Horse Nutrition

When determining a nutrition plan for your horse don’t forget about forages! Now that spring is here, the forages in your pasture should be starting to take off. Pasture is the best and most natural way for your horse to get nutrients. A good quality pasture is more than adequate to meet the major nutrient requirements of most classes of horses. Having a good quality pasture is key though. You need to have good weed control, plenty of forage available for them to graze and making sure that your horse doesn’t overgraze the pasture. Pastures are typically inadequate in certain minerals like salt, copper and zinc so supplying your horse with a salt block and a forage balancer or vitamin-mineral supplement is a good idea. The nutrient content of a pasture is highly variable as seasons change. There are cool season grasses like tall fescue, orchardgrass and timothy that grow in the fall and spring and there are warm season grasses that grow in the summer like bermudagrass, dallisgrass and crabgrass. You can take clipping of your pastures to determine the quality that is there for your horse to graze. You might notice shifts in your horse’s body condition as your pasture quality changes throughout the year. Horses will typically gain weight in the spring and summer and then lose weight when pasture quality is the lowest, in the winter. If you feed supplements or offer hay then you might not notice a shift in body weight since they can maintain with supplements. One thing to remember if your horse has insulin resistance then choosing the time of day that you allow your horse to graze is important. Through the afternoon hours until the early evening, non-structural carbohydrates are at their highest in the plant so consider grazing you horse first thing in the morning or letting them out at night. You can also manage non-structural carbohydrates in hay by soaking it in water for at least 30 minutes but remember to dump put the water before feeding. Also, with obese horses you might need to limit their grazing to only a few hours, limit the space they are allowed to graze, put a grazing muzzle on them or even dry lot them depending on severity.

Consult your livestock agent for pasture management, establishment or grazing recommendations.