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Basic Nutrition For Horses
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Novice horse-owners and occasional riders may not know the precise nutritional requirements of horses. However, this is not unusual because there are a number of variables in calculating what a horse requires in the matter of food. The factors to take into account whilst working out the requirements of horses are: age, weight and degree of activity.
You cannot put rubbish in and expect your horse to perform marvellously. You cannot only turn your horse out into a field and expect it to find all that it needs. There are common cases of wild horses dying of starvation, particularly 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 plenty of roughage too. Roughage will also help your horse's digestive system keep working in the correct manner. Just like eating just junk food is not good for the human digestive system.
A mature, working horse requires around 2-2.5% of its body weight in decent quality grass or hay a day. Therefore, a horse of 1,000 pounds will require 20-25 pounds of decent, fresh grass or hay a day. If the horse is not worked, it can almost certainly 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 uphold the number of horses you keep on it. If this is the case or if you want to breed or work the horse, you will probably need to supplement the forage food with grain or oats. In this case forage food should make up about half of a horse's food 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 way 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 good quality summer pasture. A mare and foal requires 1.75-2 acres; a yearling requires 1.5-2 acres and a weanling needs 0.5-1 acre.
You can harvest feed for the winter by cutting grass from a different field or by purchasing 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 given, but again more calculations are needed. There are services that you can employ to have your horse's feed checked.
Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on several topics, but is now concerned with distemper in horses. If you would like to know more, please visit our site at Distemper Vaccines
Article submitted Monday, May 16, 2011 & read 72 times.
Owen Jones writes on many subjects and is currently running several websites. He was born in Wales but now lives in northern, rural Thailand.
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