10/14/2026
The word “fillers” have been thrown around a lot lately when it comes to horse feed. Here is a good piece to show an example of why certain ingredients are used when.
I was sent a post yesterday bashing Bluebonnet because rice hulls are apparently “trash ingredients” that provide no nutritional value. The argument? Humans don’t even eat them.
Well, humans don’t eat grass or hay either. 🧐
So, why would a reputable feed company intentionally use rice hulls in a formulation?
Because every ingredient has a purpose. And in this case, rice hulls serve several important functions.
Rice hulls provide an extremely low-starch, low-sugar fiber source that creates a base for incorporating vitamins, minerals, and digestive support ingredients into a pellet. They also provide a foundation for fat to be absorbed into, helping us maximize calorie content in a smaller feeding size.
When you’re trying to incorporate more than just the bare bone basics (think chromium, plasma, GUARANTEED levels of digestive support, and other functional ingredients) there’s only so much room in a formula. We have to balance all of those nutritional goals while maintaining a low feeding rate and keeping NSC levels low.
And here’s the kicker…there aren’t many fiber ingredients that can reliably deliver the consistently low NSC levels that rice hulls can.
We didn’t choose rice hulls because we ran out of better ideas. We chose them because they serve a specific purpose in the formulation.
Feed formulation is about much more than looking at an ingredient list and deciding whether each ingredient sounds appetizing to a human. Every ingredient should have a job to do, and the real question is whether it helps us achieve the nutritional goals of the finished product.
I’m not sharing this to bash anyone in return. It’s clear that this person may not fully understand equine nutrition, ration formulation, or why certain ingredients are used in a balanced feed. That’s okay, we all have more to learn, and to be honest, I myself don’t do formulations and rely on asking questions from people much smarter than me! So before labeling an ingredient “trash” or bad, it might be worth understanding why it’s there in the first place.
