here are some reasons continuously feeding probiotics might be helpful:
• Give young digestive systems of foals a head start
• Aid recovery from illness or infection in horses receiving oral antibiotics
• Compensate for the effects of stress
• Reduce digestive upset in horses prone to chronic colic or diarrhea
• Help older horses absorb vital nutrients
For over 22 years, Triple Crown has been adding probiotics in the form of direct-fed microbials to all our feeds. In fact, we have 100 times more guaranteed probiotics than any other national brand. And now, EquiMix contains a patented strain of Bacillus subtilis, a unique, naturally occurring spore-forming microorganism that helps maintain a horse’s appetite while assisting in protecting against Clostridia and Salmonella. Triple Crown ensures each probiotic strain provides a minimum of 1 billion colony-forming units per day. To see how Triple Crown feed compares with these products, go to www.triplecrownfeed.com/compare.
Read about all the special ingredients found in the Triple Crown EquiMix.
References
Harlow, B.E., Lawrence, L.M., Kagan, I.A. Harris, P.A. and Flythe, M.D. Exogenous lactobacilli mitigate microbial changes associated with grain fermentation in vitro. J. Eq. Vet Sci. 2015, 35:400-417 (No. 38).
Barnhart, K, Reddish, J.M., and Cole, K. Supplementation with Lactobacillus acidophilus influences microbial diversity in the gastrointestinal tracts of healthy horses. J. Eq. Vet Sci. 2015, 35:400-47 (no. 68).
Patel, R., DuPont, H.L. New Approaches for Bacterotherapy: Prebiotics, New-Generation Probiotics, and Synbiotics. 2015. Clinical Infectious Diseases 60(S2):S108-121.
