3. Provide forage while travelling to help maintain gastric and digestive health and if travelling long distances water should be offered regularly too. Try adding some apples and carrots to the water to encourage intake!
4. Once at the event try to keep to as similar a routine as possible, for example although turn out won’t be available try grazing in hand.
5. Don’t be tempted to make changes to your horse’s feed prior to the event as this could increase the risk of colic or tying up. There is no need to increase energy consumption over what is required for training.
6. Remember the importance of forage which shouldn’t drop down below 15g/kg bodyweight (dry matter) per day.
7. Keep meal sizes small no more than 2kg and if your horse becomes stressed and over faced by the occasion try splitting their ration down into smaller meal sizes.
8. On the day of cross country avoid feeding a concentrate feed within 3 hours of your start time, although a small amount of forage and/or chopped fibre can be offered and may help protect the stomach from gastric acid during galloping.
9. Maintaining hydration prior to the cross country phase is very important. Feeding a fibre based mash such as SPILLERS Speedy-Mash Fibre can increase water intake and also encourage additional water consumption although make sure they are adapted to eating it prior to the event.
10. Post cross country water can be offered pretty quickly after initially cooling and can keep being offered whilst you carry on washing them down. This window of opportunity to get water back on board is very important as their thirst response will be at its strongest.
11. After you have offered water, washed your horse off and they have stopped blowing and their heart rate has returned to normal you can offer your horse a pick at the grass. You can then walk them back to the stables and let them have some forage in the peace and quiet of their stable making sure plenty of fresh water is available. Then later on get them out for a walk around and another pick at grass before offering them any concentrate feed.
12. Commercial electrolytes can be used according to their instructions although beware of using syringes if you have a shy drinker as you can dehydrate them more. Simple table salt is ideal and can be added to their evening feed.
13. Exact recommendations for electrolytes are difficult and will depend on sweating rates of the individual horse which are of course heavily influenced by the heat and humidity. Weighing your horse before and after exercise can give you an estimate of sweat loss if you times weight loss in kilograms by 0.9. A good rule of thumb is to replace 2g of sodium (5g of table salt) per litre of sweat lost.
We hope you found these tips useful and good luck to everyone competing at The Mitsubishi Motors Badminton Horse Trials or any other 3 day event this season.
