01/03/2025
Just because your horse is fat, doesn't mean they don't need a small feed daily that includes:
🐎 Vitamin/mineral mix - our soils are depleted
🐎 Salt - it's an essential nutrient
🐎 Omega 3 fatty acid source if on poor quality pasture or predominantly on hay
These things are essential for all horses and won't make your horse fat if mixed in with a handful of Lucerne chaff, a cup of soaked beet pulp or a cup of lupin hull fibre pellets ❤️🐴
🐴 𝗙𝗮𝘁 𝗛𝗼𝗿𝘀𝗲𝘀 𝗡𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗧𝗼 𝗕𝗲 𝗙𝗲𝗱 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗗𝗮𝘆
🪣 It is incredibly common to come across instances where easy-keeping, fat, or obese horses receive zero in the form of a hard/bucket feed because "they don't need it."
📈 Sure, they don't need the additional calories that a lot of feeds offer, but what they do need at minimum as domestic horses is minerals and electrolytes (salt).
😱 "My horse will get fat if I give them ANY hard feed."
🐎 Without wanting to offend anyone here, but no, your horse will get fat because their forage intake is not restricted or managed appropriately or they are not exercising enough.
💠 A 500 kilogram horse at maintenance has a digestible energy requirement of approximately 70 MJ per day.
💠 Let's assume the pasture or hay this horse has access to provides 7 MJ per kilogram, which is probably conservative.
💠 If this same 500 kilogram horse has unrestricted access to pasture or hay, they have the ability to easily consume 3% of their body weight in forage per day, which = up to 15 kilograms!
💠 15 kilograms of pasture or hay at 7 MJ/KG means this horse has the ability to intake up to 105 MJ of energy in a 24-hour period.
💠 100 grams of beet pulp to carry a mineral supplement, some salt, and maybe some linseeds would give this horse a whopping 1.1 MJ of energy.
💠 100 grams of copra meal as a supplement carrier would provide (I hope you're sitting down because it's shocking)... a whole 1.5 MJ of energy.
🌾 So tell me... is the hard feed component of this horse's diet the issue or is it the poor forage management practices?
🌱 Easy-keeping horses should not be deprived of the basics just because they look fat and shiny on the outside. They should receive something like the following once daily:
➖ A mineral (and sometimes vitamin) supplement with high concentrations of what their base diet is lacking. This could be something like a powdered mineral mix with a low daily feed rate, or a pelleted ration balancer (such as PractiBALANCE or PractiCAL) that provides the necessary additives in pellet form that technically doesn't require a carrier ingredient such as beet pulp, copra meal, legumes, legume hulls etc.
➖ Sodium and chloride, or better known as salt. The drive to drink is triggered by sodium, which makes salt an incredibly vital component of any and all equine diets. At minimum, loose salt should be left out free-choice, but my preference is to add it to a token meal.
➖ An omega-3 fatty acid source is often necessary if pasture quality is not good or if the horse is on a predominantly hay reliant diet. Super easy-keeping horses often do better on linseeds rather than a flaxseed oil to keep their calorie intake further restricted.
🌿 Providing an easy-keeping horse or pony with the basics in a token meal (and by token, I mean token; you don't need to feed a kilogram of chaff or a big dipper of sweet feed because you want them to know that you love them) will not promote unwanted weight gain. Forage control with tools such as grazing muzzles, strip grazing, selective or restricted grazing times, and weighing hay and feed in addition to increased movement and circulation will do much more for your equine's waistline than anything you put in their bucket.
⏰ What would you like to read next? An article on the safest pasture grazing times for high-risk horses, or an article on short versus long pasture and what is most appropriate for high-risk horses?
