Gosh, I had such an interesting day yesterday, opened my eyes to the nitty gritty of the ‘Horse Feed’ world! I was invited down to the Professional Riders Day as one of the Spillers Supported Riders. We had a tour of their incredible Mill, and had a run through of the lengths they go to, to reach their INCREDIBLY intense quality standards!
As well as the tour, we had a couple of really interesting talks with their incredibly professional team. I hadn’t realised how intense the BETA NOPS (Naturally Occuring Prohibited Substances) requirements are, and I bet most of us didn’t realise how easy it is to get human ‘drugs’ like caffene, nicotine, CHOCOLATE into the competition horses bloodstream for them to fail a dope test!?!
The last session was my favourite, as I’m so interested in the nitty gritties of nutrition, we had a great session with their Nutritionist, who is part of the team formulating their recipes. We had great conversations about some of the myths that are doing the rounds: for example Alfalfa and ulcers; laminitis and ‘sugars’ in feeds… it is great to hear the science behind all of this!
Thank you for inviting me to be involved, and I’m thrilled to be part of such a knowledgeable professional team, that has such a green and healthy ethos.
