Wheat bran, wheat pollard, and rice bran are common ingredients in pelleted feeds for horses, but are also used by horse owners as separate feedstuffs.
Bran is the seed coat or outer layer of a cereal grain. The most common bran available to horse owners is wheat bran, followed by rice bran. Wheat pollard is a finely milled blend of bran and wheat middlings. Both wheat bran and pollard are by-products of flour milling, and rice bran is removed in the process of milling white rice.
Bran (both wheat and rice) is typically high in phosphorus and low in calcium. Excessive phosphorus in the horse’s diet can inhibit calcium absorption. Feed manufacturers using bran as an ingredient will take this calcium/phosphorus skew into account when formulating feeds and some standalone bran products will have added calcium to balance out the ratio.
Horse owners sometimes add straight bran or pollard to commercial feeds as a source of fibre. Although less common now, bran mashes were fed to horses for many reasons including post exercise as a warming treat or as a laxative. Both these reasons for feeding bran have now been well documented as having little benefit. In fact, making a sudden dietary change by feeding a bran mash when the horse is not accustomed to it can potentially cause more harm than good.
Using bran as a laxative as been refuted by scientific trials, the results of which have shown no increase in faecal water content or associated softening of stool. Some horsemen believe that bran will increase the fibrous component of the diet. Although bran contains some fibre, feedstuffs such as hay and chaff contain significantly more fibre than wheat bran.
While wheat bran mashes have been a staple in some stables for many years, rice bran has become a popular feedstuff more recently. Rice bran is rich in fat, typically 20%, and as fat levels increase, the caloric density of the horse’s diet escalates. Therefore, rice bran may be the perfect feed for the horse that requires large amounts of dietary energy, such as lactating mares or heavily worked performance horses. The addition of rice bran to the diet can actually decrease the amount of grain being fed because of its high-energy content. Most rice bran products available are stabilised to increase shelf life, and balanced for calcium and phosphorus. Raw (unstabilised) rice bran should not be fed to horses due to palatability problems and digestive upset which may result from rancid fat or spoilage.
