What is best to feed in really cold weather to help your horse stay warm? Well, the answer is hay or any type of high fibre forage really. The fibre in hay and other forages is digested in your horse’s hindgut via the process of bacterial fermentation. A by-product of this fermentation process is HEAT! […]
Should you cook cereal grains for your horse? Cooking cereal grains before you feed them to your horse is very important. It improves how easy they are for your horse to digest and drastically reduces the chance of them causing negative effects in your horse’s hindgut. How to cook cereal grains for proper digestion in […]
If your horse is going off its feed, did you know that it might be the salt? We all know horses need salt, but you can feed too much of a good thing. And the thing with salt is, when a horse needs it, it tastes really good. But when they are getting too much, […]
The short answer is yes! Here is how: How Vitamin B1 affects your horse’s gut bacteria Vitamin B1 has been observed to have an influence on behaviour in multiple animal species, including horses. A horse will meet its vitamin B1 requirements via the vitamin B1 it eats in its diet and from vitamin B1 produced […]
Gastric ulcers are an all-too-common problem facing our horses. While feeding and general management play a huge role in squamous ulcer (ulcers found in the upper part of the stomach) treatment and ongoing prevention, ulcer medications that reduce acidity in the stomach to create a more favourable environment for ulcer healing are certainly an essential […]
The previous article was about the 3 things you need to build muscle in your horse; work, to stimulate the muscle to want to grow; leucine, the branch chain amino acid that switches on muscle protein synthesis; and a ready supply of the other amino acids needed to build new muscle. Which left us with […]
If you want to help your horse build more muscle, you might need to pay more attention to your horse’s branch chain amino acid intake. Muscle is a beautiful thing, be it on your horse or yourself. It provides strength, power, speed and it looks great. It is also very functional, providing stability and balance […]
Have you ever wondered about the impact of cold weather conditions on a horse’s calorie requirements? Although poorly documented, observations suggest that environmental factors play a significant role in how much energy horses need. This means that if you’ve ever asked yourself how many calories does my horse need in winter, the answer could depend […]
In a word, yes, phytoestrogens affect mare fertility! Both industry observation and published science support this. BUT, we need to be very careful not to just throw all phytoestrogens (which are simply estrogen like compounds found in plants) into the one bucket. There are many different phytoestrogens, but they don’t all affect fertility. Some, like […]
This little vitamin, B6, is not talked about much in equine nutrition, mainly because we still don’t know exactly what a horse’s dietary requirement is. We also assume a large part of their requirement is fulfilled by the Vitamin B6 produced by the bacteria in their hindgut. We do know B6 is important for building […]
