Our 3 Best Tips for Feeding The Endurance Horse Between Loops

When it comes to feeding the endurance horse, balancing the short amount of time and managing your horse’s calorie intake can be critical. How do top riders do it? Tarsha Walsh explains her best practices in three simple steps.

We hope you have had a chance to watch the ‘Feeding the 100-Mile Endurance Horse’ Masterclass with Tarsha Walsh. If you haven’t yet you can catch it here.

Here are Tarsha’s top tips for feeding during the loops:

1. Give your horse some grazing time or hay first. The hay will help to put some buffering saliva in the stomach and give it some level of protection from ulceration and reduce the potential negative impact of just putting grains into the stomach; and
2. Then, feed your ‘grain’. If your horse is happy to eat it, feed your horse’s normal grain between the loops, but keep the amount to 500 – 700 grams (for a 450 kg/990 lb horse). Don’t let them have more grain than this per loop.
   Keep any ‘sweetfeeds’ with the high-sugar, rapidly digested molasses until just before the last loop and only use it then if you need to get your horse to eat!
3. Give your electrolyte paste as late as possible (and if your horse has had a good drink, it is OK to give it right before you head out again) because the last thing you want to do is give your horse a paste that then stops them eating.

Tarsha discusses this further during the Masterclass starting at time stamp 52minutes, 50 seconds.

If you want more detail on ‘grains’ for endurance horses, head over to ‘5 Tips for Feeding The Endurance Horse’

 

 

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