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Assistant Professor/Horse Extension Specialist

Ph.D. - Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 2001

Phone: 301-405-8337
Email: amyburk@umd.edu

Research Interests:

The mission of the Graduate Equine Nutrition Program at the University of Maryland is to conduct innovative and industry driven need based research that produces valuable information that will benefit the health, welfare, and performance of the horse.

We have recently begun new and exciting research aimed at establishing the safest refeeding diet and feeding schedule for chronically malnurouished horses. Unfortunately, starvation of the horse has become an increasing problem in the United States resulting in thousands of malnourished horses each year. These horses suffer from electrolyte imbalances, fluid abnormalities, altered glucose metabolism, vitamin deficiencies and severe weight loss. Many of these horses are Thoroughbreds whose value has declined as a result of poor racing performance or poor breeding potential. For instance, one of the starved horses participating in our prelminary study was a stakes winning Thoroughbred gelding named Tri Tower’s who earned $119,000 in his career, but came to us hundreds of pounds underweight. As a result of many horses like Tri Tower’s, a large movement has started within the horse industry aimed at “rescuing” starved horses in the hopes that they may be rehabilitated and sold or adopted out to new owners.

One of the main problems facing individuals that rescue starved horses is that there is very little information available that describes how to safely refeed these horses. To date, there have only been a few studies on rescued starved horses conducted by the University of California, Davis that provided some insight as to the type of hay that should be fed. Another problem that exists is that it is not widely known that starved horses can die if forage and feed are reintroduced too quickly, a condition known as refeeding syndrome. Refeeding syndrome occurs when traditional high carbohydrate diets are used to refeed starved horses too quickly and glusose is rapidly taken up by the cells in exchange for phosphorous. The large movement of phosphorous out of the cell can cause physiological problems including cardiac, hematologic, hepatic, neuromuscular and respiratory dysfunction and ultimately death in the horse. High sugar and starch concentrate based diets have also been associated with metabolic and physiological disorders including digestive upsets like colic and gastric ulcers, muscle stiffness in exercising horses, and developmental orthapedic disease in young horses. Most people are not aware of how easy it is to negatively impact a chronically malnourished horse just by giving it too much of what they think is a good thing.

Feeding concentrates higher in fat and fiber along with adequate forage is not only a way to more safely increase the calorie content of the diet, but high fat diets have been shown to promote more even growth in young horses, decrease metabolic disorders like tying up, decrease the incidence of digestive upsets, and improve exercise capacity in performance horses. The main goal of our studies on rescued starved horses is to develop the optimal refeeding regimine that safely allows the horse to gain weight and improve their overall health status. The results from our studies will benefit veterinarians and horse rescuers by educating them about the safest diets and feeding methods to choose for refeeding the starved horse. Our results will also benefit individuals studying the processes of how horses gain weight and may also help to better understand why some horses called “hard keepers” do not gain weight. Lastly, the results of our studies can be used to improve the health and well-being of the many starved horses rescued each year.