Fat & Fiber
It is easy for horses to drop weight in the cold winter months and you may not notice it until they shed their blankets and winter coats in the spring. Be proactive by doing a weekly body condition assessment. Catch weight-loss issues before they become a problem. If you need to increase the number of calories your horse is consuming, offer more hay or introduce a high-fat energy supplement into your feeding program. Check out the body condition... Read More »
Category : Fat & Fiber | Health & Management | Tips and Topics
Here are five tips to make sure your feed room and hayloft are ready for winter. 1. Clean out your feed room. A clean feed room will help to reduce feed losses due to insect and rodent damage. It will also give you more room to store and properly manage your feed, hay, and supplements. Toss any feed or supplements that are out of date, moldy or that rodents or insects have damaged. Clean up any spilled feed that may attract hungry... Read More »
Category : Digestive Health | Essential Vitamins | Fat & Fiber | Health & Management | Tips and Topics | Valuable Nutrients
The minerals calcium (Ca) and phosphorous (P) play a major role in proper growth and development of the skeletal system in horses. Calcium and phosphorus must be provided by a horse’s diet in the correct levels and ratio. If more phosphorous than calcium is consumed by a horse then calcium absorption can be impaired and skeletal malformations, poor growth, and muscle disorders can occur. Even if a diet contains adequate calcium, excessive phosphorus... Read More »
Category : Fat & Fiber | Tips and Topics | Valuable Nutrients
One of the most prevalent myths in the realm of horse nutrition today is that bran mashes are good for horses. Horse folks have long fed bran mashes for a variety of reasons: to act as a laxative and prevent constipation, to increase water intake, to add fiber to the diet, and everyone’s favorite, to warm their horse up on a cold night. Unfortunately, the negative effects of an irregular bran mash greatly outweigh the perceived positive ones. Wheat... Read More »
Category : Digestive Health | Fat & Fiber | Tips and Topics
Have you ever come across “lecithin” while scrutinizing the ingredient list of a favorite supplement? Have you wondered why lecithin was included in the mix? Because it benefits the horse on both the inside and outside, lecithin is anything but an “empty” ingredient. Lecithin is a combination of phospholipids that occur naturally in some plants. Made of many components including fatty acids, phospholipids are involved in a host of physiological... Read More »
Category : Fat & Fiber | Tips and Topics | Valuable Nutrients
Careful management of your horse year-round will help ensure that he remains healthy during drought conditions. In the short-term future, the first and perhaps most elementary and immediate point to consider is nutrition. As the drought in Kentucky and surrounding states rages on, pastures may be brown and their bounty less than nutritious. If you rely heavily on pastures to provide calories for your horse, he may not be receiving sufficient energy... Read More »
Category : Essential Vitamins | Fat & Fiber | Health & Management | Tips and Topics | Valuable Nutrients
All horses need fiber in their diet and some of it must be the form of long hay. Horses challenged by metabolic syndrome should be offered hays that are low in non-structural carbohydrates or NSC. This class of carbohydrates includes starch, water-soluble sugar, and fructan. Normal horses can tolerate NSC levels of 20% or higher. It is recommended that horses with metabolic syndrome consume hay with NSC levels of around 10% to 12%. In order to know... Read More »
Category : Fat & Fiber | Tips and Topics
In every aspect of our lives we strive for balance. As owners and caretakers of horses we should also make every attempt to achieve balance in their lives too. We try to balance exercise with stall rest and stall rest with turnout. We try to provide balance in their nutrition as well. Understanding how to balance forage intake with concentrate intake is critical to ensuring optimal nutrition and energy balance. Concentrates are the portion of the diet we... Read More »
Category : Digestive Health | Fat & Fiber | Nutritional Minutes | Tips and Topics
Hot and dry temps got your pasture down? The record heat and lack of rain has turned many pastures brown and weedy as grasses go dormant and weeds continue to grow. This can spell trouble for your horses and your pasture. Understanding how extreme temperatures affect your pasture and using a few common sense management tools can help keep your horse safe and your pasture alive. How grasses and weeds react to stress: As a defense mechanism to stress,... Read More »
Category : Fat & Fiber | Health & Management | Tips and Topics
Packed with energy Fat is an effective energy source for horses. Pound for pound, fats provide 2.25 times more energy than carbohydrates. In a natural state, horses consume only small amounts of fats, but they digest and absorb them well. Fats are broken down into fatty acids in the small intestine and stored as triglycerides in the adipose tissue of the body. Fat is utilized to fuel long-term, slow work. Some fat is necessary Fat is necessary for the... Read More »
Category : Fat & Fiber | Nutritional Minutes | Tips and Topics
Dietary energy dictates body condition in healthy horses. Too little energy and the horse loses weight; too much energy and the horse gains weight. Typical diets of pasture, hay, and concentrate often do not supply sufficient dietary energy to horses that have increased calorie needs. Such horses include hardworking performance horses, lactating mares, and aged horses. The fat in rice bran contains more calories per mouthful than pasture, hay, or... Read More »
Category : Fat & Fiber | Tips and Topics
Simply put, horses need energy. Energy is traditionally supplied by cereal grains such as oats, corn, and barley. These feedstuffs deliver energy as carbohydrates or starch. But what if you want to supply more energy to your horse without increasing his feed intake? Feeding a fat supplement is an excellent way to achieve this. Fat is added to the diet because it is an excellent energy source. It contains almost 2.25 times as much energy as an... Read More »
Category : Fat & Fiber | Tips and Topics
MYTH: Fat is an unsuitable ingredient in the diets of endurance horses. FACT: Fat is not only a perfectly acceptable component in the diets of all performance horses, it sometimes proves to be a necessary ingredient. Due to the intense work that endurance horses perform, many are unable to maintain optimal body condition when fed forages (pasture and hay) and traditional concentrates (textured or pelleted sweet feed). Because fats contain more than two... Read More »
Category : Fat & Fiber | Tips and Topics
Lactation places extraordinary physiological demands on mares. Well-fed lactating mares produce the equivalent of 3-4% of their body weight in milk daily during the first two months of lactation. For a 1,100-pound Thoroughbred mare, that amounts to about 33-44 pounds. Considering a gallon of milk weighs almost eight pounds, average foals consume approximately four to five gallons of milk each day. In order to sustain this incredible output, the energy... Read More »
Category : Fat & Fiber | Tips and Topics
As pastures fade from green to brown, horse owners all over will soon be feeding hay to meet their horses’ energy requirements. A diet composed primarily of forage and the recommended amount of a well-fortified concentrate is all most horses need to maintain their weight. But many horses—like old horses or hard keepers—need more than the basics to stay plump and healthy through winter. To prevent an energy crisis in these calorie-needy horses,... Read More »
Category : Fat & Fiber | Tips and Topics
