Creating a diet
Feeding horses correctly requires a good eye, and a good understanding of the nutrients required by the horse. To calculate a ration fully and in detail requires a lot of technical knowledge and information and so we would always advise discussing your feeding needs with a nutritional advisor first.
However that doesn’t mean you need to be left totally in the dark. Here are a few guidelines to give a good idea of the amounts to feed:
1. Weigh your horses and assess his body condition
2. Then look at how much food in total you should be providing - this includes both your hay and concentrate feed.
Overweight horses/ponies: 1.5% of bodyweight in feed per day.
Good doers or horses in light-medium work: 2% of bodyweight per day
Poor doers or those in hard work: 2.5% of bodyweight per day
3. Then assess your workload and check you are assessing the level accurately.
Level of work | Typical activity |
Maintenance | Horses and ponies not working. |
Light | Hacking or leisure riding (approximately 1-2 hours per day). Low-level competitive work (e.g. prelim/novice dressage, novice showing, showjumping up to 1m). |
Medium | Higher-level competitive work (e.g. medium dressage, showjumping above 1m, eventing at advanced one-day events, endurance 80km rides). |
Hard | Top levels of competition (e.g. Grand Prix dressage, 3 star and 4 star eventing). |
4. Now divide the ration between forage and concentrates:
Workload | Forage % | Concentrates % | Concentrate type |
Maintenance (no work) | 80-100 | 0-20 | Low energy |
Light work | 70-100 | 0-30 | Low energy |
Medium work | 40-60 | 40-60 | Low-medium energy |
Hard work | 30-50 | 50-70 | Medium-high energy |
5. Check you know the weight of your scoop.
For example a scoop of cubes could weigh 1.5kg but a scoop of a high fibre meal could be as little as 400g.
6. Calculate
Your horse is a 500kg, good doer, with an even temperament.
Workload: Light work-riding for an hour most days and low level shows most weekends.
500 x 2% of body weight = 10kg of feed in total per day
70-100% to be provide in forage = this equals 7-10kg of hay per day.
0-30% concentrates = 0-3kg per day.
Take-home message
Generally horses that are very good doers will need the lower level ends of the concentrate spectrum and if this is the case make sure you include a balancer or broad spectrum balanced vitamin and mineral supplement to ensure their daily essentials are maintained.
Once again all horses are individuals and thus you may need to adapt from the guidelines above based on your situation.
