Monday 25th of March 2024
Horse Nutrition

Supporting the performance horse in recovery

Correct nutrition is vital for optimum performance and its role in supporting healing, and a subsequent return to competition, should not be underestimated. Adapting your horse’s diet and management are essential to keeping your horse sane whilst their workload is halted and potentially kept on box rest to aid healing. This is when providing nutritional support is an important part of your horse’s recovery and can help with getting him back to work.

Box-rest can be a trying time for both you and your horse, particularly as the added workload and pressure of trying to keep your horse happy while confined to their bed come at a time of uncertainty and concern over their underlying condition and it can disrupt your horse’s normal intestinal movement and bacterial population.

We know that sudden periods of time spent confined to a stable are a common cause of colic; it is therefore essential to manage your horse’s transition to box-rest carefully to ensure their gut keeps functioning as normal. Maintaining fibre intake with ad-lib forage or adding a low calorie chaff, such as Fibergy, to meals can help keep things moving and dividing concentrate feeds between several small meals. Traditional people reduced the hard feed ration by 50%, however we would advise treating every horse as an individual and tailoring their feeding to their individual needs. Ensure that all changes to your horse’s diet are made gradually; prebiotics in the form of Yea-Sacc or Digestive Support can help to maintain healthy hindgut function and pH.

Reduce calorie intake, a sudden decrease in your horse’s activity levels means that they need to eat fewer calories. If calorie intake is not reduced your horse may be at risk of rhabdomyolysis (or tying-up), and weight gain and will be less likely to settle into their new routine. Remember that if you are feeding less than the manufacturer’s recommended amount of a concentrate feed you need to ‘top up’ vitamin and mineral levels with a supplement or our Ultimate Balancer.

In particular for competition horses who are in the process of recovering from an injury, feed that is high in levels of key amino acids, which are the building blocks of protein and are essential for soft tissue construction, are vital to achieving ultimate performance.

Regener8 is formulated to support recovery of horses in full training or high intensity exercise. This cubed feed offers added nutrition to support the performance and rehabilitation of your horse and to help you get back to your training routine.

www.dodsonandhorrell.com

You may also like…

Join us on Facebook




Follow on Twitter