Basic Nutrition For Horses

Greenhorn horse-owners and occasional riders might not know the exact nutritional requirements of horses. However, this is not strange because there are several variables in calculating what a horse needs in the matter of food. The things to consider while working out the requirements of horses are: age, weight and degree of activity.

You cannot put rubbish in and expect your horse to perform wonderfully. You cannot only turn your horse out into a field and expect it to find all that it requires. There are frequent cases of wild horses dying of starvation, especially if the weather is bad.

Having said that, foraging, which mainly involves eating grass, is a major source of food and it gives the horse an interest, a diverse diet and lots of roughage too. Roughage will also help your horse's digestive system keep working properly. Just like eating just junk food is not good for the human digestive system.

A mature, working horse needs about 2-2.5% of its body weight in decent quality grass or hay a day. Therefore, a horse of 1,000 pounds will need 20-25 pounds of good, fresh grass or hay a day. If the horse is not worked, it can probably get by on around 1% of its body weight in food.

In the summer, this is probably not much of a problem, but if it is in the winter or if the land cannot sustain the number of horses you keep on it. If this is the case or if you want to breed or ride the horse, you will probably have to supplement the forage food with grain or oats. In this case forage food should make up around half of a horse's feed for top quality nutrition.

However, it is not just as simple as that either because not all grass and not all hay is of the same quality. The quantity that you feed depends on the quality needed not the quantity, so the feed that you give has to be tested as well.

Your pasture is the best and the cheapest method of feeding your horse(s). Here is a rough and ready guide to feeding an average horse of 1,000-1,200 pounds in a decent quality summer pasture. A mare and foal needs 1.75-2 acres; a yearling needs 1.5-2 acres and a weanling requires 0.5-1 acre.

You can crop feed for the winter by cutting grass from a different field or by buying it. The hay should be pure and not dusty. It ought to also be free of damp and mould. It might not show any signs of rot or mildew.

There are other foodstuffs that you can supplement with, but you have to do more investigation. Alfalfa hay can be given but it is not the same as grass hay and you have to do other calculations. Oats and grain may also be used, but again more calculations are needed. There are services that you can use to get your horse's feed analyzed.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on several topics, but is now involved with distemper in horses. If you want to know more, please visit our website at Distemper Vaccines