Nutrient content changes from steaming or soaking timothy-alfalfa hay: effects on feed preferences and acute glycemic response in Standardbred racehorses1
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Soaking hay and steaming hay are strategies that are used to reduce respirable dust particles for horses but may result in variable nutrient losses, including nonstructural carbohydrates (NSC) and minerals. Since these losses have not been quantified in Canadian hay yet, the first aim of this study was to identify nutrient losses from first-cut timothy-alfalfa hay grown in southern Ontario, Canada, after soaking for 30 min or steaming for 60 min. It is uncertain whether horses prefer hay when it is dry, soaked, or steamed. To address this, 13 Standardbred racehorses were offered 2 of these hays side by side for 30 min on 6 consecutive occasions until all possible combinations had been offered. Quantity of hay eaten was determined and horses were video recorded during feedings to assess time spent eating and investigating hay. Additionally, consumption of feeds with differing NSC levels has been observed to influence glycemic response in horses; however, this has not been measured in horses consuming steamed hay before and the results from soaked hay studies have been inconclusive. As such, the final aim of this study was to examine acute glycemic response in horses after being fed dry, soaked, and steamed hays. Blood glucose was measured every 30 min from 9 Standardbred racehorses for 6 h following a meal of 0.5% of their body weight of treatment hay on a dry matter basis (DMB). Soaked, but not steamed, hay had lower concentrations of soluble protein, NSC, and potassium in contrast to the same dry hay (P < 0.05). Peak glucose, average blood glucose, total area under the curve, and time to peak did not differ among treatments (P > 0.05). We conclude that acute glycemic response of racehorses was not influenced by soaking or steaming hay. Horses also consumed less soaked hay (DMB) than dry or steamed hay (P < 0.05) and spent less time eating soaked hay than dry or steamed hay (P < 0.05).
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".