5 Top Tips for Winter Feeding

WINTER FEEDING

It is important to bear in mind that for all horses the winter can be a challenging time; a combination of wind, rain, mud, dark nights, diminishing grass quality coupled with limited grazing and longer stabled periods can mean that maintaining your horse’s health, weight and fitness can be a challenge.

There are, however, ways that we as horse owners can help to minimise the weight and health issues that can be associated with the colder weather. For most horses, we believe there are five key concepts to keep in mind when it comes to winter feeding;

1. Compensate for the calories lost in the colder weather.

The obvious choice is to increase the volume of your current hard feed in order to provide more digestible energy, however it is important to bear in mind that your horse’s stomach is about the size of a rugby ball, so ideally the concentrate feed that you offer shouldn’t be more than 2kg per meal.

Most horse owners who choose this method are able to feed several feeds throughout the day and so can break the larger volume of feed up into smaller portions, however many of us do not have this luxury.

2. Feed ingredients to aid digestive function and help to provide warmth from the inside.

Forage is a fantastic form of internal ‘central heating’ for horses and ponies, due to the fact that when fermented in the hind gut, heat is produced as a by-product.

In turn this reduces the amount of calories burnt to maintain core body temperature. It is recommended that horses eat 1.5% of their bodyweight in forage per day and so increasing the amount of hay or haylage that you offer throughout the winter ensures that you can keep forage intake high while grazing diminishes.

Feeding supplementary feed such as Dodson & Horrell’s new Winter Health Mash, and using warm water rather than cold to soak, can make a significant difference in cold weather, particularly if your horse has been stood out in the field or working hard earlier during the day.

The addition of prebiotics, mint and fennel can also help maintain a healthy digestive function, when there is more reliance on dried forage and poorer quality grass.

3. Boost the antioxidants in the diet to support the immune system.

It’s always a good idea to provide nutritional support over the winter to help reduce the risk of health issues such as colds. Most high quality, complete feeds contain a range of different vitamins in order to help meet daily nutritional requirements.

If, however, you are feeding less than the recommended daily amount, adding a high specification balancer is a really good investment, remember to choose one with plenty of antioxidant support such as Ultimate Balancer which contains our QLC package.

The addition of herbs such as Echinacea can also help to support your horse’s immune system. The herb is reputed for being helpful in the recovery processes and is considered a good ‘pick me up’ for equines that are under the weather.

4. Ensure all the dietary components for hoof quality are supplied.

Everyone knows the saying ‘no foot, no horse’ and during the winter horses have to cope with all different kinds of ground conditions. In order to give your horse the best chance of coping with the changing environments it is important to make sure you are supplying all the key components at the recommended feeding rates to allow your horses to build strong and healthy hooves.

A high quality, complete feed should have effective levels of biotin, zinc and methionine already incorporated but if you are not feeding up to the recommended rates, it is advisable to top up with a high specification balancer to increase the nutritional value. Alternatively if hooves are a particular area of concern for your horse then adding a specific hoof supplement is advisable. 

5. Maximise ways to increase moisture intake

Water can be forgotten about during the winter as it tends to be kept at the forefront of our minds during hot weather. In very cold weather making sure water is accessible and finding ways to prevent buckets of water and troughs from getting frozen over can be a challenge. By incorporating soaked sugarbeet pulp or a soaked mash into your horses diet, they are able to benefit from both increased fibre and water intake.

A lot of horses would rather go thirsty than drinking icy cold water, so try and encourage your horse to drink by offering tepid water at some point each day if you can. Lack of water intake is one of the most common causes of colic during the winter. Electrolytes are useful for working horses and can help encourage horse to drink.

It can be difficult to know when to start making some of the above changes to your horses feeding regime however by monitoring when the average temperature starts to drops and the grass growth slows down we can get a good indication.

Monitoring your individual horse’s weight and condition can also give you an idea of when to start making some adjustments. A horse’s condition is determined by his level of muscle development and ‘topline,’ as well as by his actual bodyweight and the amount of fat covering the neck, ribs and quarters. A horse in good condition should have well developed muscles and have the ribs just covered so that you can feel them easily but not see them.