carrots | Horse Racing Free Tips

Tasty Treat: Are Sweet Potatoes Better Than Carrots?

Question: A friend suggested feeding my horses raw sweet potatoes as treats because they have less sugar than carrots. I hadn't given much thought to this. Is she onto something here?

Kentucky Equine Research responds: Both sweet potatoes and carrots can be offered to your horses as treats. Carrots contain about 88 percent water, while sweet potatoes have about 77 percent, making sweet potatoes slightly more nutrient-dense. Both are relatively poor sources of protein because of the high water content (carrot, 0.9 percent; sweet potato, 1.6 percent; as fed).

The primary nutrient difference lies in the carbohydrate content of the two root vegetables. Although the fiber content (carrot, 2.8 percent; sweet potato, 3 percent; as fed) and the simple sugar content (carrot, 4.7 percent; sweet potato, 4.2 percent; as fed) are similar, sweet potatoes are much higher than carrots in starch (12.9 percent and 2.1 percent; as fed, respectively). Looking more closely at the type of starch in the sweet potatoes, 80 percent is rapidly digestible (enzymatic digestion), while only 11 percent is resistant starch only fermentable by microbes). Sweet potatoes provide over twice the calories that carrots do (86 and 41 calories, respectively, per 100 g), mostly because of the difference in starch content. In this context, “as fed” refers to raw vegetables and “dry matter” to dehydrated vegetables.

While dehydrated sweet potatoes have less sugar than dehydrated carrots (18 percent and 40 percent, respectively), they have similar levels when fed raw (4.2 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively), as noted previously.

Both are rich sources of beta-carotene, which is the precursor to vitamin A.

[Story Continues Below]

Despite their names, sweet potatoes and Irish potatoes are not closely related from a botanical standpoint. Sweet potatoes and yams are vines in the morning glory family, whereas Irish potatoes are in the nightshade family. Sweet potatoes do not contain the nutritional anti-factors that make raw Irish potatoes unsafe for horses to consume.

Sweet potatoes can be a tasty treat for horses either raw or cooked. Due to their relatively high starch and sugar content, they should be fed in only small amounts. Feeding large amounts carries some risk, especially when given to starch-sensitive horses. In addition to beta-carotene, sweet potatoes are a good source of vitamin C and potassium.

Is There Such A Thing As Too Many Carrots?

Many horse owners and caretakers offer their horses treats as a reward or as a sign of affection, and most horses willingly eat the more-traditional treats of apples and carrots. But is there such a thing as too many treats? Can feeding too many harm a horse's health?

Some horse owners feed up to 10 gallons (or more) of carrots to their horses with no ill effects, reporting that the carrots add weight and are a good water substitute. Kentucky Equine Research notes if the horse doesn't have metabolic issues, there is most likely no harm in feeding that quantity of carrots, but there is concern as to if the horse is obtaining all the dry matter and nutrients needed for a healthy diet.

Carrots are primarily water (85 to 90 percent), so they do assist in keeping a horse hydrated. Assuming one five-gallon bucket of carrots is a meal, the horse would be consuming just 1.5 pounds of dry matter, of which 25 percent is water-soluble carbohydrates. As the horse takes a while to eat through the bucket of carrots, the nearly six ounces of sugar and three ounces of soluble fiber from the carrots slowly enters his bloodstream.

The high amount of water could make the horse's manure loose and provides him with a lot of calories, so he may pack on the pounds. Additionally, the horse's coat may develop an orange tint as some of the beta-carotenes are absorbed as carotenes by body tissues. Carrots do not contain significant amounts of other nutrients.

Difficult To Deceive: Horses Know Human Intention

Researchers have found that horses understand much more about human intention than once thought. Drs. Miléna Trösch, Emma Bertin, Ludovic Calandreau, Raymond Nowak and Léa Lansade created a study that used three scenarios to test how well horses understand human intention, reports The Horse.

The team used 21 privately owned horses and introduced them to an unfamiliar person who had carrot slices. The person was behind a plastic window. In one scenario, the human had no intention of giving the carrot slices to the horse, moving them out of reach every time the horse reached for them. In the second study, the person tried to give the horse the carrots, but had trouble getting past the plastic barrier. In the third scenario, the person wanted to give the horse the carrots, but kept dropping them.

The study team discovered that the horse reacted differently based on the humans' intentions. This indicates that they understand human goals, even if humans failed to reach those goals. When the person tried to give the horse the carrots, the horses seemed to try to communicate with them and touched the plastic window separating them. When the human didn't have any intention of giving the horse the carrots, the horses essentially gave up, and spent more time looking away from the human and not facing them.

Until this study, it had not been scientifically proven that horses are capable of understanding human intention.