Stubbs

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There are various means of doing this, but weigh tapes are an easy option and one that every horse owner should invest in and use regularly to monitor changes. Divide the total daily amount into as many feeds, per day, as you possibly can. Keep meal sizes small for optimum digestion and to avoid overloading the horse’s system. As a guide, we recommend no more than 0.5kg of mix/cubes/balancer per 100kg bodyweight, per meal. Do not exceed a total of 1½ - 2 kg (3½ -4 lbs) per feed for a horse and 1¼ - 1½ kg (3 - 3½ lbs), for a pony (including additional chaff or sugar beet pulp, if fed). The suggested feeding levels are intended as a guide only. Always adjust your horse's feed ration to suit his temperament, the environmental conditions, his body condition and work load. If your horse is resting why not try one of the Dengie Hi-Fi products How Hard Are You Working Your Horse?

When winter sets in and the grass content lowers in the total diet then this is where many horses lose weight even though they look as if they are still grazing and eating enough hay or haylage. The months of December through March seem to be the worst, as grass availability is poor and the weather often turns a lot colder. It is very wise to assume that an old horse will lose weight if you don’t substitute quite a high proportion of hay and haylage with soaked high-fibre feed. How dental health affects feeding elderly horses Over-feeding cereal-based feeds in one meal can also cause digestive upsets, hence the rule of feeding little and often to horses. This is because cereal feeds contain a lot of starch and the horse has a relatively small capacity for absorbing it. If starch reaches the sensitive hind gut, problems such as laminitis and colic can occur. The amount and kind of work your horse or pony is doing is an important factor when calculating the quantity and type of feed to give. Faecal egg counts and the new saliva tests for tapeworms, done before deworming with a paste, will tell you if your worming programme is working. Making sure you do these on your old horse will tell you if you have a problem with resistance. If your worm counts identify species not normally found in adult horses such as ascarids or stongyloides, then you know you have a problem with resistance. SPILLERS HAPPY HOOFand HAPPY HOOF Molasses Freeare low calorie, short chop fibres ideal for laminitics.

Quick-soaking low sugar beet pulp

His teeth are getting down to the enamel, hence the need to preserve them but he does eat any feed put in front of him and doesn't quid (he had a trip to the RVC about 3 years ago to fix a problem tooth). So no apparent problem chewing at the moment. Thank you all for your replies, I had wondered why if grass nuts are 'just grass' why I had to be careful. My vet seemed to imply I could feed large quantities of soaked grass nuts and it was after he had gone I had wondered about the 'rugby ball volume'. Alfalfa is a widely recognised ingredient for promoting digestive health due to its natural buffering properties

The amount and kind of work your horse or pony is doing is an important factor when calculating the quantity and type of feed to give. Good quality fibre sources such as Alfa-A Original can meet the energy requirements of most horses and ponies in light to medium work. Just add a balancer or supplement to balance the diet. To avoid choke we suggest opting for a range of high-fibre and high-calorie feeds that can be soaked and fed as a wet mash. This mash can be more soup-like for horses that are prone to choke. Amounts are total daily weight. They are based on a 450 -550 kilogram horse eating around 10 kg of hay or haylage (2% of body weight) and can be split into two, three or four feeds per day. We have given low and high hay replacement figures as well as total replacement amounts. This will allow maximum flexibility. Perhaps the most problematic aspect of how to feed an old horse is what happens to its teeth. At the time they erupt in a young horse, a horse’s cheek teeth are approximately 4” in length (including the exposed/erupted part and the portion within the jaw). Over the years, munching grass and hay cause these teeth to wear down over time. By the time horses are in their late twenties to early thirties, most have lost the majority of their teeth. This is normal and part of the ageing process.The decision to soak hay should be made on the health of the horse. An old horse with COPD may need hay soaking or steaming for a very short time. A laminitic horse may need hay rinsing and soaking for a short time to lower the simple sugars in the hay to prevent insulin levels from spiking. Ideally hay replacers should be fed ad lib although this may not be practical for good doers. Equally, weighing your horse’s ration, at least to start with, is a good way of ensuring you are feeding enough. As a general guide, 1kg of hay replacer can be used to replace 1kg of hay. Total forage intake should not be restricted to less than 1.5% of current bodyweight per day on a dry matter basis.In practice, this equates to around 8.5-9kg of hay replacer for a 500kg horse with no grazing once you've accounted for the water content (all forage and forage replacers contain some water which doesn't count towards the horse's forage intake). However, these are minimum amounts and some horses and ponies will need more than this - speak to a nutritionist for more advice. SPILLERS hay replacers Digestible Energy is the estimated energy (calorie) content of the feed and is quoted on an “as fed” basis in Mega Joules per kilogram (MJ/kg). As a guide, a Stubbs scoopof short chopped fibre weighs approximately 300-500g whereas the same scoop of a pelleted option (such as grass nuts or alfalfa pellets) weighs approximately 2kg.

When Kim brought Roxy she suspected gastric ulcers and when looking at different feeds to promote digestive health and condition she decided on Healthy Tummy. Now all her horses are fed Healthy Tummy! Wheat Bran (provides high calories and works well with hay and grass pellets, and beet pulp due to the phosphorous content) If an old horse is not prone not laminitis or is a very good doer, then using lots of time eating grass will be an easy way to feed them. Leafy grass is softer and easier to chew than hay or haylage so many older horses maintain their weight more easily on spring and summer grass. The classic sign of ineffective chewing is quidding – the formation of balls of partially chewed hay that are too large to be swallowed and drop out of the mouth when the horse tries to eat. However, quidding is a rather advanced sign and may not always appear to start with.

Horses vary in how wet they like their soaked feeds. Some like them just moist enough to barely crumble, while others will eat/drink their feed in soup consistency. As a general rule, the more water the better. This makes the feed similar to pasture, improves digestibility, helps protect against choking and keeps an old horse well-hydrated. Good hydration stops food from moving slowly in the guts and reduces the risk of spasmodic or impaction colic. How long will it take to soak old horse feed? Although some laminitis-prone horses will tolerate Copra, the starch level in Copra is sometimes too high for it to be a good choice for all laminitis-prone horses. Where an elderly horse has well-controlled insulin levels, then Copra can be used, but care must be taken with this feed. If you can’t test, then understanding the effect soaking has on hay and choosing to soak for short periods of time, will preserve the nutrient status of the hay. It is important to use a protocol which will not leach high levels of water-soluble nutrients from the hay.