"Laminitis: 90% Metabolism"

Popeye always ate his spinach,....

http://www.forgemagazine.co.uk/site/ind ... pr152.html

The archived articles link, also has some good reads.

here's a google page of images

http://www.google.com/search?q=chenopod ... KYKHUOED5M

I have some of these varieties growing in my garden & around the house a bit where I haven't weeded, but it no longer grows in the paddocks.
I guess the horses ate it all out.
I will have to help it propagate & maybe grow a bed of various varieties in my garden to feed to them.
I'll experiment to see which they prefer.
One variety is grown around here by 'hippies & food gatherers' & called 'spinach'. I called it a weed!

Here's a guy who knows his weeds. I found the little video embedded in this page most informative.

http://naturalhomes.org/naturalliving/fat-hen.htm

He did mention that fat hen was high in oxalic acid which as we know is not good for horses.
I wonder if it is like the grasses that contain that where the acid is higher at certain times of the life cycle of the plant.

OK my mind is rampant with thoughts.... I never saw a horse that lived on seteria grass (which is grown in Australia to fatten cattle & which is the highest in oxalic acid) have laminitis or founder even though that grass is super high in sugar & starch.
Could it be the oxalic acid that contains the beneficial components that bind to the glucose and lipids & strip them from the horse's systems.

I know there is the BIG issue of calcium being stripped from the system as it binds to the oxalic acid to overcome.

The reason I sold my cattle property & moved to this place was that my cattle property was almost entirely seteria & I knew that was bad for horses. But they were all healthy none-the-less. They didn't get sick until we came here where there is NO seteria!

And here's another thing... Towards the end of last year when the drought was bad, I was grazing my horses across the road in a seteria filled paddock. I expected them to all get laminitis. They did put on weight but none got hot feet! They were only in that paddock during the day & only for a few weeks. But one would expect my horses in particular which are so sensitive now to insulin issues, to show laminitis signs within a few days of grazing such pasture.

This is indeed food for much more thought & testing.

VERY interesting. This sounds promising. Clissa, your theories are interesting as well. More research is needed.