Two great links!

[desperatehorsewife]

First, for those feeding BOSS, or interested in it, this is a good article on it's qualities: www.understanding-horse-nutrition.com/black-oil-sunflower-seeds.html

Plus, here's a must read for every horse owner!
www.horses-and-horse-information.com/articles/0995vitals.shtml

[DianneC]

Thanks! I enjoyed the one on BOSS especially. I bought some after a recent discussion on this board. I think I'll try a different brand next time, the bag from Fred Meyers had lots of stem and junk in it. BOSS is high in Omega 6 which increases immunity and inflammation. So I think it would be good for winter but bad for an old or injured horse that has trouble with inflammation. Flax is great for inflammation, we take a capsule of flax oil for our selves. The oil capsules are pretty cheap, I wonder if horses would eat them.
There is some information on the second link about feeding and horses needing lysine. They mention soy meal for increasing protein, especially lysine. The soy meal we get here is pretty hard, I wonder how well its digested. Anyone know? And didn't someone say that soy wasn't good for horses? Off to search the web some more.

[desperatehorsewife]

I must admit I didn't read too thoroughly through the second link. I'd been looking for heart rate info and found that.

I've begun riding with a stethoscope and stop watch while monitoring Sandy as he'd been lugging up hills and sweating more than he had been prior to his eye injury. I hadn't really thought about checking the heart or respiratory on my horses until reading this, though, and I must admit to becoming a little obsessed with heart rates of late, lol!

I bought my BOSS from the feed store. Price sure has gone up, but still pretty reasonable when you just toss them a cup. Surely easier to scoop it out than oil. Jet had a blue shine to her last year when eating them!