An oat is an oat, right?  Well not quite.   There are a number of ways you can buy oats for your horses.  The first that comes to mind for most is the conventional whole oat.  The conventional oat has been serving the horse world for many years, and doing a great job of  it! Unfortunately for the whole oat, it has been rolled, crimped, steamed de-hulled and had gallons of oil added to it.  The problems with rolling, crimping, steaming and de-hulling are simple - anytime a whole grain is compromised in these ways it experiences vitamin and mineral loss.  The only way to use these methods and maintain the wholesome goodness of the oat would be to process immediately prior to feeding.  Adding oil is often passed of as a way to increase fat content, but in reality pouring oil onto poorly cleaned oats will simply "settle the dust"; stick it to the oat kernels for your horse to eat when you get it home.       De-hulling is a process in which the oats are run through a machine that extracts the groat from the hull.  This concept is wonderful - separate the groat from the indigestible hull - makes the oats easier to chew and to improves digestibility.  However we, again, have the issue of broken grains and the process adds quite a bit of cost to your bag of oats.  This brings us to the hulless oat

With improved breeding, the development of hulless oats varieties are providing the horse industry with a higher protein feed that is much safer than the premix feeds at a competitive value.

 Hulless oats lose their hull at harvest and are approximately 1/3 higher in test weight and protein than conventional oat varieties.  Hulless oats are not the same as hulled conventional oat varieties and should not be considered as the same product, as protein and test weight are significantly different.

 Caution should be taken to not over-feed hulless oats as the benefit in feed value to the horse is much higher than conventional oats.  Less product is needed to provide a comparable nutritional value.

  Easier to Digest - Higher Protein!

They'll be begging for more!