Horses, majestic creatures of strength and grace, rely heavily on their diet for overall health and performance. Caring for a horse involves more than just grooming and exercise; their diet is crucial to their well-being. In caring for horses, a fundamental aspect is understanding their dietary needs and how best to meet them. One of the cornerstones of equine nutrition is ensuring a balanced diet that provides essential nutrients while considering individual needs and circumstances.
As an equestrian enthusiast passionate about equine care, ensuring healthy feeding for your horse is crucial for their well-being, longevity, and vitality. This article will discuss how to help your horses eat healthily and what you should avoid when feeding them. We’re also giving you hints about the rules you need to remember and the essential nutrients needed when feeding your horse.
Understanding a Horse’s Digestive System
Horses have relatively small stomachs compared to their size and a large hindgut for fermenting fibrous material. The University of Maine emphasizes that a thorough understanding of horses’ digestive systems is essential when feeding them. This includes awareness of their physical constraints and critical aspects of digestion and nutrient absorption. Their diet should primarily consist of high-fiber forage like hay or pasture grass, which keeps their digestive system functioning properly and prevents issues like colic and gastric ulcers.
Healthy Foods for Your Horse – What They Can Eat
1. Pasture Grass and Tender Plants
Pasture is the natural food for horses as it contains the nutrition your horse needs to be healthy. It also provides silica, essential for your horse’s dental health. But problems can also occur if you don’t do it correctly.
If your horse has been eating hay or browsing on sparse meadow all winter, it could suffer from colic or laminitis if you suddenly turn it into a lush pasture. On the other hand, overexposure to high carbohydrate grass can also cause metabolic syndrome like obesity, as well as diabetes and other cardiovascular diseases.
So it’s best to gradually transition from hay to pasture by giving it half an hour in the field and adding ten more minutes every day until it gets more comfortable. Nevertheless, high-quality pasture grass provides the best nutrition.
2. Good Quality Hay
When pasture grass is not available, horse hay is a good alternative. But it can be challenging to find good quality hay. It should be weed-free and free from molds and dust because it can make your horse sick. You need to test it before feeding it to the horse to ensure that you can compensate for the lack of vitamins and minerals with some supplements.
Like rich pasture grass, access to rich hay must be moderated, especially if your horse is an easy keeper, because it can cause health problems.
3. Some Grains
You may also feed your horse with oats, grains, and corn in moderation. Processed grains we have now are not a natural food for horses, and they don’t contain the silica that pasture grass does. It can cause ulcers and dental problems, and overeating grains can result in colic or fat. Wheat, which is also a grain type, is not suitable for your horse, so refrain from feeding it to your horse. It could save you from many health issues.
4. Concentrate mixes
In addition to grass and hay, concentrate mixes are also a good alternative since they can provide a quick source of energy and help compensate for the lack of nutrition. A concentrate is a mixture of several ingredients, such as grains, flaxseed, bran, beet pulp, vitamins and minerals, molasses(for energy and flavor), and more. There are plenty of commercial mixes out there that can meet your horse’s diet specifications.
5. Salt and minerals
Salt and minerals are supplements that are either mixed with the concentrates or offered separately. Providing either a salt block or loose salt in a pasture or stall helps horses to satisfy their cravings, and it is more consumed during summer than winter.
6. Treats for your horse
Like humans, horses also enjoy treats once in a while. You can share it with your horse to thank you for its hard work or as a reward after training. Although nothing’s wrong with it, it is best to consider this guideline when selecting the type of treats, the feeding frequency, and the amount:
- Choose healthy vegetables and fruits close to their regular diet so their digestive won’t be upset.
- Feed only a small amount because feeding too much can cause an imbalance in their diet, like decreasing protein content, rising starch levels, and diluting vitamins and minerals. It can also result in a severe digestive upset caused by colic or laminitis. So always remember the acronym A.I.M., which means “Always In Moderation.” For example, two carrots are sufficient for an average size horse.
- Treats are only special if available occasionally, so feed sparingly.
Here are some of the healthy treats for your horse:
- Healthy fruits and vegetables such as apple slices, carrots, hay cubes, or banana
- Sugar cubes can also be a treat, but they are healthy for the horse.
- Commercially made horse treats are also beneficial because they provide more travel nutrients than fresh fruit and vegetables.
7. Water
Horses don’t eat water, but it’s essential for their diet. Whether your horse eats pasture or hay, fresh and clean water is necessary for both. Insufficient water can result in chronic dehydration, which causes weight loss and poor health conditions.
You also have to ensure that your water and watering equipment is clean because if it is unhygienic, like in troughs and buckets, bacteria and viruses can live in it and make your horse sick. If your horse is working hard or sweating, expect that they will drink more.
Toxic Foods for Your Horse – What They Shouldn’t Eat
1. Stone fruits – unpitted stone fruits can cause your horse to choke.
2. Chocolate or other sugary foods –your horse might enjoy it, but high-sugar foods are not necessary, and it could lead to health problems like obesity. It can also cause a positive result in a drug test.
3. Vegetables that belong in the cabbage family – like turnips, cabbages, kale, cauliflower, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts can cause a feeling of discomfort in your horse and will make them very gassy if fed in large amounts.
4. Potatoes and tomatoes are members of the Nightshade family, and it is best to avoid these.
5. Bread, donuts, and cakes – these can cause a blockage in their digestive tract.
6. Meat can be harmful to your horse in the long term, and it is not necessary from a nutritional perspective since horses are herbivores.
7. Garden waste – feeding your horse with lawn clipping is risky because it can contain poisonous plants and toxins from garden sprays. It can also cause choking and drastic changes in the pH of the hindgut.
8. Moldy or dusty hay can damage your horse’s lungs.
9. Brans are unsuitable for horses and should be avoided unless they are needed for a specifically prescribed diet.
Five Rules to Adhere When Feeding Your Horse:
1. Meet the Basic Needs
For you to be successful in providing the basic needs of your horse, you need to have a feeding plan and that includes the following nutrients:
- Carbohydrates are most likely the most significant part of your horse’s diet and are divided into two groups. The first is structural (fiber) carbohydrates from roughage your horse eats, such as hay or pasture grass. The second one is the nonstructural carbohydrates, mainly sugar and starches in grains like corn, oats, and barley. Ideally, you should feed your horse with forage for about 1.5 to 2% of its body weight, but the minimum is 1% (on a dry basis). Feeding less roughage than this can cause health issues such as colic and ulcers.
- Protein – This nutrient is necessary for body growth and maintenance. Mature horses may settle with a lower protein percentage, about 8-12%, but growing horses need more protein to develop muscle tissue. However, they can do well with 12% protein feed. Feeding horses with higher levels of protein is also not good because the horse will break down the excess protein and excrete it as urine, which will be converted into ammonia, leading to some respiratory problems in stabled horses.
- Fat – It is an excellent and easy-to-digest energy source for your horse. Commercial feeds with no additional fats contain approximately 2-4% fat, but feed supplemented with fat in some kind of stabilized oil provides 2-12% percent. Adding fat to your horse’s feed increases its energy density, requiring less feed.
- Vitamins – This is a critically important compound that has two categories. The first is the water-soluble group, consisting of B-complex vitamins like B1 B2. The other one is the fat-soluble group comprised of vitamins A, E, D, and K. Your horse needs enough vitamins, but too much is not desirable either. A good forage combined with some concentrates can provide adequate vitamins for your horse’s body.
- Minerals – Your horse needs an adequate amount of this critical organic material to help its body function properly. You can find it in supplements on feed and tack store shelves. If your horse mainly feeds on forage, a loose vitamin, mineral premix, or ration balancer is a good option. Expect your horse to consume 1.5 to 3 oz. of the mixture daily.
- Water – An average, healthy horse can consume about 5-15 gallons daily, depending on the temperature, humidity, and activity level. You should provide clean water accessible at all times for your horse to drink when thirsty, but if it’s not possible, you can give water at least twice daily. Then, allow it to drink for several minutes. Lack of water in the horse’s body can lead to dehydration, intestinal impactions, and other forms of colic, which is why it’s critical for your horse’s health.
2. More Forage
Hay or pasture is the most significant part of your horse’s diet, and 70% of your horse’s daily calories should come from either. A good-quality forage can provide the nutritional requirements of your horse, so it would be better if it would spend more time eating because it is beneficial for his brain and gastrointestinal tract.
3. Make It Small
Your horse’s stomach can only hold between two to four gallons of material at any given time. It spends 16 hours per day grazing in its natural environment, which means it would be best for your horse’s health if you feed it frequently in a small amount if it can’t browse full time in the meadow. If your horse spends most of its time inside or in a dry lot, the ideal feeding frequency is four times a day but still in a small amount. But, if you find it difficult to feed this often, you can put the hay in a slow feed hay net to make feeding time take longer.
4. Control the Quality
Since pasture or hay is the foundation of your feeding plan, you need to take control of the quality. As mentioned above, hay should be stored clean and free from weeds, molds, and dust. You should also maintain the pasture, so your horse can get all the needed nutrition. That means you must test and fertilize the soil and remove weeds.
5. Trust the Experts
Whether you’re feeding a mare and foal, a senior horse, or your equine athlete, choose a ration designed by a Ph.D. because they know much more than we do about equine nutritional needs. These nutritionists studied and spent hours formulating commercial rations that provide your horse’s needs.
Ensuring your horse eats healthily involves understanding their natural diet and nutritional needs. By focusing on quality forage, balanced nutrition, adequate hydration, and individualized care, you can help your horse maintain optimal health and well-being.
