Research, technology and innovation
Quality, research and technology.
When we first created Porrini feed, we wanted to provide the best to meet horses’ nutritional requirements whatever their workload and for every stage of their lives. We work with horses, riders, grooms, yard owners, vets and anyone who specialises in equine health and wellbeing. This means listening very carefully to the specific requirements of each and every one of them, investing in research, selecting only the best quality raw materials, and continually innovating our products.
Only by doing all of this can we guarantee you high-performance products that help you to get the best from horses and protect their health and wellbeing every single day.
Porrini’s technological process
We select only the best cereals to make our feed. They are sourced from controlled farms and processed by steam flaking. This method of cooking and flaking cereals and legumes improves their organoleptic, chemical and physical characteristics, thereby making them easier to digest and enhancing the horse’s performance.
Transforming cereals into flakes opens the doors to many nutritional and health benefits, including:
- Reducing kernels into thin layers or flakes significantly increases the volume of the cereal, which increases the time required for ingestion and means that there is a larger surface area in contact with the gastric juices and this aids digestion.
- Starch is rapidly transformed into less complex sugars and dextrins and gelatinisation breaks up the crystalline structure which consequently improves digestibility and increases absorption (to nearly double that of ground dry grain).
- The feed becomes more appetising, which means major benefits to high-level performance.
- Reduced moisture levels in the cereal means it stores better for longer.
Steam flaking enables us to increase the amount of energy provided by the ingredients and is the only method that enables horses to eat certain types of cereals and legumes, such as soya, sorghum, etc., which have the characteristics to be an excellent feed but could not be eaten without stream flaking.
Steaming the cereals and legumes also ensures optimum sterilisation, and destroys the bacteria and mycotoxins that could build up if the cereals were stored for an extended period.
The digestibility of starch
The action of amylase in significantly less in horses compared with other animals (2 g of starch/kg of BW per meal) and it is essential for the animal’s health that no more than this is consumed. Any starch that has not been digested by the small intestine could reach the caecum and lead to abnormal fermentation which in turn could cause colic.
Transforming starch into dextrins by cooking it with steam flaking makes it more easily digestible which would reduce the chance of colic.
These are just a few examples:
- Maize from 34% in milled cereals to 87% in flaked cereals
- Barley from 61% in milled cereals to 81% in flaked cereals
Pelleted products
We have chosen to include pellets in some of our feed products. Pelleting allows us to achieve multiple benefits, including:
- Stabilised products
- Longer storage times
- Removal of dust from starchy products
- Optimum preservation of the ingredients’ organoleptic properties.
Pelleting enables us to add vitamins and minerals to our feed which would otherwise be difficult to feed to a horse, and it also encourages horses to chew better.
With the right balance of flaked cereals and pellets, Porrini feed delivers the optimum mix of product quality, digestibility, palatability, and performance.
The benefits of added fats
Horses cannot eat while they work, so the energy produced by their feed needs to be stored until needed. Horses store energy outside the muscles as fats and liver glycogen, or in the muscles as glycogen.
The sources of energy used by horses that must be in their diet are:
- Non-structural carbohydrates (NSC), namely sugars and starches
- Structural carbohydrates (SC), lignin cellulose and hemicellulose
- Fats that contain more calories per unit (2.5 times) than carbohydrates and proteins and thereby provide high energy density
- Proteins that can be converted into energy
To ensure that horses have enough available energy, they need to be fed a diet that provides a perfectly balanced intake of carbohydrates (which if fed in excess may cause changes to the microbial balance in the intestines leading to colic or laminitis) and fats which, in addition to supplying the animal with energy, have positive effects on the health of their manes and coats, and can also enhance performance in the short and long term.
We use micronisation to add fats with the very finest quality high oleic oils during the production of our feed products as this distributes the fats evenly throughout the entire ration of feed.
Choose the best for your horse
Every horse has different requirements that depend on a variety of factors, such as age, workload, and lifestyle. We aim to ensure that every horse gets the best and help those who look after horses to get the best from them while protecting their health and wellbeing.
Find the best Porrini feed for your requirements.
Porrini. The choice of champions.
Excellence, performance, innovation, passion, daring, technique, and research.
These are our values and the values shared by the champions who we help to always be their best.
Ask our experts for their advice. Contact us and you’ll see that everyone can get the best from their horse with the right advice.
Your dealer can give you the best advice, help you to make the right choice, and become your go-to partner for all your Porrini needs.
