UK Graduate Student Spotlight: Kelsey Smith

Smith’s research is focused on determining the dietary requirement for the amino acid threonine in growing horses.
Share
Favorite
Close

No account yet? Register

ADVERTISEMENT

UK Graduate Student Spotlight: Kelsey Smith
The objective of Smith’s research is to determine the dietary requirement for threonine in growing horses. | Photo: iStock
Name: Kelsey Smith
From: Washington
Degrees and institute where received: BS from Cornell University
MS candidate at the University of Kentucky

Kelsey Smith chose to pursue her master’s degree under Kristine Urschel, PhD, an associate professor in the department of animal and food sciences at the University of Kentucky (UK), to gain a solid foundation in basic nutrition. She chose equine nutrition because of the unique difficulty of balancing performance and health, as well as the prevalence of nutrition-related diseases.

The objective of Smith’s research is to determine the dietary requirement for threonine in growing horses. Threonine is an essential amino acid and an important component of many proteins within the body. In the study, she fed horses six diets that all had the same energy and crude protein contents but contained varying levels of threonine. She used the indicator amino acid oxidation method to estimate the rate of synthesis for all proteins within the body. Smith predicts that as horses consume increasing amounts of threonine, protein synthesis will also increase until reaching a plateau at the threonine requirement (meaning that any excess threonine would not make a difference in protein synthesis).

“If we can determine the requirement for individual amino acids, we can reduce crude protein intake and nitrogen excretion,” Smith said. “Excess nitrogen excretion can cause environmental damage, increase the ammonia concentration in barns and possibly cause negative physiological effects that may affect performance in horses

Create a free account with TheHorse.com to view this content.

TheHorse.com is home to thousands of free articles about horse health care. In order to access some of our exclusive free content, you must be signed into TheHorse.com.

Start your free account today!

Already have an account?
and continue reading.

Share

Written by:

Related Articles

Stay on top of the most recent Horse Health news with

FREE weekly newsletters from TheHorse.com

Sponsored Content

Weekly Poll

sponsored by:

Where do you primarily feed your horse?
277 votes · 277 answers

Readers’ Most Popular

Sign In

Don’t have an account? Register for a FREE account here.

Need to update your account?

You need to be logged in to fill out this form

Create a free account with TheHorse.com!