Dr. Meriel Moore-Colyer, BHSII is a Consultant Equine Nutritionist and former lecturer in animal and equine science at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. She has been involved with horses all her life and until recently competed in Horse Trials and Dressage events in England and Wales. During her undergraduate days she represented British Universities competing in combined training events throughout Europe.
Dr Moore-Colyer's main interest is in equine nutrition, specialising in aspects of gut health and fibre degradation.
The recent work commissioned by Youngs Animal Feeds Ltd involved feeding four different diets to four of the University?Äôs school horses, in light work, for a twelve week period. The fibre based diets were offered as sole diets for three weeks at a time. The diets were then swapped round so that at the end of twelve weeks, each horse had three weeks on each diet.
All the feed intakes and faecal outputs were accurately measured and then the true digestible energy values for each diet were calculated.
The diets offered included three of the new exciting feeds formulated by Youngs: Super Molichop Shreddi, Super Molichop Bloom and Super Molichop Lite. The fourth diet was an 80:20 combination of Super Molichop Shreddi and a coarse mix.
All diets were found to be highly digestible with Super Molichop Shreddi being a particularly palatable and degradable feed; a safe and convenient way to include sugar beet shreds in the ration.
Dr. Meriel Moore-Colyer, BHSII, is a Consultant Equine Nutritionist and a senior lecturer at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester..