Keeping your horse healthy starts with basic nutrition. Choosing the right feed for your horse is not an easy task because it needs to be based on your horse’s age, workload, and the quality of your hay. You have to make sure that you include plenty of bulk and roughage in the feed, while keeping to a constant feeding routine.
In addition, you often give the same feed to all of your horses. You may have to alter it depending on the size of the horse and the workload. Inclusion of certain foods like alfalfa in the diet can also help keep horses healthy and keep diseases at bay.
Look at what I feed Freedom (6 quarts of TC Senior, about 20 lbs of hay and sometimes alfalfa pellets) compared to his pasture mate Willow (half a quart of TC Ration balancer). And yet she’s pretty round and he’s a good weight but hardly fat.
Here are some tips to help you choose the right feed for your horse, courtesy of Animal Health Company.
Liz, is there a “quiz” that you can answer to get results? this is so unclear to me. horse is 1000lbs, light work etc.
Yes. There’s an online program called Feedxl.com. You can buy a one month subscription (it’s around $15) and you can put in all the things you are currently feeding along with your horse’s work regime, etc. It tells you if you are missing any nutrients or if you are overfeeding. I use it every time I’m thinking about changing feeds or a horse is working more/less.