All animals require food to maintain bodily condition, provide raw materials for growth, repair damaged tissues and provide energy for work or exercise. The horse is a grazing animal, designed to eat almost constantly throughout the day. Their natural feed is grass and they have evolved to eat for 18 out of the 24 hours.
Here are ten rules for feeding your best friend:
- Feed little and often: this imitates the horse’s natural feeding pattern, and achieves satisfactory digestion by ensuring a constant passage of food through the digestive system.
- Feed plenty of bulk and roughage such as grass, hay, haylage, etc: this ensures that the digestive system is always adequately filled, as would be the case in the wild.
- Feed according to size of horse and workload: more work requires more energy and more food (just like us really). Too much or too little food will result in the animal being over or under weight.
- Keep a checklist on your horse’s condition: by fat scoring regularly you will be able to tell whether your horse needs to gain, lose, or maintain weight. This information is vital when working out how much you should be feeding your horse. It is also worth remembering that an overweight horse which is lacking energy is unlikely to benefit from a higher energy feed.
- Do not make sudden changes to the diet: bacteria in the large intestine break down the feed and they have to adapt to any changes in the diet. Sudden changes can cause some bacteria to die, produce poisons, and cause metabolic disorders.
- Keep to the same times of feeding each day: horses are creatures of habit and thrive on a regular routine (again like us haha).
- Ensure that both feed and feeding utensils are clean: horses are fastidious feeders and can be easily deterred from eating.
- Do not do fast work immediately after feeding: a full stomach will put pressure on the lungs and affect the horse’s breathing. Fast work results in redistribution of the blood in the body, leading to impaired digestion.
- Provide a constant supply of fresh water: if this is not possible, ensure that the horse is watered before feeding so that undigested food is not washed through the digestive system too rapidly.
- Finally: you need to know what to feed in addition to grass or grass products such as hay. Remember that many leisure horses may only need the addition of a vitamin and mineral supplement rather than a concentrate feed.
Future Feeds has the knowledge and experience required to provide your horse and grazing animals with a balanced diet with a variety of feeds that are suitable for animals of varying ages and states of health, as well as being balanced for the type of work or exercise being undertaken.
Give us a call today on 0800 200 399 and we can deliver three bags to your doorstep with our FREE delivery service within the greater Canterbury area. Check out our great range of products here: https://futurefeeds.co.nz/services/