Feeding the Inactive Adult Horse
You know the type … This is a horse that spends most of it’s time relaxing in the pasture or stable. He might be an old gelding that you ride on weekends, a horse injured in competition or a horse laid off when the show season ended.
A horses’ daily diet needs to include many different nutrients in all the proper amounts of energy, protein, minerals, vitamin and amino acids.
Fiber is the first and most important ingredient in your horses’ diet. It provides all the energy horses need for everyday maintenance metabolism: ordinary functions like breathing, walking, grazing and sleeping. Without adequate fiber the horse’s digestive system doesn’t function properly – it loses the ability to conserve water and electrolytes also are compromised. Without fiber in the system, high carbohydrate feeds tend to pack in the gut as well. The result is a horse at risk for dehydration, colic and laminitis
Except in the most strenuous circumstances fiber should always make up at least 50% (by weight) of your horses’ diet. And for the maintenance horse that percentage can be pushed up considerably higher – even 100% if the horse is an easy keeper, is not being worked and has good quality hay. Grain is the optional part of your horses’ diet not roughage (fiber).
Horse Feeding guidelines:
- Feed according to body weight of horse.
- Feed for work done, not for the future.
- Make sure he has access to fresh clean water at all times.
- Feed plenty of roughage for healthy gut function. Look at the proper grain to hay ratio.
- Feed by weight not volume of feed; weigh grain and hay.
- Feed at the same time each day.
- Feed little and often so as not to overload the horses’ digestive system.
(Keep grains to 4 lbs. – 5 lbs. per feeding.)
- Use high quality feeds.
- Do not feed dusty or moldy feed.
- Make any changes to the diet gradually so as to reduce the risk of digestive upset like colic.
- Don’t exercise immediately after feeding. Allow 2 to 3 hours after feeding before working the horse and do not feed until one hour after working.
Horse Moms All-In-One health and nutritional supplements has been able to take the guess work out of feeding and supplementing your horse by analyzing the different life stages of horses.
Plus provide supplements with nutrients specific to each life stage and activity as well as providing total body support with additional ingredients to support your horses’ skeletal system, digestive system, immune system, skin and coat, muscular system, nervous system, circulatory system and respiratory system.
At Horse Moms, biochemists, equine nutritionists and veterinarians combine their fields of knowledge and expertise to design and formulate the Horse Moms All-In-One health and nutritional supplement for Maintenance horses.
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