February 09 midwest horse digest Page 9
Feeding Forages-
The why, when and what for!
By: Kelly Ann Graber B.S., P.A.S per day as a bare minimum. If the horse is in short in the calorie department. Your horses’
Forage as the Foundation
heavier training, growing, reproducing or body condition will tell you this.
The overall health of our horses and
lactating the percentages of feed required for
proper gas-trointestinal function is reliant on
body weight will increase thereby increasing
The Economics of Forage
using forages (hay or pasture) as the
the amount of hay or forage needed.
Most importantly to some are the
economics. Generally speaking, forage in the
foundation of your feeding program. A horse
Building on the Foundation form of hay or pasture is much less expensive
has no requirement for cereal grain (oats,
Hopefully the importance of forage than grain. Even if you pay $5/bale for hay…
corn, barley) in his diet, but cannot exist
is now un-derstood and we can build upon where can you find a decent bag of grain for
without forage. One of the most common
that. Before you select your grain or diet $5? So, by feeding good quality hay and
mistakes that people make in feed-ing horses
balancer you need to think about what kind plenty of it, you may be able to decrease your
is not providing enough good quality forage.
and quality of hay you are feeding. Again, use feed bill by only hav-ing to feed a concentrated
We as horse owners have forgotten or never
the forage as the foundation and evaluate amount of a diet balancer type product. Pound
learned that horses are forage eating animals
through analysis or average comparison, your for pound, hay is usually your cheapest feed
who when left to their own
forages’ attributes as far as source and really is what horses are meant to
accord will “graze” about 18
protein, calories and major and eat!
hours out of every 24 hour
trace mineral levels. Many
day.
horses can meet or exceed pro-
By: Kelly Ann Graber B.S., P.A.S. Equine
Horses have a
tein, calorie and even some
Nutrition Consultant for Progressive Nutrition
very small stomach that
major mineral requirements
To request a seminar or simply ask a question
requires them to eat many
through good quality forage fed
contact Diane Logue at
small meals all day long to
in adequate amounts. If you are
tizmarequine@hotmail.com
function at its best. These
in this situation, you may not
meals are not meant to be
need to feed any cereal grain
grain, but for-age. A horse
(corn, oat, etc) and only need to
will graze a little, rest a little,
use a diet balancer to meet the
graze a little and so on.
trace mineral, fat and amino
When we confine a horse to
acid needs that the forage may
a stall or dry lot, we really
not be providing. If we use
need to mimic mother nature
forage as the foundation, the
as best we can, and let them
only reason we would even feed
“graze” and eat those small
meals all day long. In addi-
Feeding adequate forage can
grain to our horses is to make
tion, the horse has a very
reduce many common vices.
up for the difference in what our
horse needs and what the
long and coiling intestinal
forage is providing. We know
system that when empty is much more prone
forages tend to fall short in the trace mineral
to twists and torsions. Keeping forage moving
and amino acid categories so we would want
through the gut all day long can also help
to add these things back, but we may only
reduce these types of colics, similar to when
need to add additional grain if the forage falls
we have water in a garden hose… it becomes
more difficult to twist or kink that hose. To
accomplish our goal of keeping the GI tract full,
we can either feed them every 2-4 hours or
give them enough hay so that when you go to
feed them again, they haven’t quite cleaned up
what you had given them pre-viously. This
means that they were able to “graze” all day or
night just as their system is meant to. This
practice can reduce many common vices like
wood chewing, pawing and cribbing. In addi-
tion, horses are happier, healthier and more
will-ing to work for you.
An average ma-ture horse in light
riding requires about 2% of it’s body weight per
day in feed. On a 1000 lb horse that would
equate to 20 lbs of some-thing per day. If you
are feeding 5 pounds of grain, that would
mean that a bare minimum of 15 pounds of
hay should be supplied. If you feed less grain,
more hay would be required. An average flake
of grass weighs about 3 pounds, while an
average flake of alfalfa weighs about 4
pounds. This means that somewhere around 4
to 5 flakes of hay per 1000 lbs should be fed
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