Need help finding an apropriate diet for a horse with chronic renal failure and granular disease

Question
So I recently found out my 12 year old horse has chronic renal failure and granular disease.. I've heard that beet pulp is good but then bad for him.. He is a very picky eater and won't eat much.. So I need help finding some grains/ supplements that would be good for him..  Thank you for any of your help.

Answer
Hello Kimberly,

Thank you for your question. This can be a very difficult situation for any horse and owner to manage.  When a horse`s kidneys are failing, you want to avoid stressing their workload, which means that you want a diet that doesn't send a lot of waste to the kidneys.  Excess dietary protein has to be filtered through the kidneys so you are going to want to avoid feeding more protein than your horse needs.  Balance a ration that closely matches requirements.  Try and feed protein-rich forages as the horse`s digestive system manages forage based and grain based proteins differently.  By sourcing protein from forages, you can cut down (or eliminate) protein from grains which may be more troublesome for your horse.  Excessive dietary mineral also needs to be filtered through the kidneys so much like with protein, you are going to want to avoid dietary excesses.  Once again, balancing a diet will help.  Legume based forages contain a lot of mineral, especially calcium and phosphorous, so try to source quality grass forages.  Beet pulp can have a significant calcium content and may not be a good fit for your horse, but a balanced ration would be able to sort that out.  Second cut grass hay may be your best bet for protein and mineral issues.  You may want to avoid feeding complete pre-mixed feeds and go more to feeding nutrient specific ingredients.  So if your horse needs more energy in the diet than grass hay can provide, feed a fat supplement for energy instead of a sweet feed.  If you balance a ration and find that you are in fact short of protein, feed soybean meal as a protein source instead of a complete feed...this will bring the more valuable amino acids to the diet and avoid surplus of useless amino acids.  The same can be said for mineral; if your ration is short in mineral feed a measured amount of a mineral/vitamin supplement.

When you balance your ration, you may find that your horse doesn't need a lot of supplementation and so his pickiness won't be an issue.  Not all horses need to eat grain and in your case you may not want him to.  If you need help balancing a ration let me know, I will use my 'Ration-X' ration balancing software to create one.  I would need to know your horse's weight, workload and have an accurate forage analysis of your hay.

Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with any diets that will help a horse with granular disease.  Not to say there isn't one, its just not something I've worked with.

Thanks, Corlena