While you may consider 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 each horse’s nutritional needs will alter depending on age, weight and level of activity. Grass is the most crucial part of a horse diet. This incidentally is one of the most important components of his diet, which keeps his digestive system working correctly, and when we say forage we are meaning a combination of natural grass and cut hay.

Mature horses ordinarily eat about two to 2.5 % of their body weight in feed each day so a one thousand pond pound horse will eat around 20 to 25 pounds of feed each day. Food rich in nutrition are what horses require and high-fiber feeds should not be give to them, as it might upset the digestive system. In fact, a horse would be happy if you fed him with a food of hay/pasture forage amounting to one percent of his body weight. If your horse doesn’t do much work, they will do nicely on strictly grass, with no grain thrown in. 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. Thus, for the proper growth and development of the animal, his daily diet should comprise of pasture amounting to one half or more of his weight.

When you are thinking about a balanced diet for your horse, think about the nutrient content as well as quality standards of the forage. When you are aware of this, you can easily figure out the correct amounts of nutrients that would meet his specific requires. One of the best and most affordable sources of summer feed is pasture, which if it is good quality, can satisfy all the nutritionary requisites of the horse. How do you figure out how much pasture is required to feed a horse? Here is a rough guideline to help you: (using a weight of 1,000 - 1,200 pounds). Roughly the necessities are as follows: a mare and foal would require 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. Ensure that the hay is leafy and green in colored and cut in a systematic way, free of dust, moulds weeds or stubble. There is plenty of proteins, vitamins and minerals contained in this food. Alfalfa hay is great for horses in a developing phase as it is protein enriched by there could be excessive calcium content in relation to phosphorus. Too much calcium is not good for developing horses so if you’re not sure about hay quality, have it analyzed.