|
APRIL 2003 ARABIAN HORSE ISSUE |
CONTENTS |
BOOK PREVIEW Rex A. Ewing Updated &
Expanded 2nd Edition PixyJack Press,
LLC, The first edition was about 30 pages smaller than this second edition. I reviewed it favorably in December of year 2000. This one costs about $4 more but I think you get better content for your money. You get updates, refinements and a better balanced presentation of all the information covered in the first book, plus the author elaborates in places where the first book really wasn't as "Refreshingly Simple" as it was cracked up to be. I mean the scientific parts still aren't easy, but they are easier to get at because the way he puts it to you is so solid. Quick Summaries and Charts abound and he is especially careful to organize his information around pivotal baselines, for example daily digestible energy in calories: nursing foals (12,700), weanlings (6 months, 15,300), maintenance horses (16,400), pregnant broodmares (19,600), yearlings (19,900), breeding stallions (minimum 20,500), lactating broodmares (28,200) and performance horses (32,000 calories per day). He points out with repeated care that the approach to your horse's energy, protine, vitamin, and mineral requirements does not vary lineally or arithmetically, but in a complex and individual fashion. And he emphasizes that whatever you change about your horse's feed, do it slowly, over weeks not days. Further, he reminds you that any horse stressed by bad teeth, parasites, poor weather, or disease will require sharp increases in nutritional needs. I like Chapter 11 Closing Considerations: The Basics, where he wraps up the book with the Eight Basics of a Successful Feeding Program. As I said in my first review of this book: "When I'm doing my chores and trying to feed the best I can, I'm always wondering if all the elements of my feeding program are as good as they can be. I'm continually concerned with colic and founder and the worry of being like a deer in the veterinarian's headlights. Ewing's little book is a useful addition to my library." I would add further that this edition is worthy of study as an excellent reference for you to use in conjunction with the good advice you can get from the experts you trust at your local feed store. And, if you want to increase your confidence in the way you feed, refer to his suggested reading list. Fasten the gate, Bob Howdy, Ph.D.
|
FEATURES |
|||
|
|||||
