Feeding Your Horse within the Winter

As temperatures drop, feeding your horse presents a brand new set of challenges. As an alternative of grazing all day on nutritious inexperienced grass, he’ll most likely be switching to a weight-reduction plan of hay. Many horses shed some pounds with out entry to limitless pasture. As well as, impaction colic resulting from dehydration presents a really actual threat. Learn on to remain forward of those dangers this winter.

Hay Retains Your Horse Heat within the Winter

Not solely does hay meet your horse’s forage wants, it additionally helps preserve him heat. The method of digesting fiber within the hindgut produces super quantities of warmth, virtually like carrying round slightly wooden range. Don’t consider anybody who tells you to feed corn to maintain your horse heat—it doesn’t!

Whereas round-bale hay presents a handy technique of feeding many horses for a very long time within the winter, be choosy about high quality when shopping for it. Many are saved outdoor, which is OK for cattle use, however hay for horses should be saved below cowl to keep away from mildew spores that trigger respiratory illness and sickness.

Moreover, cattle-quality hay may be very stemmy and tends to be unpalatable and wasted by means of trampling. Store round for spherical bales that resemble your small-bale hay high quality. Utilizing a bale feeder will assist stop a lot of the hay from being wasted.

Hay Alternate options

In the event you don’t have room to retailer hay for all the winter and end up confronted with a hay scarcity, there are some options out there. Beet pulp, senior feed, hay cubes and hay pellets are all good methods to supply forage and stretch your hay provide. Take into account that none of those present long-stem forage, so begin utilizing them to stretch your hay provide earlier than you run out fully.

Nutritional vitamins & Minerals

With out entry to inexperienced grass, horses could turn out to be poor in nutritional vitamins A and E, that are the primary to go after grass is baled into hay and saved for lengthy intervals. A ration balancer or vitamin/mineral complement are choices to contemplate for winter feeding in case your horse isn’t fed a business equine grain combine, which is already fortified with nutritional vitamins and minerals.

Moreover, your horse ought to at all times have free entry to salt. Since ice-cold salt blocks can turn out to be unappealing to lick, the best choice is a feeder with free salt. Horses have a tendency to control their salt consumption very nicely, and this additionally retains them consuming loads of water.

Hydration Nation

A very powerful nutrient in your horse’s weight-reduction plan is water. With out staying correctly hydrated, the contents of the intestines can dry out as they cross by means of, inflicting impaction colic. Though that is typically the simplest sort to resolve with a vet’s help, each horse proprietor would like to avoid a case of colic.

In case your temperatures commonly fall under freezing, examine water troughs not less than twice a day, breaking apart any floor ice. Higher but, use insulated buckets or float a trough heater within the water. Though horses will drink very chilly water, they’ll drink extra whether it is within the 40 to 65-degree Fahrenheit vary.

Be extra-careful about trough heater cords, ensuring they’re wrapped in wire or conduit so mice and horses can’t nibble on them. Stick your hand in every day to examine for any wayward electrical present, which is able to cease horses from consuming instantly.

Winter Weight Upkeep for Your Horse

Many horses shed kilos within the winter as they burn extra energy to take care of their core temperature. Be ready for this and have additional hay and grain readily available if you want to enhance rations.

You may additionally contemplate switching to alfalfa hay or supplementing your grass hay with it (versus including extra grain). Alfalfa boosts the energy per pound of hay, whereas nonetheless making certain sufficient forage is within the weight-reduction plan.

If you’re ready for the challenges of feeding your horse within the winter, you gained’t be taken without warning when Mom Nature throws you a curveball this season.

This text about feeding your horse in winter appeared within the November/December 2022 difficulty of Horse Illustrated journal. Click on right here to subscribe!