Why We Feed Seeds, Not Seed Oils

Vegetable oils have become increasingly common in horse feeds and supplements. Soybean, corn, canola, sunflower, flax, rice bran, and more recently camelina oil are used to add calories, improve coat condition, or provide essential fatty acids.

At Wild Fed, we see it differently.

We prefer to feed fats in the whole foods that naturally contain them rather than as extracted oils.

Here's why.

1. Horses Weren't Designed Around High-Fat Meals

Horses evolved eating a forage-based diet that is naturally relatively low in fat. Their digestive anatomy reflects this.

Unlike humans and many other mammals, horses do not have a gallbladder. Instead of storing and concentrating bile and releasing a larger amount in response to a fatty meal, horses continuously secrete bile from the liver into the small intestine.

This system is well suited to an animal designed to graze and browse throughout the day, consuming small, frequent meals.

Horses can digest supplemental fat, and research has shown that they can adapt to higher-fat diets. But the ability to digest something doesn't necessarily mean that feeding several ounces of isolated oil at one time is the most physiologically appropriate way to provide fat.

In nature, horses obtain fats in relatively small quantities as part of grasses, seeds, and other plants—not from bottles of extracted vegetable oil.

2. Whole Seeds and Seed Oils Are Not the Same Food

When oil is extracted from a seed, one component of the food—the fat—is concentrated while much of the original food matrix is left behind.

Depending on the seed, the whole food can provide:

• Essential fatty acids

• Protein and amino acids

• Fiber

• Minerals

• Naturally occurring antioxidants

• Tocopherols, including forms of vitamin E

• Polyphenols and other phytochemicals

An extracted oil may come from a seed, but nutritionally it isn't the same thing as eating the seed.

That's one reason Wild Fed uses whole chia and sunflower seeds rather than simply pouring vegetable oil over our feed.

3. Not All Seed Oils Are the Same

It's important not to put every seed oil into the same category.

There are 2 types of Fatty Acids.  

Alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), an omega-3 fatty acid which comes from fresh grasses 

And

Omega-6 fatty acid linoleic acid, which is in Corn, soybean, conventional sunflower and safflower oils.

Now, Omega 6 isn’t  inherently bad, it is the fatty-acid balance that matters.

The issue is adding substantial quantities of omega-6-rich vegetable oil can shift, in a bad way,  the fatty-acid composition of the overall diet.  

That's why seeing "vegetable oil" on a feed label raises additional questions:

What type of oil is it?
How much is being fed?
What is its omega-6-to-omega-3 profile?
And what does the rest of the horse's diet look like?

4. What About Camelina and Flax Oil?

Camelina and flax deserve to be distinguished from oils such as corn and soybean because both are naturally rich in the omega-3 fatty acid ALA. This is one reason camelina oil has become so popular in equine nutrition.

From a fatty-acid perspective, that's a legitimate advantage. But there are still reasons to look more closely.

Camelina (Camelina sativa) belongs to the mustard family (Brassicaceae). Plants in this family commonly produce pungent or bitter defensive compounds called glucosinolates, which may discourage herbivores from consuming large quantities of them. While horses may encounter and consume Brassica-family plants, they are not generally considered a major component of the natural equine grazing diet.

Most glucosinolates remain in the seed or meal rather than transferring into the extracted oil, so they are much more relevant when feeding the whole camelina plant, seed, or meal than the oil itself.

But it raises an interesting question:

Should we routinely extract and concentrate one desirable component from a plant that horses would not ordinarily consume as a significant part of their natural diet simply because that component—in this case omega-3 fat—looks beneficial on a nutrition label?

There's another consideration as well. The more polyunsaturated a fat is, the more susceptible it is to oxidation. Camelina's high ALA content is its greatest nutritional selling point, but it also makes the oil chemically vulnerable to oxidative damage.

Camelina naturally contains antioxidants that help protect these delicate fats, but once the oil has been extracted, stability still depends on processing, packaging, temperature, light, oxygen exposure, storage conditions, and how long the container remains open.

So while camelina has a considerably more favorable fatty-acid profile than many conventional vegetable oils, we still come back to the larger question:

Do horses need extracted oils at all, or are there better ways to provide essential fatty acids through foods that more closely resemble what horses evolved to eat?

5. Oxidation and Free Radicals Matter

This is one of our biggest concerns with extracted polyunsaturated oils.

Polyunsaturated fatty acids are susceptible to lipid peroxidation, a chemical process involving free-radical chain reactions.

Oxidation can be accelerated by:

• Oxygen

• Heat

• Light

• Time

• Improper storage

During lipid peroxidation, free radicals react with fatty acids and create lipid peroxides. These compounds can continue reacting and break down into secondary oxidation products, including reactive aldehydes.

Eventually we recognize advanced oxidation as rancidity, but oxidation can begin before an oil develops an obvious unpleasant smell or taste.

This doesn't mean omega-3 fats are unhealthy—quite the opposite.

It means the form in which delicate polyunsaturated fats are provided matters.

6. Nature Already Packaged the Oil

A seed is a remarkably effective natural storage system.

Its fats are enclosed within a physical structure and accompanied by proteins, fiber, minerals, antioxidants, and other compounds produced by the plant.

Instead of extracting one desirable nutrient and concentrating it, we can simply feed the food that contained it in the first place.

That's the approach we prefer at Wild Fed.

6. Why Wild Fed Uses Whole Chia and Sunflower Seeds

Rather than adding extracted vegetable oils, Wild Fed provides dietary fats through whole chia and whole sunflower seeds.

Each brings something different to the diet.

Chia: A Whole-Food Source of Omega-3s

Chia seed is naturally rich in alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), an omega-3 fatty acid. But unlike chia oil, the whole seed also provides:

• Soluble and insoluble fiber

• Mucilage

• Protein

• Minerals

• Naturally occurring antioxidants and polyphenols

That means the horse receives omega-3-rich fats within the original food matrix rather than as an isolated oil.

Sunflower Seeds: Fat + Natural Vitamin E

Sunflower seeds provide essential fatty acids along with protein, fiber, minerals, phytochemicals, and naturally occurring vitamin E compounds called tocopherols.

Vitamin E is especially relevant when feeding polyunsaturated fats because it functions as a fat-soluble antioxidant, helping protect lipids in biological membranes from free-radical oxidation.

This is another example of the intelligence of whole foods: the plant packages delicate fats alongside compounds that help protect them.

Sunflower seeds are naturally higher in omega-6 fatty acids, while chia is exceptionally rich in omega-3 ALA. We therefore don't look at either ingredient in isolation. We use them together as part of a forage-based formula.

So, Do Horses Need Added Oil?

There are circumstances where concentrated calories may be useful, particularly for horses with very high energy requirements or those that are difficult to keep weight on.

And horses have demonstrated an ability to digest supplemental dietary fat.

But that doesn't mean extracted vegetable oil needs to be a routine component of every horse's diet.

We believe it's worth asking a different question:

Can we provide those nutrients through whole foods instead?

Whenever practical, our answer is yes.

That's why Wild Fed doesn't rely on inexpensive vegetable oils to increase the calorie or fat content of our feed.

We use whole sunflower seeds and whole chia seeds, allowing the horse to receive their fats alongside the proteins, fiber, minerals, antioxidants, and other naturally occurring compounds found in the original food.

The Wild Fed Philosophy

Modern nutrition has become very good at taking foods apart—extracting oils, isolating proteins, purifying individual nutrients, and then adding them back into formulated foods.

Sometimes that's useful.

But we also believe there's tremendous value in asking what happens when we simply leave the food whole.

Horses evolved eating grasses, leaves, herbs, flowers, roots, bark, and seeds—not isolated oils poured over their meals.

When nature already packaged a nutrient beautifully, why take it apart? Visit the website