Adjusting the Amount of Feed You Give Your Horse From Day to Day
Did you know it’s perfectly ok to adjust the amount of feed you give your horse from day to day??
In fact it’s something we recommend you do, for a couple of reasons. First is that it helps keep your horse’s behavior level and calm. Horses are funny creatures in that they will express the amount of calories/energy in their diet in their behavior. Which means if you feed more than they need, you may cause a change in behavior, with potentially more hyperactivity than you might want.
To help prevent this, you can simply adjust how much you feed according to how much work is being done. Using FeedXL, you can create balanced diets (using the same ingredients with minor modifications) for rest days, light work days and harder work days, with less calories in the diet for rest days and increasing calories for light and harder work days. Then feed each diet according to the work your horse does on any particular day. That way you will be matching you horse’s calorie intake with his requirements and should see lovely level behavior, regardless of days off.
The second reason we recommend you adjust feed according to work is for weight control… because if you feed excess calories to a horse or pony you will potentially also get weight gain, particularly in easy keepers!
An added benefit is that you will save on feed costs by not feeding extra on days it isn’t needed. Bonus!
So while we advocate keeping feed consistent and not making sudden changes in WHAT is fed, don’t be afraid to adjust AMOUNT fed!
For more detail have a read of our article ‘Feeding For Behaviour‘.
Do you have a question or comment? Do you need help with feeding?
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