5 Reasons Working Barns Put Their Hard Keepers on Camelina Oil

It adds calories without adding grain

When a hard keeper is already eating all the hay he’ll take, the usual next step is more grain, and more grain mostly adds starch. Sheila L. was at that point with her 24-year-old gelding. She “didn’t want to add more grain and he only eats so much of his alfalfa and orchard grass.”

Fat is the most concentrated calorie a horse can eat. The weight-gain dose for a 900 lb (410 kg) horse is 120 mL a day, which is about 1,000 calories. That’s close to what three-quarters of a pound of oats would give him, with no starch or sugar, and it goes on top of the feed he’s already eating. With no starch, sugar or potassium in it, it’s also a safe fat source for horses with PSSM1 (polysaccharide storage myopathy) or HYPP (hyperkalemic periodic paralysis).

It’s a better fat than corn oil

Corn oil is the cheapest calorie you can pour on a feed, and we won’t argue with the price. But it’s almost all omega-6, and a horse on hay and grain already gets plenty of omega-6 and not much omega-3, since hay loses most of its omega-3 as it dries.

Camelina has more omega-3 than omega-6, and the vitamin E from the seed keeps it fresh in the feed room for a year after opening.

Horses eat it, even the picky ones

A weight program only works if the horse cleans up his feed. Kathy W. started seven horses on camelina oil at once, and two of them rarely eat anything new. “By the 2nd feeding they were cleaning their buckets as readily as the others.”

If one of yours is suspicious of anything new, start with one pump on his usual feed for the first few days and build from there. For the fussiest ones, our equine specialist mixes about half the oil into a pail of soaked beet pulp and hay cubes that hangs in the stall overnight, and the buckets are empty by morning.

It’s easy to add to the program you already feed

There’s no new feed to switch him to and no powder to mix in. The oil goes on top of what he already eats, once a day, straight from the pump on the jug or pail, and an open container keeps for a year without refrigeration. It’s compliant with Equestrian Canada and United States Equestrian Federation (USEF) rules, so horses that show can stay on it all season.

Start at the label dose for his weight and work up to twice that over about two weeks, then drop back to the label dose once he’s where you want him. The feeding directions next to the order sizes below have the amounts. If your horse is insulin resistant or on a metabolic program, check the plan with your vet first.

It has worked on horses that had already tried everything

Many of the horses in our weight reviews had already been through more hay, senior feed, rice bran or a corn-oil phase. Macy, Natalie M.’s 30-year-old Thoroughbred, was one of them.