Generally speaking, beer is not something prescribed by medical professionals. While delicious and refreshing, the health benefits of beer—aside from its ability to help you relax—would appear to be minimal. But this Alabama horse has to drink a beer a day for its health.
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AL.com reports that ol’ Mac—a 20-something-year-old horse who lives at King’s Home in Chelsea, Alabama, a non-profit that provides help to women and children who have been abused—has something called Cushings disease, which inhibits his ability to naturally sweat. To help with this ailment, his vet told his keepers to give him a beer each day.
“Beer has ingredients that can open the pores and help them sweat,” King’s Home Development Director John Tidwell told AL.com.
Tidwell reached out to Jason Malone, the co-founder of a local brewery called Good People, to ask about beer donations. The offer was one Malone couldn’t refuse.
But what kind of beer does Mac prefer? “Apparently, he’s a big fan of IPAs,” Malone told AL.com. “He’ll be our biggest, literally and figuratively, IPA fan.”
While many horses love the taste of beer, possibly because it consists of ingredients such as barley and hops, which resemble the grains in horse feeds. The alcoholic content is not a concern, as horses do not get drunk easily, if at all. Their livers process alcohol extremely rapidly because they naturally produce large amounts of alcohol dehydrogenase. This is an enzyme that breaks down the products of fermentation, which occurs in the horse’s large intestine during normal digestion. It quickly converts all forms of alcohol to carbohydrates to be used for energy.
So despite this Alabama horse has to drink a beer a day for his health, you should not do for your horse, or pets. This is not an encouragement for people to provide horses or any other animal with alcoholic beverages. It is dangerous for pets.
