Your horse needs a diet that meets his nutritional needs. Here’s what you should know.
Horses are athletes, and to perform at their highest levels, they need the right fuel. Your horse’s diet is critical to ensuring its ability to do its best in the arena. Karen Davison is the director of equine technical solutions at Purina Animal Nutrition, and she shares key points to help you understand your horse’s nutritional needs.
A Balanced Diet
A barrel horse is a performance animal, and that work requires energy, but that’s not all.
“You have to have a balance of nutrition,” Davison said. “There’s fuel, and then there’s other nutrients that support the body and its physiology. We need to meet all the nutritional demands for athletic activity with feeding management practices that support digestive health and comfort.”
Feeding Naturally
We often think the best way to feed horses is as close to what they eat in the wild, but for a performance horse, they’re not living a life grazing on pasture. They’re being ridden, hauled to shows and asked to perform at a young age.
“We want to sustain the level of demands we ask them to do, and do it within the constraints of their physiology,” Davison said.
Following are the nutritional components needed for a balanced diet.
Building Blocks
Water
Your horse needs access to fresh, clean, ample water every single day. Hard working horses need 10–30 gallons of water per day, depending on workload, hot and humid environment and how much they sweat. Make sure it’s not polluted with hay or frozen in the winter.
Forage
The base of every horse diet needs to be quality forage such as grass, hay, hay pellets or hay cubes.
“Horses evolved as grazers and must eat forage,” Davison said. “The higher quality your forage, and the less [physical] demand on your horse, the less the nutritional supplement needs are on your horse.”
If your forage quality is not optimal, or your horse’s workload increases, supplementing with a grain or feed will become more important.
Supplementation
Adding a grain, pelleted feed or other feedstuff fills in the nutritional gap between the forage your horse consumes and what your horse needs.
“That’s where the magic is, making sure you fill in those gaps appropriately and consistently,” Davison said. “That’s where the challenge can be for folks.”
The Nutrients
Energy
“Energy is fuel for work and is generated from calories, which are supplied in the diet from starch, sugar, fat and fiber. Starch and sugar, supplied mainly from concentrate feeds and grains, provide energy for high-intensity, shorter-duration exercise,” Davison said.
Fats are supplied by high-fat ingredients like rice bran or vegetable oils and fiber is from forages or ingredients like beet pulp and soybean hulls. Fat and fiber calories are the primary supply for more moderate intensity, longer duration type of exercise.
Protein
While energy gives your horse fuel to do its job, amino acids from dietary protein help build lean tissue and aid the immune system. The amino acid balance from various protein sources can be significantly different and provide different results for the horse. High-protein forages like alfalfa hay provide different amino acid levels than other more readily digestible and high-quality proteins like soybean meal and whey-based proteins.
“Protein can be burned as fuel, but it’s expensive,” Davison said. “It’s expensive to buy and expensive to burn. You would rather the fuel be provided by the starch and sugar, fiber and fat, and leave protein to support lean tissue.”
Vitamins and Minerals
Exercising horses have an increased requirement for vitamins and minerals to support immune function and antioxidant systems affected by stress and exercise. Electrolytes are specific minerals that affect proper nerve and muscle function. Plain salt replaces the major electrolytes lost in sweat and should be available free-choice to all horses at all times.
“It all works together to keep it all in balance,” Davison said. “At times, we can get focused on one or two things in the diet, but it’s the total balance that’s important.”
Developing A Diet
What should you do first? Davison suggests focusing on acquiring the best quality forage that you can consistently get for your horse.
“Get as much good quality hay as you can afford, and store it, because changing hay frequently could potentially result in digestive upset,” Davison said.
Once your hay is locked in, adjust your feed accordingly. Choose supplemental feed that your horse likes and will eat. If your horse works hard routinely, you may need a concentrate feed for additional calories or nutrition. If your horse maintains its body condition on hay or pasture alone, they may benefit from a ration balancer, which is typically a concentrated protein, vitamin and mineral product to provide the nutrition missing in hay, but without a lot of additional calories.
Read the label to see the nutritional content, and then the feeding directions to make sure you feed the way that feed was designed to be fed. Davison said if you have chosen a feed that needs to be given at four or five pounds a day, but on top of hay is too much for your horse, so you feed one or two pounds, your horse will not get enough protein, vitamins and minerals, because the feed was formulated for a greater serving size.
“You may need to pick a different product and do a little math,” Davison said. “If you’re feeding a feed that is 12% protein based on feeding four pounds of feed, and you choose to only feed one or two pounds, you’re feeding a lot less protein. So, you might look at a concentrated ration balancer instead.”
Davison recommends weighing your feed and hay instead of feeding by volume. Your flakes of hay could be very different amounts without you realizing it, and different feeds fill a ¾ scoop with more or less than expected.
Finally, learn how to body condition score your horse, and get used to doing that regularly. You want to aim for a score of a five to six—meaning you can’t see their ribs, but you can feel them pretty easily. You may have to adjust your horse’s feed based on age and activity level, and body score is a great way to keep tabs on their weight.
“Noticing how thin or fat your horse is can be a really good management tool,” Davison said. “That tells you whether you’re feeding enough calories or not.”
When in doubt, contact your veterinarian or an equine nutritionist to help you put together a good feeding plan for your horse.
