Oat math

I'm a little stressed out right now, as I work on an application for a program from Oxford University, so I'm calming myself down with a little math.  :)

I know, and have blathered, that oats are too high in phosphorus when compared to its amount of calcium.  If Gene were to stay on them permanently (as in, if we could afford it... sigh...), I would feel the need to supplement calcium.  Maybe I will next winter.

One of the articles that I read when researching feed suggested offering the horse a free-choice calcium supplement, which simply will not work in my situation.  I'm still trying to figure out how to offer free-choice loose salt.  Instead, if I were to seriously try to balance this, I would need to supplement myself.  Of course, this would be an inexact science as Gene insists on pouring a little out for his homies every time he eats, but it's a good exercise anyway.

I looked up the nutrition information on whole oats.

234 grams of whole oats contains:

18.72 mg calcium
177.84 mg of phosphorus

The idea ratio Ca:P in a horse would be:

1:1 to 2.5:1

As for calcium toxicity, studies have shown that the Ca:P ratio is far more important than an overload of Ca.  There is a lot made of the Ca:Mg ratio, but according to this site, there isn't much to worry.  In fact, Mg is often supplemented in horses without thought about calcium (I think I still have a bag of Quiessence from an overly paranoid vet many years ago).

So, oats seem to contain a ratio of 1:9.5 Ca:P.  A little bit skewed.

Let's bump this up to more horse-like numbers - measured in lbs (so American) vs measured in grams.

234 g = 0.51588169351 lb.

1 lb of whole oats contains:

36.29 mg calcium
344.73 mg phosphorus

To achieve the 1:1 ratio, 308.44 mg of calcium would need to be supplemented.  Since some oats are wasted, keeping the ratio on the low end would hopefully not skew it to the high end.

Gene receives 1.75 lbs at each feeding.  He would need to be supplemented 539.77 mg of calcium per feeding, as he would be receiving:

63.51 mg calcium
603.28 mg phosphorus

Per day, at a ration of 3.5 lbs, he would need to be supplemented 1079.54 mg of calcium daily, ~1.08 g.

There, I feel much better.  The healing power of math.