Feeding Fatties: Horses become overweight when they are taking in more calories than they are using daily. As a result for the horse to lose weight it needs to either consume less energy, or use more energy!
Overweight horses obviously don’t require feed for weight gain and sometimes even pasture alone can result in excess body condition. In this situation pasture intake needs to be restricted by putting other stock through the paddock first or limiting access to pasture. The horses digestive system requires that they receive a minimum of 1.5% of their body weight in hay, chaff or pasture daily. Therefore horses on very restricted pasture intake i.e yarded, will require some hay to avoid aliments such as colic and ulcers. Avoid rich lush hays and use grass or meadow hay.
Because overweight horses don’t require feed for weight gain they miss out on many necessary nutrients for optimum performance and health. NRM Equine Balancer is ideal for these horses.
NRM Equine Balancer is a concentrate vitamin and mineral pellet which will meet the shortfalls in forage diets. As it is a concentrate it is fed at very low intakes, therefore having very little contribution to daily calorie intakes.
Feeding Skinnies
There are many more reasons a horse may be thin than just feed, these include worms, poor teeth, excessive workload and inadequate shelter to name a few.
In regard to feed, a lack of body condition is a result of simply too much energy being expended daily in relation to calorie intakes. This is likely to be due to limited or poor quality pasture and/or a lack of supplementary feed.
Hay is very important as a substitute for pasture and should be provided ad lib. For thin horses hay is not energy dense enough and they require a more concentrated source of calories, so hard feed is a must. The higher energy feeds are better for putting on weight as they provide more calories per kg, so feeds like NRM Sweetfeed and NRM Performa are ideal.
The only catch to this is that some horses can get ‘highly strung’ on these high energy feeds (even though they require them!). In this situation you can use a lower energy type feed such as NRM Coolade or NRM Lite-Brew and add fat sources such as Equi Jewel which is fantastic for putting on weight and is non heating so provides ‘cool energy’ to the diet.
By Gretel Webber
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