Purina Impact Professional Senior

Product

Purina Impact Professional Senior horse feed is a pelleted, complete feed formulated for older horses. The feed bag label states that the benefits of this feed include: a formulation with high quality forage to replace hay or pasture that a horse would normally be eating; corn and corn by-product free, for controlled starch and sugar; protein, vitamin and mineral fortification to meet needs of older horses; added fat and digestible fiber to increase calorie content; and formulation created by PhD Equine Nutritionists. Text on the back of the bag touts Purina's, "Feedguard Nutrition System." This is presented as a production systems that ensures quality and consistency in the feed produced through rigorous ingredient inspections and testing.

The Impact Professional line of horse feeds includes three products; Mare & Foal, Performance and Senior (1).

Impact Performance Mare & Foal (2):

Pelleted, supplemental feed with a controlled starch and sugar formulation including added high quality protein, fat, vitamins and minerals to meet the nutritional needs of breeding mares and growing foals/

Impact Professional Performance (2):

Pelleted, supplemental feed with a controlled starch and sugar formulation including ingredients to support health stomach with proper pH, added high-quality protein, fat, digestible fiber, vitamins and minerals to meet the nutritional needs of high-performance horses.

Impact Professional Senior (2):

Pelleted, complete feed with a controlled starch and sugar formulation including added high-quality forage, high-quality protein, vitamin and mineral fortification to support the nutritional needs of senior horses.

Manufacturer

Impact Performance Senior is manufactured by Purina Animal Nutrition LLC (www.purinamills.com) which is owned by Land O'Lakes (www.landolakes.com). Purina Animal Nutrition LLC produces feeds for multiple species including horses, cows, chickens, ducks, pigs, goats, rabbits, game birds, deer, exotics and bees. Purina Animal Nutrition is not to be confused with Purina Pet Care. Purina Pet Care is a different company, owned by Nestle, that manufactures feed and related products for dogs and cats.

For horses, Purina Animal Nutrition has ten product lines; Equine, Omolene, Strategy, Ultium, Race Ready, Impact Professional, Miniature Horse & Pony, Enrich Plus, WellSolve and Impact. The company also produces horse treats, ration balancer, gastric support supplement, fat supplement and amino acid supplement (1).

The corporate headquarters and research facility are located in Gray Summit, Missouri. Per the company website, the research facility was built in 1926. It is a 1,200 acre working farm and the company boasts over 24,000 research studies across the United States with over 125 registered patents (https://www.purinamills.com/about-us?navid=footer%3EPurina%3Eabout-us). Land O'Lakes website shows an annual revenue of $14 billion with its Animal Nutrition business contributing $3.8 billion ( https://www.landolakesinc.com/Company#fndtn-Feed).

Cost and Feed Rate

I purchased a 50 pound bag of Purina's Impact Professional Senior from a local feed store for $17.49. That equates to a cost of $0.35 per pound. For a 1,000 pound adult horse in maintenance, using this product as a complete feed, the recommended feed rate would be 14 pounds a day. At $0.35 per pound, the daily feed cost would be $4.90. Impact Professional Senior can also be used as a feed supplement for pasture or good quality hay

Comparison to Similar Products from Other Manufacturers

Nutrena and Triple Crown produce pelleted, complete, senior horse feeds as well. Below are select feed label items for all three products, as well as a locally available Orchard grass hay/alfalfa mix.

Cost

The cheapest of the four is the grass hay/alfalfa mix at $0.14 a pound. But that is buying a 1,300 pound bale. Among the commercial feed products, the Purina Impact Professional Senior is the cheapest per pound. Using each products feed rate recommendation for a 1,000 pound adult horse in maintenance the daily feed cost are:

Purina Impact Professional Senior = $4.90 (14 lbs per day)

Nutrena Proforce Senior = $5.69 (12.375 lbs per day)

Triple Crown Senior = $6.00 (12 lbs per day)

The Purina product is still the cheapest of the three commercial feeds. It also has the fewest ingredients of the three with 26, compared to 53 and 64 for the Nutrena Proforce Senior and Triple Crown Senior, respectively.

Guaranteed Analysis

The guaranteed analysis is of limited use for evaluating feeds. The figures presented are on an, "as fed," basis, but don't provide the % dry matter metric that would allow a conversion of "as fed" to "dry matter" basis. On a dry matter basis, feeds can be better compared. It would also be helpful to have the percent ash, as well as percent dry matter, as we could then calculate the total carbohydrate content. From that we can estimate the non-structural carbohydrate (starches & sugars) content by subtracting out the neutral detergent fiber (cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin).

For me, the more meaningful and useful section of the label is the list of ingredients.

Ingredients

The Purina Impact Professional Senior product label lists 26 ingredients, compared to 53 and 64 for the Nutrena and Triple Crown products, respectively. The individual ingredients should be in order, by weight, in formulation from greatest weight to least. What stands out for me are the number of ingredients that are common to all three commercial horse feeds, the choice of oilseed meal, inclusion of live microbials and microbial-derived enzymes, and the inclusion of organic mineral sources.

Common ingredients

With the first ten ingredients, seven are common to all three commercial feeds. Those seven are wheat middlings, alfalfa meal, soybean hulls, cane molasses, soybean oil, calcium carbonate and salt. Wheat middlings are the portions of the wheat grain the remains after starch has been removed to produce flour. Wheat middlings and alfalfa meal (alfalfa hay that has been ground up) contribute fiber, fat, protein, vitamins and minerals, and some starch and sugar. Soybean hulls are a digestible fiber source, and soybean oil provides a non-starch/sugar energy source. Molasses, in addition to being a flavoring, is a binding agent that holds ingredients together. Calcium carbonate (limestone) is used as a carrier for minerals and helps prevent ingredients from lumping together in the pelleting process. Salt provides a source of sodium and chloride which are important minerals for a variety of biological functions. All of these ingredients are commonly used ingredients in my database of 228 feeds. Since all three products are intended for the same life stage of horse, senior, it isn't surprising that there are common ingredients amongst them. What is also interesting are the different ingredients used.

Oil seed meals

Oil seed meals are often used as protein sources, with soybean meal considered the gold standard of plant proteins. The Nutrena and Triple Crown products use soybean meal, whereas the Purina Impact Professional Senior uses sunflower seed meal. In an earlier blog, I presented a method of gauging the quality of protein content based on amino acid profile of feed compared to the that of horse muscle tissue. My assumption is that the closer a feed ingredient's amino acid profile matched that of horse muscle (an ideal profile), the better the quality of the protein as it provided the amino acids and relative proportions that would be needed to build and repair protein portion of muscle tissue. Using amino acid profile data from the NRC Nutrient Requirement of Horses (6th edition) I calculated the amino acid variance from horse muscle tissue for a number of ingredients. Combining the profile variance with % crude protein gives an indication of how much protein is in the ingredient:

Casein, a milk protein product, has a small variance in its amino acid profile and a high protein content. It is a good protein source. In contrast, sunflower meal and peanut meal are poor protein sources because they have an amino acid profile that varies considerably from the horse muscle ideal profile, and the ingredient has a low crude protein content. Soybean, canola and alfalfa meals are decent sources; they have lower amino acid profile variances, but also lower crude protein content. Interestingly, the Nutrena and Triple Crown products also contain amino acid supplements (lysine, methionine, and threonine. Sunflower meal does, however, have one nutritional advantage; no antinutritive factors.

Many plants contain chemicals that are antinutritive, which means that the chemicals inhibit the digestion of desired nutrients or are simply toxic. Sunflower seeds don't contain any known antinutritive substances (3). Soybean meal, flaxseed meal, canola meal and cottonseed meals, among others, do contain antinutritive substances which require additional processing to inactivate. Soybean meal contains phytates that bind phosphorus (4). Those phytates will also bind zinc (4), which prevents it being absorbed in the digestive tract. Cottonseeds contain a pigment, gossypol, that will bind to lysine and prevent its digestion (5). Flaxseed meal contains linatine which is a vitamin B6 antagonist that inhibits the digestion of B6 (6).

Microbials and Microbial-derived enzymes

The Purina Impact Professional Senior does not contain live microbial (e.g. yeast, bacteria) whereas the Nutrena and Triple Crown products do. Purina's website (https://www.purinamills.com/horse-feed/education/detail/six-common-horse-feed-additives# ), in the education section, states that there isn't enough peer-reviewed scientific studies to substantiate a beneficial effect of live microbials. I have seen articles elsewhere that echo that same opinion. The Nutrena and Triple Crown products, however, tout these ingredients as facilitating digestion.

Organic mineral complexes versus inorganic sources

Organic mineral complexes area minerals that are chemically bound to amino acid(s) or polysaccharide (carbohydrate). Inorganic minerals sources would be mineral bound to inorganic molecules like sulfur (sulfates, sulfites) or oxygen (oxides). There is a belief that by mineral digestibility is improved by binding the mineral with an organic substance. The thinking is that the organics compound shields the mineral from digestion-impairing reactions with other minerals and by providing an alternative absorption path (that of the binding organic compound) to the normal inorganic path. Again, Purina has stated that there isn't sufficient peer-reviewed research to substantiate an improvement in digestibility from organic mineral complexes versus inorganic. Other manufacturers claim there is a digestibility improvement, including Nutrena.

Summary

There are lots of choices out there of commercial horse feeds. Purina alone offers ten horse product lines, with multiple products within each. The right product for your horse will depend on a number of factors such as price, availability of product, life stage of your horse, medical condition and ingredient preferences. Perhaps, most important is whether or not the product works for your horse. If my senior horse has dental issues and can't properly chew forages, I would be looking at a complete senior feed. Price is going to be a major consideration. I also am not convinced that direct fed microbials and chelated minerals are effective. As such, I would be leaning toward the Purina Impact Performance Senior. I would prefer soybean meal as a plant protein source and beet pulp as a forage besides alfalfa meal.

References:

(1) Purina Animal Nutrition website (www.purinamills.com), retrieved November 29, 2018

(2) Product pdf. Purina Animal Nutrition website (www.purinamills.com), retrieved November 29, 2018

(3) Sunflower meal. www.Feedipedia.org. retreived 2018

(4) Soybean meal.www.Feedipedia.org. retreived 2018

(5) Cottonseed meal. www.Feedipedia.org. retreived 2018

(6) Flaxseed meal. www.Feedipedia.org. retreived 2018