Equitack and Animal Feeds

23/06/2025

*Creature Feature*
Want your pet to be the star of the show?
Send us a pic and a bit about why your pet or horse is special, and your furry friend could star in our upcoming Creature Feature!
From dogs and cats to horses and donks, rats, rabbits and birds... if it's fed by Equitack, we want your story!
Drop us your pet's story and a good pic in a pm, and watch out for your pet's next claim to fame!

19/06/2025

From show jumping to polocrosse... we're being treated to a spectacle of equestrian sport lately!

All ready for the Westown Square High Goal Polocrosse Tournament 2025

📍 Location: Shongweni Club
📅 20-22 June

18/06/2025

Bring out the blankets, winter is here!

To clip or not to clip?
At this time of the year our horses all sport a thick, fluffy coat to protect themselves through the cold. This is a natural way for the horse to adapt to the colder weather and keep themselves warm during winter. When cold they stand the hair follicles up and the warm body heat gets trapped in this space, creating a warm layer and protecting them from the cold. This is the horse's natural way of keeping warm.

We come along and stable and blanket horses to minimize the growth of the horse's coat and to protect them from the cold. Keeping your horse warm minimizes the 'fuel' account by lowering the amount of feed they burn to keep warm.

The benefits of clipping are:

➡horses look amazing for equine competition and events.
➡ horses recover much better from exercise as they sweat less without all that fluffy hair.
➡With sweating less during exercise they loose less sodium chloride essential for your horse and the normal supplementation of salt is necessary as opposed to possibly not giving enough with excessive sweat loss.

When do I need to clip?
When you are exercising your horse regularly and it's hairy coat is causing it to sweat profusely and he/she is taking a long time to recover after exercise. Standing around with a long, sweaty and hairy coat also puts your horse's immunity under pressure.

How do I manage my clipped horse?
➡ remember we have removed his/her defence mechanism of keeping warm so we have a responsibility to keep him/her warm. A day rug will be necessary and a nice warm blanket in the evening.
➡ For those people that do not need a full clip there are other clip shapes available that leave hair on the horse to assist keeping them warm while allowing them to recover where they need to.

Winter is cold and while we want our equine athletes to look their best, when clipped we need to provide them warmth to cope.

14/06/2025

A reminder that we're closed on Monday the 16th June for the public holiday.
So pop in today to stock up!

12/06/2025

A great addition to the Spurwing Horse Feeds range . Available in 10kg bags

‼️ Exciting News: Our New Spurwing Horse Feed Balancer 25% Has Arrived! 💪🌿‼️

🌟 Absolutely molasses-free — no hidden sugars, just clean, concentrated nutrition. Perfect for horses needing a low-sugar, high-performance diet.

🌟 This powerful balancer is specially formulated to complement hay or grazing by delivering the essential nutrients often missing from forage-based diets.

🌟 With 25% high-quality protein and a precise amino acid profile, it supports muscle development, tissue repair, and performance — ideal for horses in regular work or those on calorie-controlled plans.

🌟 Packed with vital vitamins and minerals like calcium, magnesium, selenium, and B-vitamins, it’s perfect for easy keepers, horses prone to laminitis, or those managing metabolic conditions.

🌟 Built on a fibre-first foundation, it promotes digestive health and steady energy release — no sugar spikes, no fillers, just functional fuel.

Spurwing Balancer comes in the following sizes:
⚡️ 10kg Bag
⚡️ 40kg Bag

11/06/2025

Hay you? Yes you!
Pop in to pick up some of our quality teff, eragrostis and oat hay.

11/06/2025

Did some-bunny say OAT HAY?
Pop in to grab the best oat hay treat for your bunnies, guinea pigs and other hay-munching critters!

11/06/2025

Who doesn't love a donk?

Donkeys are hindgut fermenters like horses. However they have a very slow metabolic rate, chewing slowly and only needing to eat 16-18 hours a day as opposed to 22 hours of a horse.
Donkeys have very powerful jaws and teeth and are able to chew rough and longer grasses into finer particles to be digested efficiently in their hindgut. They often eat plant and grass types that other herbivores are unable to eat and digest, making them very efficient and they are able to withstand tough conditions.
Having such an efficient digestive tract and having a slower metabolic rate, donkeys only require 1.5% of their body weight per day, a horse requires 3%. A 150kg donkey only requires about 2.3kg of dry matter intake a day.
Donkeys are not designed to eat food that is high in sugar and starch and when kept as pets they often suffer from metabolic diseases and obesity. They are very sensitive to sugar and starches and it is advised to keep them away from commercial diets but rather feed hay, a balancer and roughage cube.
As donkeys in South Africa can suffer from a vitamin and mineral imbalance, it is advised to feed a balancer to them, recommended 250g a day.
Another point of interest to note is that donkeys are extremely sensitive to disturbances in their herd dynamics. Donkeys form deep connections with each other or other horses and when separated they can pine and even die. So watch who your donkey is attached to and be mindful of separating them.

❤️

09/06/2025

Keep warm everyone!

08/06/2025

06/06/2025

Cold weather incoming! Some of us love it, some of us hate it, but like it or not, winter is upon us!

The sudden change in weather from balmy to icy makes many horses reduce the amount of water they drink. In order to avoid colic, keep these handy tips in mind to increase your horse's water intake.

Ask our friendly ladies for suitable products.

04/06/2025

Great quality hay available at Equitack!

https://www.facebook.com/share/1ERyWGmd5K/

How to combat the winter cold weather for your horse.
Just like us horses energy requirements go up with the colder weather and your horse can lose weight if we do not provide the extra calories they lose in keeping warm.

For horses that do not have access to large amounts of space and grazing the impact of the grass value is less due to the fact that those horses are very much 'fed in the bag' most of the time and the grazing factor is not counted for much nutritional value.

For those that rely on grazing remember with the colder weather and less rain the nutritional value of the grazing does decrease and we need to provide extra good quality hay to provide those calories they are losing.

Ways to combat condition loss in winter are:
➡ keeping your horse warm with blanketing. Horses use a much higher amount of calories to keep warm and can lose weight if we keep them on the same daily intake but allow them to become cold.
➡ Feeding extra hay. Horses are hind gut fermenters and when they eat hay the increased fermentation in the hindgut increases their body temperature and keeps them warm.
➡ Increasing concentrate intake as you increase workload so they can utilize the extra feed to build muscle.
➡ Always blanket a clipped horse, even with a day rug during the day so your horse does not become cold. Clipping horses helps hugely for them to recover during work, but puts them at risk of becoming cold without their fluffy winter coats.

Horses are very resilient to the cold and seem to cope far better in the cold than the heat. It is said that they cope well between 5 - 15 degrees. As long as we feed them correctly they do not lose body condition and can look amazing even living out in cold conditions.