Horse Nutrition - Where to Begin
Although you may assume this is a straightforward thing to achieve - feed your horse - you'd be astonished at the quantity of horse owners that don't comprehend the essentials. There is no real rule of thumb for feeding, as each horse's nutritional requirements will fluctuate depending on age, mass and amount of activity.
To begin with, your horse naturally uses fodder as being a fundamental constituent of their diets. It is without doubt one of the Chief requirements for a properly operating digestive system. When we speak of forage, we usually mean natural pasture and cut hay.
Older horses usually eat in the region of 2 to 2.5 pct of their body mass in feed each day. So a one thousand pound horse will eat approximately 20 to 25 lbs of feed per day. Meaning high quality feed, not low quality high fibre feed (which can interfere with proper digestion).
In a perfect pasture planet, your horse should eat a minimum of 1 % of its body weight in hay/pasture fodder each day. If your horse doesn't do much work, they may do nicely on strictly forage, with no grain scattered in. On the other hand, growing, breeding, or working horses must have supplements as well as forage - like grain or perhaps a supplemental concentrate. Imagine it this way, forages ought to supply at least one half or more of the overall weight of the feed eaten each day for optimum growth and development.
Till you can feed a healthy "meal" to your horse, it's important to be aware of the nutrient content and quality of your forage. Once you know that, it is easy to determine the correct amounts of each to satisfy nutrient needs.
One of the best resource, and the least costly one for summer time feed is your pasture. And, in most cases good pasture by itself can offer all the nutritional requirements your horse needs. How do you determine the amount of pasture is needed to feed a horse? Here is a approximate guideline that will help you: (using a weight of 1,000 - 1,200 lbs)
Mare and foal 1.75 to 2 acres
Yearlings 1.5 to 2 acre
Weanlings 0.5 to 1 acre
Winter feed needless to say would be cut hay, and again, top quality if you can supply it. It should be cut early, be leafy and green in color and as free as possible of dirt, moulds, weeds and stubble. This feed will likely be full of protein, minerals and vitamins.
Yes, it's possible to use alfalfa hay, but be aware about the higher protein content in case you are giving to young developing horses, as it may contain an unnecessary amount of calcium in connection to phosphorus. Too much calcium is not good for growing horses. If you're not clear in your mind about hay quality, have it checked.
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