What Do I Need To Feed My Horse?

If hay isn’t enough, grain can be added, but the bulk of a horse’s calories should always come from roughage. Horses are meant to eat roughage, and their digestive system is designed to use the nutrition in grassy stalks. A horse should eat one to two percent of their body weight in roughage every day.

What foods should I feed my horse?

In simple terms, horses eat grass and hay or haylage, but salt, concentrates and fruits or vegetables can also enhance their diets, depending on the required work regime and available feed.

What are 5 nutritional requirements for horses?

When feeding horses, it is important to recognize that there are six basic nutrient categories that must be met: carbohydrate, protein, fat, vitamins, minerals and water. Often, feed companies will balance the first five nutrients for us; however, it is critical not to forget about water.

What Should I feed My first horse?

For a first horse or pony, 80-100% of its total diet will be hay or grass, with the rest as hard feed. If your new horse is a fatty, it needs to go on a diet. Reduce the calories and increase the workload. Go for a low-energy feed and provide total hay and hard feed at 1.5% of its bodyweight instead of the usual 2%.

What ingredients should be in horse feed?

Equine Feed Ingredients

• Complex carbs, such as alfalfa, grain hay, and beet pulp.
• Simple starches, such as barley, corn, and oats.
• Fats, including vegetable, corn, and fish oils.
• Proteins, such as dried whey, or linseed and canola meals.

What should a horse eat daily?

Horses are able to consume about 1.5 to 2% of their body weight in dry feed (feed that is 90% dry matter) each day. As a rule of thumb, allow 1.5 to 2 kg of feed per 100 kg of the horse’s body weight. However, it is safer to use 1.7% of body weight (or 1.7 kg per 100 kg of body weight) to calculate a feed budget.

What do horses need daily?

Horses need a regular supply of food and water
In most cases, they need to have hay or pasture throughout the day, with additional grain feedings twice a day. An average-size horse will eat about 20 lbs. of food a day and drink at least eight gallons of water.

How often should horses eat?

In summary, the horse is designed to consume small meals throughout the day. It is also suggested: The absolute minimum is to feed your horse at least twice per day, evenly dividing their meals and times they are fed. The optimal feeding schedule for a horse would be meals three to five times per day.

What is the most nutritious feed for horses?

Roughage/Forage Roughage, found in hay or grass, is the bulk of the horse’s food. Grass or alfalfa hay, or a combination of the two, are good sources of roughage. Grass hay is generally higher in fiber and dry matter than alfalfa, but alfalfa may be higher in protein, energy, vitamins and calcium.

What is the most important part of a horse’s diet?

The most basic requirement in a horse’s diet is long-stem forage. Ideally, this comes in the form of fresh grass. If grass is not available, free-choice grass hay is the next best choice. Keeping hay in front of horses at all times allows them to most closely mimic their natural grazing behavior.

Can I feed my horse just hay?

Many pleasure and trail horses don’t need grain: good-quality hay or pasture is sufficient. If hay isn’t enough, grain can be added, but the bulk of a horse’s calories should always come from roughage. Horses are meant to eat roughage, and their digestive system is designed to use the nutrition in grassy stalks.

Should horses have hay all time?

Because we like to think our horses follow the same schedule that we do, many people think that horses need less hay at night because they’re asleep (and therefore, not eating). However, that’s a myth. Horses need access to forage at all times of the day.

How many bales of hay should a horse have a day?

A horse can eat anywhere from 15-25 pounds of hay a day, which generally equates to a half of a 45/50-pound square bale of hay per day (~15-30 bales per month).

What should you not feed horses?

There are certain foods which you should certainly never feed to your horse.

• Chocolate.
• Persimmons.
• Avocado.
• Lawn Clippings.
• Fruit with Pips and Stones.
• Bread.
• Potatoes and Other Nightshades.
• Yogurt and Other Dairy Products.

What foods should not be fed to horses?

Here are eight foods you should never feed your horse:

• Chocolate. ©russellstreet/Flickr CC.
• Persimmons.
• Avocado.
• Lawn clippings.
• Pitted fruits.
• Bread.
• Potatoes and other nightshades.
• Yogurt or other milk products.

What are 4 types of horse feed?

Types of Horse Feed

• Sugar Beet Horse Feed.
• Straight Horse Feeds.
• Conditioning Horse Feed.
• Balancer Horse Feed.

How many hay flakes a day for a horse?

The daily dry matter intake of an adult horse performing light work should be about 1.8% of its body weight each day. At least 65% of this amount should be forage. In other words, a 1,000 lb horse should be fed 18 pounds of dry matter each day.

How long can horses go without hay?

Ideally, horses should go no longer than 4 hours between forage meals and be fed on a consistent schedule. However, it’s hard to predict when, or if, an extended time period without forage will cause health issues like colic and ulcers.

Is corn or oats better for horses?

Oat starch is more digestible in the small intestine than corn starch, and this feature makes oats the safer feed choice when large amounts of cereal grain must be fed. Oat starch reduces the risk of hindgut acidosis, which is caused by starch entering the hindgut and undergoing rapid fermentation.

What are a horses basic needs?

All animals have requirements that are essential for their welfare, and when these basic needs are not met, the animal suffers. In horses, it is claimed that these needs include social contact, social companionship, free movement and access to roughage in the form of grass, hay and/or straw.

What do horses do when they are bored?

An unwillingness to work or sluggish, listless behavior is the first sign of boredom, and horses that are habitually bored may repeated circle their stall, paw the ground or bang their heads on wall or beams.