While you may believe this is a easy thing to do - feed your horse - you’d be surprised at the amount of horse owners that don’t know about the fundamental principles. There is no real rule of thumb for feeding, as all horse’s nutrition requires will vary depending on age, size and level of activity. Grass is the most fundamental part of a horse diet. Being one of the most essential factors to keep its digestive system to function optimally, grass ordinarily means natural pasture and cut hay.

big horses usually eat about 2 to 2.5 % of their body weight in food each day so a 1,000 pound horse will consume roughly twenty to twenty five pounds of food per day. Horses require good nutrition so this means high quality food, not low quality high fiber food (which can interfere with correct digestion).

Ideally, your horse would be healthy if you fed him with 1% of his body weight made up of hay/pasture forage. In case your horse is not employed in much activity, then the right feed is only forge without any grains. On the other hand, horses which are active, or at the growing or breeding stage, require additional supplemental feeds over and above the grass like grains or concentrate supplements. Think about it this way, forages should supply at least one half or more of the total size of the feed eaten everyday for optimum growth and development.

The nutrient content and the quality of the forage are crucial considerations when you are planning to give your horse a stable diet. When you are aware of this, you can easily figure out the correct amounts of nutrients that would meet his specific needs. One of the best and most affordable sources of summer feed is pasture, which if it is good quality, can satisfy all the nutrition requisites of the horse. To know the correct quantity of pasture that your horse needs, use this rough guideline, which uses the weight of 1000 to 1200 pounds. Roughly the necessities are as follows: a mare and foal would need 1.75 to 2 acres; yearlings would need 1.5 to 2 acres and weanlings 0.5 to 1 acre.

Winter food of course would be cut hay, and again, high quality if you can provide it. The hay which you food should be cut uniformly and have green leaf-like appearance and there should not be any dust, moulds, weeds or stubble accompanying the hay. This food is normally rich in protein, minerals and vitamins.

There is plenty of proteins, vitamins and minerals contained in this food. Yes, you can use alfalfa hay, but be mindful about the higher protein content if you are feeding to young developing horses, as it may contain an excessive amount of calcium in relationship to phosphorus. Too much calcium is not good for growing horses so if you’re not sure about hay quality, have it analyzed.

Tags: Horses