Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Farm & Home News with Rex Dollar

Summer time is here and many people have started to ride their horses on a regular basis, going on trail rides and attending horse shows.

Horses under different working conditions will require different nutritional diets, which leads to the question "How much should I feed my horse?"

To determine how much to feed a horse will depend on the class of horse. Is the horse mature, idle, working, growing or in a stage of reproduction. Listed below are six things to remember when feeding your horse.

Horses should be fed according to body weight.

Mature horses being fed to maintain their body condition should consume 1.5-2.0% of body weight in forage and 0-0.5% body weight concentrate as opposed to a mature horse being fed under intense working conditions should consume 0.75-1.5% body weight of forage and 1.0-2.0% body weight in concentrate. Recommendations for lactating mares and young horses are available a the Extension office - ask for publication FSA-3038.

Horses should be fed according to body condition scores.

Body condition scores range from 1 (poor) - 9(extremely fat). The ideal condition score for most horses is 5 to 7. The description of a condition score 6 would be a slight crease down the back, ribs can not be seen, but can be felt, with little fat on the neck, shoulder and withers, and with moderate fat on the tail head.

As a non-ruminant herbivore, the horse innately has a need to forage or chew long roughage.

A horse requires one percent of its body weight daily of long stemmed roughage to allow for normal activity of the digestive tract.

Feed should be provided by weight, not volume.

Standard volumes of feed stuffs do not weigh the same due to their density differences. For example a standard three-pound coffee can containing 32 pounds per bushel oats will weigh 2.5 pounds and 38 pounds per bushel oats will weigh 4 pounds. Also, the same three-pound coffee can filled with sweet feed may differ in weight and nutrient composition as a can of pelleted feed.

Horses should not be fed concentrates at a level more than 0.75 percent of body weight at any one feeding.

If a horse's nutrient requirement exceeds this limit, the feeding time and amount may be split into two or more times per day to limit the amount being fed at one time.

Avoid abrupt ration changes. When changing a ration, some changes can be made almost immediately, some require a few days, and others require a week or longer. Changing from one concentrate to another can generally be done in a few days if they are close or equal in energy levels. However, changing a horse from a high fiber diet to a high energy diet may require a week or more.