Knowing your horse’s body weight is crucial for proper diet formulation. Access to an actual scale can be tricky, but luckily there are alternative methods to estimate your horse’s body weight.
To measure your horse’s body weight, we recommend using the heart girth measurement (around the horse) plus length, and use these values in the following formula:
Body Weight = (Girth2 x Length) / 11877
Did you know – in FeedXL you can simply enter your measurements and the calculator will do the work for you!
To obtain the girth and length measurements of your horse, you will need a tape measure and possibly an assistant to hold the horse & help holding the tape.
If you don’t have a suitable tape measure that your horse is comfortable with, you can use any type of string (for example baling string) to take the primary measurements and mark the start and end points for example with a knot. Then measure your string for the actual measurement value.
Save your string, it will be easy to use next time as well, and you can quickly see if your horse has had any changes in weight!
Measuring the Heart Girth
Bring your tape measure over the horse and place it right behind the elbow and approximately an inch / 2.5 cm behind the highest point of the withers. Ideally the measurement is taken during exhalation.
Measuring the Length
Have your horse stand straight and place the tape measure from the point of the shoulder to the point of the buttocks.
If you run your hand down on the horse’s neck towards the shoulder, you can feel the tip of the humerus bone. This will be your point of shoulder. Also, if you run your hand down from the duck of the tail, towards the buttocks, you will feel the tip of the ischium. This will be the point of the buttocks.
Final Tips
Although using a tape measure to estimate body weight doesn’t beat an actual scale in accuracy, it is important to be consistent with your measurement habits to obtain comparable results. Measuring at the same time of the day (for example first thing in the morning), using the same location, making sure your horse is standing on all fours, is calm and breathing normal will help you obtain trustworthy weight estimates which you can then use when formulating diets.
Interested in learning more about helping your horse achieve an ideal weight? Learn how to score your horse’s body condition here in our blog: Why Body Condition Score? (feedxl.com)
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OK, this is a good one… Poet was getting colic regularly last spring.
And I was the cause… yikes!
You’d think I would learn, but nope, took me a little while to figure this one out!
What was going on? Here is the story…
I came home from somewhere one day last spring and noticed Poet wasn’t himself… he was laying down, half rolling, standing up… you know that thing horses do that sends us COLD as horse owners. He had colic!
I called my vet, he was out of town, but as I walked Poet around in the roundyard we discussed symptoms. As we chatted Poet ate some grass and did a poo, but was still uncomfortable.
I had to leave to go and pick the kids up from school. When I got back, he seemed normal. I watched him like a hawk but he was back to normal Poet. Excellent I thought, dodged that bullet.
Fast forward (and I forget now the exact time frames, but let’s say… a week) and, colic, again! Same thing, uncomfortable laying down half rolling repeatedly. So I called Doug, he came to check him out! Seriously noisy guts! Gas colic, or as I have heard some vets call it, the dreaded trapped fart!
The colic resolved again on its own… but this time, with the revelation it was likely gassy colic, I started to figure out the problem!
Our pasture in spring was almost all ryegrass and self-sown wild oats, both grasses that can accumulate high levels of fructan. And fructan ferments fast in the hindgut creating gas that was getting trapped in Poet’s gut.
OK, I thought, I can manage that!
BUT… there were days that for whatever reason I would give the horses a ‘little bit more’ pasture on their grazing strip than normal. For the most part I didn’t really think much of it, it would be a bit colder or I’d feel like they needed more (it’s that whole guilt thing kicking in!) and so they would get a bit more pasture which meant more of these high fructan grasses.
And twice on the days I gave them more he colicked again! DUH! Finally got it!! Too much high fructan pasture was causing excessive gas production and Poet just couldn’t get rid of the gas!
From then on I was very strict with the amount of pasture they got (which yes! I should have been in the first place… lesson learnt!) and we didn’t get any more colic and haven’t had any episodes (touch-wood) since!
It was a good lesson in how seasonal conditions can affect horse health. And in how diets need to be adjusted accordingly to manage these seasonal issues.
This spring I am being very mindful of how much spring grass he gets. My new place doesn’t have the same type of pastures. There is still ryegrass, but virtually no oats, so the risk is potentially lower.
Still… I am not taking that chance so they are getting less access to the pasture to manage the risk of colic (and laminitis!).
Because I still need to keep forage intake up, I use low sugar hay (in my case Rhodesgrass) to safely fill in the forage gap in their diet along with their usual lucerne/alfalfa each day. And all is well so far.
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Heads up! Your horses WILL NOT show you they are in pain until the pain is so bad they can no longer hide it!
Why? Because they are prey animals!
And if you’ve ever watched a David Attenborough documentary you will know that the old, sick or injured are the ones that get EATEN!
So if you are a prey animal and you are old, sick or injured, you hide it for as long as you can… so you don’t get eaten.
Why is there a photo of a dog and a chook you ask?
I know that might seem a bit random but it is because the dog (predator) was showing me EXACTLY why the prey (in this case the chicken) try not to show they are unwell.
My dog Chewy normally pays no attention to my chickens.
But for three days she stalked this chicken who was ancient by chicken standards, I suspect senile and on her way out. Chewy literally sat by the fence or stalked her as the chicken moved up and down the fence, just watching and waiting for her chance (which she never got, just so you know!).
It really struck me that the old, sick or injured animals really are targeted. Chewy could easily catch any of the chickens, but she never bothers to stalk them… but this one she did! She just instinctively knew she was an easy catch and was waiting for her chance.
Instinctively horses know this! They know if they show signs of weakness they put themselves at risk.
Why am I telling you this?
Well…so that you understand that just because your horses ‘seem ok’ doesn’t necessarily mean they are. And as owners and riders we need to be SUPER vigilant for any small indications our horses may give us that something isn’t right.
Gastric ulcers are a classic example… and we often come across horses with severe ulceration but no ‘symptoms’ as such save for some subtle changes in behaviour or appetite, or even just a swishing of the tail when being ridden.
The moral of the story? Be vigilant, FEED WELL (because nutrition is your best form of prevention of many diseases and conditions) and be on the lookout for really subtle indications that something isn’t right because it might be all your horse ever shows you for fear of being eaten!
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The connection between nutrition and healthy hooves
Does your horse have hooves like this?
This is the hoof of a mare maintained on a pasture and hay only diet.
And it shows. This hoof is screaming deficiency… probably mainly of copper and zinc. But amino acid deficiency may also be contributing.
Her body condition was good… so the pasture and hay was providing enough calories. But there certainly wasn’t enough nutrient there to support hoof health.
So if you are ever told that hay/pasture is all a horse needs, remember that yes, it may be all a horse needs to maintain weight.
BUT to maintain immune function, gut wall integrity, hoof quality, muscle function, bone health and well… everything else your horse needs to stay fit and healthy, pasture and hay just do not (in 95%+ cases) contain enough minerals to do this well. Proper nutrition is key to maintaining healthy horse hooves and so much more.
This is where FeedXL comes in so handy. FeedXL will show you exactly what your pasture or hay is missing so you can top up with just what is needed by YOUR horses.
Is now the time to try FeedXL nutrition calculator for your horses health?
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Do you have a horse that has water that runs out of the anus before, during or after he poos?
This condition now has a name! Free Fecal Water, or FFW. And also, happily it now has some research behind what may cause it as well as a potential treatment.
If it is something you struggle with, read on!
There were multiple presentations on free fecal water at the EEHNC conference. Here is a summary of the main points:
What is Free Fecal Water?
Free Fecal Water (FFW) is a condition in which horses produce normal feces, but before, during or after defecation, free water runs out of the anus.
There appears to be no effect on general health associated with the condition, but it can cause skin irritation and it becomes a management (and appearance) issue for you as the owner.
Causes can include abrupt changes in forages, a change from hay to haylage and use of large amounts of high-moisture wrapped forages. Horses that have suffered previous bouts of colitis, geldings and paint horses are at higher risk. The association for geldings and paints is thought to be due to their position in social hierarchy and higher levels of stress.
Dental health and parasitic infections/fecal egg counts have not been found to be related.
There may be some sort of motility disturbance, with either increased gut motility or abnormally strong gut contractions, and inflammation of the gut involved, all reducing the hindguts ability to absorb water.
What can you do about Free Fecal Water?
It was recommended that management of free fecal water focuses around proper ration formulation to provide a balanced diet using ingredients that will support a healthy gut environment (we of course recommend FeedXL to help with this), as well as good feeding management to provide regular small meals and constant access to forage. It was also recommended to keep starch at a maximum of 1 g/kg bodyweight per meal.
You should also pay attention to the type of forage and fibre being fed, being sure to incorporate fibres that have good water holding capacity. Grass forages for example will hold more water toward the end of the hindgut than alfalfa/lucerne forage or a superfibre like beetpulp will hold.
The final point discussed was potential treatment using a fecal transplant from a healthy horse. In a study with 14 horses with free fecal water, all showed improvement 3 days after being treated via fecal transplant and 2 months after treatment, 7 of the 14 horses had had no re-occurrence of the condition. (Theelen, unpublished). Laustsen et al (2018) reported a second study in which 10 horses with FFW were treated using fecal transplant (or fecal microbiome transplant, FMT). Within a week of treatment their free fecal water score dropped in severity and remained low for the entire 12 month study, supporting the use of fecal transplant for treatment of these horses.
The researchers were careful to point out that all other possible causes of this condition must be ruled out prior to treatment via fecal transplant. They suggested radiographing the abdomen to look for sand, a full rectal exam, testing for parasites, ruling out irritable bowel disease and scoping for gastric ulcers.
The method for the fecal transplant treatment given was as follows:
Place horse on omeprazole (full treatment dose) for a couple of days prior to fecal transplant (this will just cut the acid production in the stomach and make it more likely that the bacteria will make it through alive). GREAT IDEA!!
Take 500 grams of fresh feces from a suitable donor (one who is on a high forage diet with a healthy hindgut and parasite free).
Gently mix the feces in 2 litres of luke warm water, sieve to remove large particles and then add 100 grams of grass or other fibre only pellets (make sure they are grain free with a very low starch and sugar content). Other options would be alfalfa, soybean hull, beet fibre or lupin hull pellets.
At this stage be careful not to shake the mixture and run a sieve through the mixture to collect large particles as opposed to pouring the mixture through the sieve… this will help to keep the manures exposure to air as minimal as possible because oxygen will kill many of the good bacteria and these are the ones we want very much alive!
Administer via gastric intubation (this is a veterinary procedure and must be carried out by your veterinarian).
If you try this treatment on your horse we would love to know the outcome! We have had success over the years using fecal transplant in horses with chronic diarrhoea, but don’t have experience using it with these free fecal water horses. And the omeprazole step is a brilliant idea as we’d always worried about the poor bacteria getting through the highly acidic stomach, so makes perfect sense to make the stomach environment a little friendlier for them and imagine it will only serve to improve the effectiveness of the treatment.
Reference: Mathijs et al (2019) Free Faecal Water: What do we know and can equine faecal microbiota transplantation be used to manage this issue? European Equine Health and Nutrition Congress, Utrecht, The Netherland.
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Grazing muzzles are a really, really useful tool. A muzzle means horses can be out grazing 23+ hours per day. Without them they would be strip grazed (trashing pastures in the process) or locked up for extended periods, which for gut and mental health is not ideal either.
But they come with their challenges. They can rub if they don’t fit properly. If you don’t have one that your horse is OK with, they can create behavioral issues (rearing while trying to put them on or being impossible to catch to put them on) and certain brands can be too hot to wear in hot climates.
And of course, there is always that unknown of how long you should leave one on in your particular muzzle+horse+pasture combination (which can cause a bit of angst for a while until you get it figured out!).
The other thing you need to be really aware of is how they limit normal behavior. Horses love to groom one another, but with muzzles on all the time they can’t do this. So, make time to let them have muzzle free time together so they can do some mutual grooming.
Just something to keep in mind for those of you with muzzled horses.
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Feeding grain free diets has grown in popularity in the last 10 years and there are certainly many benefits. BUT, need it always be the way to go? The answer is, it depends, but often no.
Horses with conditions like laminitis, PSSM tying up, PPID/Cushing’s, equine metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance etc MUST be fed a low sugar, low starch (or low non-structural carbohydrate; NSC) diet. Usually, to achieve low enough starch and sugar levels, these diets need to be grain free. One of the things FeedXL is great for is to help you sort out which feeds, forages and supplements are safe (low in starch and sugars; NSC) or not safe to feed horses with these conditions.
But for horses that don’t need low sugar, low starch diets to control diseases, as long as grain is FED SAFELY, grains can form a very valuable part of a ration! They are economical compared to high energy fibres like beet pulp (which are expensive in comparison), they provide a source of glucose that horses in heavy work can use to readily replenish muscle glycogen supplies, and they are palatable… horses love grains, so keeping horses in hard work eating on grain based feeds tends to be relatively simple provided the recipe is good!
So, as long as grains are well cooked (with the exception of oats which can be fed uncooked) and as long as you feed them in small meals (no more than 0.5 kg/100 kg BW, 0.5 lb/100 lb BW) they can form a very useful part of a horse’s diet. These are HUGE ‘as long as’ statements too… feed grains in the wrong way and things WILL go horribly wrong. But that is another story for another day.
The moral of this story is don’t fall into the trap of one-size-fits-all when it comes to grain free.
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We talk a lot about a horse’s gut bacteria and how they impact health… have you ever stopped to think about your gut bacteria and how they might be influencing your health?? This relatively new area of science is quite literally mind blowing. These tiny critters control us in so many ways and have such a massive impact on our life that it is truly worth thinking about how what you eat affects them (and then how they affect you).
Here are a few very quick bits of info that are quite amazing… you ready?!
1. Bacteria in your body outnumber your human cells by 10 to 1, so in actual fact, we are 10 parts bacteria, 1 part human.
2. Bacterial DNA in our body outnumbers our human DNA by 100 to 1, so in that respect we are only 1% human (Don’t think about that too much!!)
3. Bacteria like to tell us what to eat. Certain foods are their favorites so in order for them to survive, they will make us go and eat their favorite foods! This is OK if you have a nice healthy population of fibre/vegetable loving bacteria in your gut. But it becomes an issue when you have accidentally bred up a sugar or fat loving bunch of microbes. Next time you are craving sugar or fatty food you can probably blame your bacteria! In saying that, if you starve the ones you don’t want in there (e.g. stop eating sugar) the cravings should lessen!
4. Bacteria produce mood altering hormones like dopamine and serotonin. Studies suggest half of these hormones in our body come from our intestine! Get the wrong bacteria and you could very likely be in the ‘wrong’ mood!
5. Bacteria can reduce or increase anxiety. In mice, taking the gut bacteria from nervous mice and introducing them to calm mice made the calm mice anxious! Scary huh!!
This list could go on (and on… and on!). There are known relationships between diseases like asthma and Type 2 Diabetes and gut bacteria for example. Suffice to say they are important little critters and probably have far more of an influence on you (and your horse) than you realise.
Eat well! Keep those bacteria healthy… we can’t help you much there (other than eat more real food and less junk) but certainly when it comes to feeding your horses, always think about how what you are feeding is affecting their gut bacteria. If you have time, have a read of our article on feeding for hindgut health! https://feedxl.com/15-keeping-the-hindgut-healthy/
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What is a trypsin inhibitor and how does it affect your horse?
Soybean naturally contains an anti-nutritional factor called trypsin inhibitor. Trypsin inhibitor is a compound that actually blocks the action of trypsin (which is an enzyme, or as I call them, a little pair of scissors, in the horses gut that cuts up protein so it can be absorbed by the horse). When trypsin is blocked by soybean a horse can no longer digest protein… not very useful right?!
Why would you feed soybean to horses?
So, if soybean contains stuff that stops a horse from digesting protein, why on earth would we use it in a horse’s ration?
This is talked about a lot and often given as a reason why soybean should not be fed to horses. BUT, if you’ve been hanging around us here at FeedXL for a while you will have heard us say many times that if soybean is cooked properly trypsin inhibitor is destroyed which then makes soybean perfectly safe to feed. And given it is the best of the best when it comes to quality plant protein it makes a valuable addition to diets in so many ways.
Make sure your soybean is safe for your horse
To check soybean products to see if they have been cooked properly there is a test kit called FeedCheck Soy (https://cbsbioplatforms.com/Store)… this kit gives a rapid visual check on whether soybean has been cooked enough to destroy the trypsin inhibitor. Soybean products that still have active trypsin inhibitor will show red coloring while properly cooked products will have no red coloring at all.
The photo above shows a test we did on two samples. We had completely raw full fat soybean on the left which is clearly bright red indicating it has all of its trypsin inhibitor still present. The product on the right is a commercially available (branded) product, which has been extruded and shows no hint of red coloring to demonstrate beautifully how, when done properly, trypsin inhibitor can be destroyed without destroying the actual soybean and all of its amazing protein! Happy days for those of us who love the benefits soybean can bring to a diet!
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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 part of the treatment and also ongoing prevention of ulcers.
However, with gastric acidity being needed to facilitate the absorption of minerals like calcium, and documented studies in humans linking the use of ulcer medications like omeprazole that reduce gastric acidity with increased bone fracture, there has always been this nagging question of whether using omeprazole in horses would have a negative impact on bone health.
Omeprazole and Its Impact on Mineral Absorption in Horses
Dr Brian Nielsen, Professor in Equine Exercise Physiology, Michigan State University, presented the results of his study ‘Omeprazole and its impact on mineral absorption in horses’ to the Recent Advances in Animal Nutrition – Australia conference.
Dr Nielsen reported that when given at the preventative dose of 1 mg/kg of bodyweight for a period of 8 weeks, omeprazole caused no significant treatment effect on radiographic bone aluminium equivalence (meaning bone density was not affected) and did not affect markers of bone formation. Nielsen et al (2017) concluded that ‘daily administration of omeprazole did not appear to have any negative effects on indices of skeletal health measured in the study’… so good news for those of you who have horses who need repeated rounds of omeprazole at the preventative dose rate to keep ulcers under control!
However, Dr Nielsen does warn that use of omeprazole for periods longer than 2 months, or at the recommended treatment dose (of 4 mg/kg of bodyweight) could still pose a risk to skeletal health in horses.
The Key to Ulcer Prevention
Here at FeedXL, we always say that if your horse has ulcers then you must treat with an acidity reducing medication like omeprazole. However, the keys to long-term prevention of ulcers in our horses are good management, regular, frequent feeding, feeding lots of forage, avoidance of long periods of time without feed, constant access to water, reducing stress in any way possible. Probably most importantly, always feeding forage before exercise (alfalfa/lucerne is best) so you never ever exercise a horse on an empty stomach are still key to the long-term prevention of ulcers in our horses.
Nielsen BD, Eckert SM, Robison CI, et al. Omeprazole and its impact on mineral absorption in horses. Animal Production Science 2017;57:2263-2269. https://www.publish.csiro.au/AN/AN17323
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