Feeding is an essential part of horse care that doesn’t follow an absolute, ‘one-size-fits-all’ method. While feeding charts and guides are valuable, they serve better as general outlines rather than strict rulebooks. As caretakers, this simply means we need to accommodate unique factors that are specific to each horse. These include age, breed, temperament, routine workload, and even time of the year or prevailing weather conditions. Above all, the nuanced understanding of your horse that comes from your prolonged experience with them plays an unmatched role in fine-tuning its dietary plan.
Learnt through years of experience, some of these considerations, especially observing and understanding your horse’s unique character and peculiarities, can significantly shape the way you maintain your horse. It’s often been said that the person who can feed a horse best is someone who spends the most time with it—someone who understands its unique character and quirks. Therefore, while guidance is essential to feeding, the true essence of feeding lies in a combination of knowledge, experience, keen observation, and the wise application of those observations.
The Importance of Proper Feed Measurement
When it comes to the quantity of feed, it’s crucial to provide the right amount tailored for each horse’s needs and to measure accurately. Feeds should always be measured by weight rather than volume. A simple reason for this practice is the variability within different batches of the same feed—especially cereal grains. If measurements based on something like a scoop go unchecked for their exact weight, your horse could end up getting too much or too less.
Understanding Balanced Diets: Not All Mix-Ins Help
Another crucial point is the understanding of balanced foods. They’re specifically designed to maintain an appropriate balance between various nutritional components, such as minerals which play a crucial role in your horse’s health. With good intentions in mind, some caretakers add different kinds of feeds to introduce variety. However, this practice can inadvertently disrupt the careful balance that these balanced diets uphold, leading to unwanted effects and potential harm over time. Thus, maintaining a balanced approach to diet is key to the healthy and happy life of your horse.
Food Quality: Investing in the Best
Prioritizing high-quality food for your horse is essential to maintaining its overall health and well-being. The savings made by purchasing cheaper, lower-quality food often don’t outweigh the negative impact on your horse’s feeding value. Attempting to save money this way could lead to a decline in your horse’s physical condition, and potentially jeopardize its health.
Avoid Poor Quality Hay
In particular, it’s essential to avoid poor-quality hay for your horses. Hay that is moldy or fusty should never be given, as it can pose serious health risks. Making the effort to secure the highest quality food for your horse will ultimately pay off, as it contributes to their optimal growth, performance, and vitality.
Feeding Times: Establishing Consistent Routines
Horses are creatures of habit who thrive on consistency, especially when it comes to their meals. To support their well-being, establish regular feeding schedules that cater to their unique needs based on their size and workload.
Small, Frequent Feedings
Due to their relatively small stomachs compared to animals of similar size (with a capacity of 8-15 liters), horses benefit from receiving smaller meals at frequent intervals. Ideally, horses should receive three meals per day. However, if your horse is engaged in minimal work and relies mainly on fodder, it may suffice to feed them twice daily.
Adapting to Workload
For horses with moderate workloads, the necessary concentrate should be divided into three daily feedings. In cases where horses participate in regular, strenuous exercise and require larger quantities of concentrate, providing an additional fourth meal during the evening is beneficial. This approach prevents overloading their stomachs and optimizes their digestion.
Balancing Feeding and Exercise
It’s crucial not to feed a horse immediately before exercise. A full stomach can press against the lungs, subsequently limiting their function. Similarly, a horse should not be worked for at least an hour after a full meal. Should exceptional circumstances prevent allowing this digestion time, restrict the exercise to a walk.
Additionally, refrain from providing a large meal to a tired horse immediately upon returning to the stable. Their digestive system is not prepared to efficiently handle a large intake of food at that time.
Changes in Diet: The Importance of Graduality
When adjusting the diet of your horse, it’s crucial to make changes slowly to allow their digestive system time to adapt. This is particularly important when transitioning a horse from pasture or increasing their concentrate ration due to heavy work.
Role of Bacterial Fermentation
Equine digestion occurs mainly through bacterial fermentation in the large intestine. Presence of certain foods allows bacteria adapted to digest that particular food to thrive, while other bacteria types may be less abundant. Therefore, a sudden change in diet can lead to digestive disorders as the existing bacteria may not be sufficient to adequately breakdown the new food.
The shift in diet can also affect other bacteria that were best suited to the previous diet. Starvation of these bacteria could lead to their death, releasing toxins that can cause issues such as colic or even laminitis. Gradual introduction of new foods allows for a slow change in gut bacteria, thereby minimizing digestive disturbances.
Methodical Changes in Horses’ Diets
When you first transition a horse from grazing to stable feeding, start by only providing hay for a few days. Afterwards, you can begin to gradually introduce a concentrate ration. Similarly, an increased concentrate ration should correspond to an increase in work activity.
In case exercise must be put on hold due to unfavorable weather conditions or lameness, the concentrate ration can be safely reduced without adverse effects. However, when exercise is resumed, it’s important to gradually build the ration back up to its previous levels.
Food Storage: Prioritizing Freshness and Preventing Waste
Horses, surprisingly enough, might display a discerning palate, showing a preference for fresh feed. It’s paramount, then, food provided is fresh and appealing, and old food that has turned stale, mouldy, or dusty is strictly avoided.
Longevity and Nutritional Value of Feed
Certain feeds do not store well, losing their nutritional value over time or becoming stale if kept for too long. This situation can result in needless wastage, particularly when only minor amounts are being fed.
The Benefits of Cubes and Nuts
In instances where small quantities of feed are required, packaged cubes and nuts offer distinct advantages. They can be bought in small, sealed bags that prevent spoilage and facilitate storage. Upon opening, these feeds can be conveniently stored in containers like plastic dustbins, as previously mentioned, which help prolong their freshness.
Storage Conditions for Horse Feed
Regardless of the type of feed, all horse food should be stored under appropriate conditions. Strive to maintain a dry, temperate storage environment that is free from vermin, preserving the quality and freshness of the feed for your horse.
Watering: The Importance of Consistent Access
The key to maintaining a properly hydrated horse is to consistently provide clean, fresh water. Horses can typically regulate their own water intake, so there’s no need to restrict access when water is consistently available. However, problems can arise with limited access to water, making “water before feeding and after exercise” advice relevant in those cases.
Water Intake and Potential Issues
The consumption of water can cause the food in a horse’s stomach to expand. Drinking large quantities of water after eating dry food can lead to colic. One solution for horses without continuous access to water is to remove their water buckets for an hour after feeding.
Horses should also not consume large amounts of water immediately before exercise, as a stomach filled with water can press against the diaphragm and lungs, affecting their functionality. Although drinking cold water does not harm hot, tired horses, it’s best to allow them only enough water to quench their thirst until they have cooled down. Afterward, they can have unrestricted access to water.
Water Temperature and Cooling Down
Despite the common practice of warming water before offering it to horses, there’s no evidence to suggest that cold water is harmful. In fact, providing tepid water may deny horses an effective means of cooling down. Consider your own preference for a cool beverage after strenuous exercise as a frame of reference.
Monitoring Water Intake and Detecting Dehydration
While automatic drinkers are convenient, refilling water buckets enables you to assess a horse’s daily water intake. This intake in different conditions varies, ranging from 18-23 liters (4-5 gallons) to 68-92 liters (15-20 gallons) for a large horse working in hot weather. Monitoring water intake is useful as excessive sweating can lead to dehydration and insufficient water consumption, combined with dry food and minimal exercise, can contribute to impaction (constipation) – a common issue for stabled horses.
Feeding Utensils: Ensuring Comfort and Efficiency
Feeding your horse isn’t just about the food you give—they also need a comfortable and efficient way to consume it. Be it hay racks, the ground, or hay-nets, each method has its own pros and cons for feeding hay.
Hay Racks, Ground Feeding, and Hay-Nets
Hay can be fed from a wall-mounted hay rack, which, if mounted high, may unfortunately lead to hay seeds falling into the horse’s eyes, and loose dust and mould spores being inhaled. On the contrary, feeding hay on the ground, while being a more natural position for the horse to eat, can lead to wastage through the soiling of the hay.
The alternative? A hay-net. It drastically reduces wastage, makes the horse eat slower, and provides the added benefit of keeping the horse occupied, reducing its boredom. It makes measuring the proper amount of hay per horse easier, too—a handy spring scale in the hay-store can further facilitate this.
Preparing and Serving Hay
Before filling up the net, ensure the hay is adequately shaken and loosened from its compact form. Discard any foreign materials, such as sticks or pieces of wire, that could have been picked up during baling. Depending on your net, it should hold about 4.5-5.5 kg (10-12 lbs) of hay.
Dampening the hay can be beneficial—it reduces the release of mould spores into the stable atmosphere, which is crucial for horses allergic to them. Immerse a full net in water for five minutes and drain it before presenting it to your horse.
Proper Hay-Net Placement
When hanging your hay-net, aim for a height that’s just below the horse’s usual head position, to ensure no seeds or hay fragments fall into their eyes. The net needs to be securely tied so it remains at its original height, and doesn’t fall to the ground when empty—this can lead to a hazardous situation where the horse might get its foot caught. A recommended method to prevent this involves passing the drawstring through the tie-ring down to halfway down the net, pulling it tight under the strings and forming a quick-release knot. Even when the horse pulls at the net, the knot only becomes more secure, and can be easily untied by pulling the loose end of the drawstring, ensuring its safety and ease-of-use.
Concentrate Foods: Encouraging Healthy Eating Habits
How you present your horse’s food can impact its eating behavior, and thereby its overall health. Concentrate foods, like grains, pellets, or mixes, can be offered from fixed, wall-mounted mangers or from removable bowls placed on the ground. But it’s crucial to consider your horse’s comfort, safety, and the cleanliness of their eating area.
Safe Feeding Practices
When using fixed mangers with attached tie-rings, it’s essential to tie a piece of breakable cord to the tie-ring and attach the halter or head collar rope to it, instead of tying directly to the ring. This safe practice can prevent serious injuries caused by mangers being detached when the horse gets startled and pulls away.
Feeding from the ground is actually a natural eating posture for horses. It can encourage discharges to drain down the nostrils, maintaining their respiratory health.
Cleanliness and Hygiene
An uncluttered stable is easier to clean thoroughly and disinfect. This is where removable feeders shine—they’re simpler to keep clean compared to their fixed counterparts.
Maintaining cleanliness in mangers is no less important. Always remove all uneaten food—horses, with their acute sense of taste and smell, will often reject new food mixed with old. If your horses are unwell and off their food, this practice becomes even more critical. Offer small quantities of fresh food to entice them to eat.
Remember, keep your water buckets and automatic “drinkers” clean. Regularly maintaining these prevents algae growth in the water, which can taint it. This point is particularly relevant for drinkers in paddocks, as they can be overlooked during the cleaning process.
Feeding Ponies: Sustaining Their Hardy Nature
Native ponies are characterized by their hardiness and resilience, enabling them to thrive in harsh conditions with limited pasture. In domestication, they often maintain this quality, unless hindered by unnatural management practices. They can happily graze all year round, but may require additional nourishment, especially during the winter months.
Adapting to Domestic Life
When domesticated, ponies can still survive primarily on grass and outdoor living, as long as they have some protection against extreme weather conditions. In the winter, they need a hay ration to replace the grass, keeping them healthy during the colder months.
As a general rule, it’s best to avoid feeding them oats—however, a small quantity of approximately 0.5-1 kg (1-2 lbs) may be given after a particularly strenuous day’s work, such as hunting.
Exercise and Stable Life
When living outdoors, ponies take their own exercise and are generally easier to handle. If they’re stabled, they may become more spirited and require careful handling, especially if oats are included in their diet. Pony riders might find the animals to be too “hot” or even unmanageable due to their increased energy levels from an oat-rich diet, so it’s essential to monitor both their diet and the environment they live in to maintain their natural hardiness and good behavior.
