This one doesn't take a lot of research, but it's something I see asked repeatedly in Facebook groups by first time horse owners and that's:
"How much should I be feeding my horse?"
And it's such a broad question with so many answers which is why asking in a place like a Facebook horse group will get you a ton of varied answers.
There are tons of articles that I am going to link at the bottom of this blog for your reading which talk about different ways to feed horses and how to determine what your horse needs. Reminder when you are researching what to feed your animal to look at objective third party websites and articles rather than articles and websites published by feed producers or feed stores as the latter are always going to paint their product in a positive light to make the sale.
Horses are fed by weight and not by volume. Accompanied with the above question I'll see that someone is feeding their horse "two scoops of X" or one scoop of Y" and "three flakes of hay" except that scoops or flakes are not measurements.
There is the fight amongst equestrians as to whether all forage diets or supplementing with grain is the best. I am not going to broach into what is best because I believe that this will vary from horse to horse. I have six horses: some have added grain to their diet and others are on completely grass hay with their minerals and a balancer. I think that drawing a hard line about feeding leaves us closed off to making decisions that may be best for our individual animals, and I'll share my personal journey with that on another blog.
Forage is any roughage and can include a variety of grass hays and legumes. These can come in round or square bales, as well as pelleted, cubed, and shredded versions. Long stem forage like bales should be at least a part of your horses diet each day for mental stimulation as the chewing takes up time thus relieving boredom, but as long as your horse is otherwise stimulated and not participating in abnormal behaviors (tail chewing, weaving, etc.) as a result of boredom then all forage can be short stem from a nutritional standpoint. Horses should eat between 1.5-2% of their body weight in forage per day.
Commercial feeds and grains should also be fed by weight and typically there is a chart on the bag that tells you how much weight in pounds should be fed per one hundred pounds of body weight.
One thing we personally do is get a guaranteed analysis on the hay we are feeding to make sure we are supplementing our horses correctly. We also have done hair tests as well as blood work to ensure that we are feeding them correctly. While some vitamins and minerals can be overfed without risks, others do constitute a risk when overfeeding.
A few things to take into consideration when setting up your feeding program are (in no particular order):
- caloric needs of your animal
- quality of forage in your area
- time it takes to feed
- body condition of horses
- horses vitamin/mineral needs
- availability of feed
If you have any questions, please feel free to shoot me a message on social media! I'm not an expert, but I am happy to share any and all research I've done.
Please remember that this blog nor is any research online meant to take the place of veterinary professionals and other equine professionals.
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