Unlock Your Horse’s Health with Feed Testing: a discussion with Cassy Streeter and Kimberley Detmers

Jon Paul Driver 0:05
Welcome to the Feed Central Hay Matters podcast your go to source for all things hay related in Australia. I’m your host Jon Paul Driver. In today’s episode we’re joined by Cassy Streeter and Kimberly Detmers. Kimberly is the Quality Services Operations Manager at Feed Central. Cassy Streeter is the NIR Services Manager for Equi-Analytical, Dairy One, both of you welcome to the podcast. So let’s start with we mentioned Equi-Analytical we’re talking horses today. Cassie, do you want to take us through a little bit history around Dairy One Equi-Analytical.

Cassy Streeter 0:41
Equi-Analytical was originally developed as a response to a need in the equine industry for an equine testing lab and dairy one already had a forage testing lab available. And we kept having equine customers come to us and say, well, I need to test my hay or I need to test my pasture grain. And we would supply them with reports and it has the information they need plus a lot of other information that has absolutely nothing to do with horses, because they don’t have a rumen. So we’re providing fiber digestibility numbers, which is all well and good, but they’re paying for test results that they don’t need that they won’t be able to use. So we really need to address the equine market. So we decided to launch equi analytical in June of 2004, which means that we’ve been around for 20 years. And as I said in that webinar earlier this week that that first month of June, we had a grand total of 16 samples in June 2004 that has translated over 20 years to averaging 10,000 samples a year. And we range anywhere from 600 samples per month record analytical to almost 1400 samples per month during our busiest time of the year, which as you imagine is summer going into fall as horse owners are buying hay and making decisions about you know how they’re going to feed their horses throughout the winter. So Equi-Analytical we’ve laser we’ve been in business 20 years and starting in 2013. Along Came this partner feed Central. They approached us about wanting to become an affiliate. So everyone has our NIR affiliate network where we license our NIR calibrations to feed and forge labs all over the world. And just for those that are not in the know, and IR stands for Near Infrared, it’s a rapid non destructive technology that you can use to analsze feed forage samples. So everyone has very robust calibrations for from a lot of samples from the dairy industry, but as well as the equine industry, and we’re able to license those calibrations to labs all over the world. And feed central joined as a partner in 2013. And I had the fortune to be able to actually meet him really last year, that’s almost almost exactly a year ago, to the day on nearly here for Tim came on site. Visit us here at Dairy one, and they were talking about okay, well what are some areas where we can do more testing or what other people could use our testing services. And I mean, I’ve been with everyone for 13 years. As the name suggests, we’re primarily in the dairy industry. But I’m a horse girl. So I’m always pushing Equi-Analytical whenever I can. And so I was happy to say Hey, Tim, hey, Kimberly, what do you think about launching Equi-Analytical launching the brand in Australia, I know the Australian market is really strong on the equine side, I thought there was a lot of opportunity there, and probably some gaps where people are in need of testing, similar to what we see here in the US. And so I pitched it to them, and they fell for it. I mean, they went for it. And now we have Equi-Analytical in Australia. And I’m really excited that that, you know, we just launched this week, it’s really exciting to see something that you know, started just 20 years ago, and now we’re entering the next the next phase. Awesome.

Jon Paul Driver 4:07
What’s really cool is you know, we’re obviously sending samples across to Cassy in equity analytical almost every second day. And, you know, we we understand so that’s for the wet chemistry side of services and you know, the the turnaround time for getting samples to the US if you get your samples stuck in customs or or sit with a with a bad postal carrier, you know, you set like you might get your results as soon as a week back, which is awesome. But you know, we’ve had, you know, could be two three weeks with wet chemistry. So having equi analytical, more local, I think will be really beneficial for the horse market in Australia.

So we have the new relationship between dairy one equity analytical and feed Central. The test Can be done in Australia now? Yes, yes, it’s been let’s go to the next step. Why are customers testing there? Hey,

Speaker 1 5:08
Well, so my little online background is I actually have. I did, I did my graduate work at Cornell University studying the genetics of Equine metabolic syndrome and Cushing’s disease or PPA ideas, another name that people are familiar with. There are a lot of horses out there that really are kind of suffering needlessly, that have health challenges that could partially be addressed or actually mostly addressed, just by taking a closer look at their nutrition. And one of the biggest things that you can do is to test your forage because most of the horses diet is composed of forage, whether it be hay pasture, a mix of the two. And it may even not even be fed as hay and might be fed as a pellet, but it’s still a forage pellet, it’s still forage based diet. And if you don’t know what’s in that hay, it’s kind of hard to make sure that your horses eating what they should and keeping them healthy. And I became very familiar with the, like I said, from my graduate work, and then when I came here, started working with dairy one that I got more involved in equine analytical, I could say probably easily, at least 80, probably even 90% of the phone calls we get are from people that have horses with these metabolic challenges there, whether it’s metabolic syndrome, or Cushing’s or insulin resistance. It’s it’s affecting a lot of horses here in the States. And people are looking to test to be able to feed their horse appropriately. Some of them are making purchasing decisions, you know, do I buy this hay? Or do I buy this, Hey, I don’t know which lot to buy, what works best for my horse? Well, you would send a sample and have both test it and see what would work for your horse or horses. Or on the flip side, kind of like me, when I had a horse, I didn’t really have a choice in the hay that I got. The hay that I had was, well, the hay that I had. But I still needed to know what was in that hay to know how to supplement my horse appropriately. So again, even if you don’t have a choice in purchasing your hay, if you know what you’re feeding, then you can make sure that you’re supplementing or making adjustments to the diet as as needed.

Jon Paul Driver 7:12
Let’s talk about the sampling process. Because it’s a little tricky. If you’re not in the hay industry, I have a hay probe, I sell, hey, I sell quite a bit of hay. Not everybody has a hay probe. So how to horse owners navigate through that.

Yeah, I can accept that. Thanks, Kathy, we’ve actually had a few different rules also, feed central actually offer a high core or high probe for sale. And we’ve we’ve even had some rural stores approaches recently. And they’ve purchased because they’re, they’re doing field testing through their stores. So you might have a local rural store who has a or a local pony club that might have one I’ve had, I’m not sure on the equine side of things. But I know on the on the dairy side of things. We’ve even had clients using like an auger bit and drilling into bales and getting a nice core sample out that way. And what that core sample does is it’s making sure that we’re getting a really representative, accurate representation of what what that forage is you’re not, you’re getting an accurate leaf to stem ratio, you’re not pulling out particularly for something like loosen hay or something that the leaf detaches really easily. You’re not leaving all of that leaf behind and maybe testing the the west side of that, that hate product. And

Cassy Streeter 8:43
Then even going on from hay, it might not just be hay, you might be testing pasture. That’s a different that’s that’s completely different look, you don’t get to walk up to all your bales and take all your samples and be done. Oh boy, you put your shoes on and you’re gonna go walking across your pasture with a pair of scissors and a bucket and and pretend your horse and pretend you’re a horse. So there’s some observation involved. You know, you know what, hey, you put in front of your horse, but when they’re on a pasture, you have to do a little observation. So if you want to test pasture, if you’re keeping your horses out on pasture, you want to only sample what the horse is eating and you want to sample it at grazing high. Okay, so we’re not grabbing samples and pulling them up by the roots. Though I will tell the horse people out there I know. There are some horses that pull it up by their foods. They don’t tend to eat it, they just throw it on the on the ground stained fully and just to aggravate you but you want to cut it grazing height and you only want to cut the species that your horse is eating. So if you have all this lush grass, it looks really nice but your horses aren’t touching it. Well, if they’re not consuming it, then it’s not part of their diet. So you get to leave that there and there are full instructions on the Equi-Analytical website that are available, where you can see the full instructions for taking a sample. The other side of it. Kimberly has heard me say this one How many times I think at this point, and depending on who the audience is, it’s either a leader or a quart size bag, whatever unit of measure makes the most sense to you. That’s the size bag, we don’t need a gigantic bag of forage. If you are testing pasture, I will caution don’t forget that part of what happens in the lab. And Kimberly did a great job covering this in the webinar. When we’re testing, especially pasture samples, we try the samples in the lab. And then we put them through a mill and actually grind them into a powder before we do the analysis. So when you’re thinking of pasture, how much moisture is in pasture 70, and that could sit at 80?

Jon Paul Driver 10:40
A lot.

Speaker 1 10:43
Yeah, anyone who’s ever had a grass stain on a shirt knows that there’s easy transfer from green material, because it has so much moisture in it. So take that liter size bag, and all that nice grain, it’s nice and full. Okay, well now take all the moisture out of it, you’re not left with a lot of material for testing on the other side. So we don’t want a huge, huge sample. But if you are taking if you’re if you’re packing your samples into a liter size bag, make sure it’s it’s a nice full full bag, especially on pastures. Just want to make sure that we have enough material there to test.

Jon Paul Driver 11:16
Yeah, exactly. We do get some clients that, take that and think that a full bag is is shoving a little bit of sample in it putting it down and going, Oh, yes, it feels bad, but it’s like flat as an a4 piece of paper, you know? So we can work with that. If it’s a dry sample, if it’s a green sample, if it’s Hey, sample, if it’s a pasture sample, we do need a bit more than that to to be able to accurately test it have enough to test with

All right, so we have our leader or quart size bag. And it’s it’s full of our sample. And we followed all the instructions on the Equi-Analytical website and did it perfectly. Now what do we do? Kimberly, this is this is where you come in, right?

Speaker 1 12:01
Because I will vouch for Kimberley on the side, make sure you complete your paperwork, it doesn’t matter if you’re sending if you’re here in the States, or if you need to send directly to the United States for whatever reason. Or if you’re sending to feed Central, complete your paperwork, nothing is worse than getting this beautiful hay sample. And there’s no paperwork to go with it. And you don’t know who you belong to. Nothing is worse than

Jon Paul Driver 12:28
At least a phone number, we need at least a phone number. And getting those pastor samples to us. Or if you’re testing haylage or Thailand, we’ve actually just recently had some walk ins that they’re feeding haylage to their horses get their samples to us as quickly as possible this high moisture environment, these plant cells are still respiring. And they’re the longer they’re in transit, the more those feed test results actually going to be affected. By the time we get that so won’t be a true representation of what that pasture is sitting in the paddock. You’ve lost sugars, it’s respiring, it’s losing that. The other thing I will note is if it’s haylage exclude the oxygen, we have cryovac bags being used more and more. But if you don’t have that ziplock bag and rolling it up taping it sharp does a pretty good job as well. And sending them cool. So be it past a sample pass the samples actually traveled really well in a in a paper bag, I find that they don’t sort of end up coming into a soggy that respiration can result in even excess moisture, we find if it’s traveling through the Personal System for for a lengthy period of time. So Express post for these these sorts of samples are a really good idea. And keeping them cool slowing down that respiration process. So when they when they hit the lab, the test results is still going to be quite close to what it is on farm or in your in your backyard. Awesome.

Now that you’ve sent the sample in, what’s the expectation here? How long a turnaround times are we talking about? And then what do you do with the results.

Say if you’re sending in a dry sample, you’re gonna see a bit of a a quicker turnaround time, but that’s a sample doesn’t need to be dried down in the oven which a few hours with a process that we have no control over. We can’t cook the sample we don’t want to risk cooking the sample so it’s a gentle dry down. We just got to leave it be that dry down does add tend to add an extra day to that turnaround time. Normally you’ll see a one to two day turnaround time for the NIR services. It’s quite quick as Kathy mentioned earlier, it’s a non invasive testing process and it can be processed through quite rapidly through the lab. What we’ll do actually when fed central receives in a sample will actually send you an email and let you know when to expect those results what test we’ve we’ve applied to the sample may Make sure that we’ve interpreted your submission paperwork correctly. And that that’ll go through to you as soon as we log that sample into our system.

Cassy Streeter 15:08
And then where do we take them from there?

Jon Paul Driver 15:12
Where does that go, it goes into our, our grinding room, we’re grinding that sample down into a powder, and it’s quite small. It’s a one millimeter particle size. And that gives us a really good reaction rate for wet chemistry testing, or NIR testing, and better repeatability of result because you’ve got such a consistent particle size. So we’re grinding that sample down. And what we’re actually end up with is, is a jar of powder. And that jar of powder, we’re only using for the feed central lab, about 60 mil of product. So when you’re considering on farm you’re sampling from from a stack of hay, or you know, could be truckload of hay, it could be a whole paddocks worth. Same with pasture, it’s quite a large area. And this is where that on farm, accurate sampling comes in that by the time it gets to the lab and into the testing side of things, we’re only using 60 bill, and I know Equi-Analytical, they have even smaller sample cups than us, they’ll have what is that probably about a 10 mil sample cup is

Speaker 1 16:22
Just about just about it is not much material at all. And I I love when I show people what it really looks like what our cups look like. So you know that huge lot of hay that you have, you know, we’re gonna reduce it to and analyse it. And the look on people’s faces when they see what actually happens in the lab is that oh no, this is standard for any feeder forage lab this, this is how we do it. This is how we do it, which goes back to that accuracy. That sample we were talking about and the hay Pro. That’s why we really stress it. My quote that I came up with I came up with this years ago, because it just it gets the point across is we can accurately analyse the sample that you submit to the lab, whether or not the sample you submitted to the lab is an accurate representation of the forage that you have. That is on the customer side and on the sampling side. So we’ll analyse the sample and we’ll give you the results. And hopefully those results are representative of what you’re feeding what you’re getting to your animals.

Jon Paul Driver 17:20
And Feed Central have hay inspectors going on farm because we have a whole visual and feed testing inspection service. But one of our inspectors Steve, I’ve had him go on farm and sample his taken core samples of a particular line of hay in a shed. And he sampled that a few times, like over over a period of time because it was quite a large batch. And the deliveries were sort of spread out. But just monitoring this Hey product, and because of his sampling technique, every time we’ve been tested that like those results are virtually identical, like and it just really underscores the importance of that on farm collection.

Cassy Streeter 18:05
And then where we take the results, right? Yeah,

Jon Paul Driver 18:07
Where are you going? Where do you go with the results?

Speaker 1 18:10
So what do you do the results? Those are the two big questions that we get, you know, customers call and they say, Okay, I’ve been told I need to take a hay sample, right? I need to test my hay. So how do I how do I test my hay? How do I how do I take a sample? The next big question is, what do I do with the results? Now, the thing that always surprises people is I say, what to do with the results, how to interpret the results don’t ask us. And there’s a reason this is a little bit of a legacy from dairy one. So normally, the dairy one forage lab, as I said originally was developed to work with the dairy industry. And the dairy industry has the vast supply of nutritionists out there that are taking the results, interpreting them and implementing practices on the farm. So we never wanted to get into the business of giving nutritional advice. We are the analysis people, we are just the lab, we will take that sample, we will analyse it, we can help you troubleshoot the sample. But in terms of recommendations for your worse, we leave that to the professionals, whether that be so you could take your once you get your results back, you could take it to your veterinarian, if you’re working with a veterinarian. You could if you’re working with a nutritionist, you can take it to a nutritionist, sometimes it’s a nutritionist working with a feed company, and they will be able to take your hay analysis we we work with all sorts of companies here in the States. There’s, you know, they’re happy to accept the hate test results. In fact, they’re very excited when people come to them and say, Well, I’ve tested my Hey, what should I do? That’s that’s exactly what the companies want to hear because they say great, here’s here’s what you can do to supplement your horse’s diet. Another thing you can do that we talked about in the in the webinar is there’s nutrition software available out there for the equine industry, you know very well known programs available in the dairy side. but we we often work with feet x l, they have nutrition software that you can work with. And they have different levels of subscription that you can get to be able to work with the software. And there’s a file format called XML that you’re able to import directly into that software. And you can start working with it and figuring out how to supplement your horses diet, looking at the hay test results, seeing where the diet might be deficient for your horse. It is a neat little program, I was very bummed that I just had my one horse and then I and I got to work with it just a little bit. But for those, especially if you I mean, it’s good for owner if you just have one horse, but especially if you’re working if you have multiple horses at different stages in their life, there are so many tools and cool tricks and feed XL that you can load your test results right in and you can get right to work and start saying what you need to do to balance your horses diet.

Jon Paul Driver 20:55
Yeah, right. So as you’re alluding to there, Cassie, like, we can test your sample accurately. But there are so many individual circumstances that we don’t have the time to interpret all of that. You know, what, what breed is your animal? What, what age, what work? Are they in?

Life cycle and reproductive versus?

Yeah, exactly. And that’s where the vets the nutritionists, ration balancing software. They all start with those questions, what environment do you live in. And then we can go into diet formulation. And you know, what, what does your animal actually need.

Speaker 1 21:40
We also have a feed composition library available, you can access to the Equi-Analytical website. And if you’re not familiar with test results, it’s a good place to start. We have we can take it down to states, but we also just have very large groups. So you can look at the typical profile for a grass hay, legume hay, you can look at a few different things and see how yours compares to the average. And it’s a good place to start just to start getting familiar with the numbers if you’ve never encountered them before. That can be pretty intimidating. I understand that if I were a horse owner, and especially if I have a situation where my horse is sick, and I’m trying to figure things out, and they put all these like throw these numbers at you. The feed composition Library is a good way to get your feet wet and see how your forage compares. It’s again, it’s not nutritional recommendations for your animal. It just shows you how to start looking at how the forage that you had tested how it compares to the average out there to other grass, Hays. It’s a good place, it’s a good place to get started.

Jon Paul Driver 22:42
Yeah, and I know I certainly will jump on there if that if if we have a sample that comes in the lab, and I’m like, Oh, I haven’t seen this in a bit. I need to jog my memory what what does what are we expecting out of these results or because you’ve you’ve tested some quite far out there things in the dairy one lab forage lab there. And there’s there’s a lot of information in that forage conference. Forage competition library.

We talked about a couple of different resources today, obviously the first place we want to send folks for feed testing information is the Feed Central website.

This is me asking.

Kimberley Detmers 23:20
Yeah, yeah, that definitely available there. Perfect.

Jon Paul Driver 23:23
You can check out Equi-Analytical, yes, I may have been searching that feed composition library in the background here. And it’s, I can already tell it’s fantastic. Decidedly for the feed testing nerds in the room, which I think is kind of all of us. Kimberly, anything else you want me to direct them to,

We do offer the sample submission kits as well. So that that gives everybody everything they need to take a sample, it gives guidelines on different product types, how to how to sample the different product types, as we said, you’re sampling a bit differently if you’re taking a sample to if you’re taking a pasture sample, or even possibly sending it to grain sample. So we’ve got all of that information in a sample kit as well for clients and we provide reply papers bags as well. So the post is an extra cost that you have when you when you do a field test with fit Central.

Awesome. Well, Cassy, Kimberly, thank you very much for your thoughts today. And it sounds like there’s some great new options for equine enthusiast in Australia to take care of their feed testing needs.

Thanks so much for having us. Jon Paul,

Cassy Streeter 24:33
Thank you very much.

Jon Paul Driver 24:34
Again, we’ve been joined by CassY Streeter Dairy One Equi-Analytical and Kimberly Detmers with Feed Central. This podcast is proudly presented by Feed Central stay tuned in for coming episodes.