A lot of you use them, and while there is theoretical justification for their use there is still very little science that actual shows a proven benefit in feeding them.
A study just published does however lend some nice information in this area. It is both blinded (i.e. the people feeding the horses, the people assessing the horses for various measures of movement and levels of comfort don’t know if the horses were on the joint treatment or not at the time of assessment so it couldn’t influence what they ‘saw’ and recorded. And the author who analyzed the data was blind to which horse was on what treatment so they too could not be influenced) and is also a crossover study where each horse in the study was on both the joint treatment and the placebo and assessed on both so you could see changes in the same horse as opposed to changes between two different groups of horses where one group is treated and one group given a placebo.
This study also used ‘objective’ measurements of gait using high speed motion capture to assess movement of the hind legs at the trot.
The results are interesting, with significant improvements in lameness scores (less lameness in treated horses), less response to flexion tests and improvements in muscle tone reported (plus many other results).
A good time to remember too that not all joint supplements are created equally as far as the ingredients and amount of ingredient per dose they contain. The supplement used in this study was ‘FlexAbility’, from Science Supplements, UK; it contains chondroitin sulfate 162 g/kg, glucosamine 190 g/kg, vitamin C 80 g/kg, methyl sulfonyl methane 256 g/kg, docosahexaenoic acid 66 g/kg, eicosapentaenoic acid 34 g/kg For those of you who use FeedXL, if you look in the ‘Health’ tab in your results you will see a breakdown there of the various joint nutrients and how much of each are in your horse’s diet when you use a joint supplement.
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Complete Feeds, Concentrates/Balancer Pellets and Supplements—Choosing how to feed
While there are many commercial feed and supplement options available, they can be classified into 3 broad categories; complete feeds, concentrates/balancer pellets and supplements. Depending on your own personal preferences you can use one or a combination of these options to put together a diet for your horse.
This article will help you make choose the best feed option for your horse by taking a look at what the 3 options are, how they should be used and the advantages and disadvantages of each one.
Complete Feeds
A complete feed is a feed that has been formulated to meet the energy, protein, vitamin and mineral requirements of horses. They can be in the form of pellets, cubes, meal or sweetfeeds. Each complete feed will be formulated specifically for a certain type of horse. For example there are complete feeds for breeding horses, horses in sales preparation, pleasure horses, horses in hard work, horses that tie‐up … the list can go on and on.
Complete feeds will contain a variety of ingredients which are usually some combination of grains and grain byproduct (wheat, barley, corn, oats, bran, pollard), legumes or oilseeds (soybean, faba bean, lupins and other protein meals like cottonseed), minerals like salt, limestone and dicalcium phosphate as well as a trace‐mineral and vitamin premix. Many also contain oil.
For a complete feed to actually be “complete” when you use it in your horse’s diet, you must follow the manufacturer’s feeding recommendations for the feed. For example, a working horse feed will have a table on the bag that will say something like for a 500 kg horse in moderate work, you should feed 3 – 4 kg/day. If you feed less than this amount, your horse’s diet will not contain the required levels of vitamins and minerals and the feed will no longer be complete.
A common problem people find with complete feeds is that these feeding rates are too high, with many owners exclaiming their horse would explode if it was fed that much. If this is the case, the complete feed may need to be “topped up” with an appropriate supplement. Using this approach allows you to control your horse’s calorie intake, without compromising vitamin and mineral intakes. Alternatively, if the feeding rates of complete feeds are always too high for your horse, consider using either a concentrate/balancer pellet or supplement.
Complete feeds also don’t allow much flexibility in a feeding program, because deviating from the recommended feeding rates will mean you also unbalance your horse’s diet, so horses needing constant adjustment of their diet according to daily workload, bodyweight and temperament aren’t well suited to a complete feed.
Keep in mind that not all “complete feeds” are created equally. Some will do a very good job of meeting requirements when fed at the correct rates, while others will still leave many deficiencies in your horse’s diet, even when being fed at the recommended levels. This is where FeedXL is a big help—it allows you to easily see which complete feeds really are complete and which aren’t.
A diet for a working horse using a complete feed might look like this:
3.5 kg/day of complete feed
Plus chaff, hay and/or pasture
Concentrates and Balancer Pellets
Concentrates and balancer pellets are fed to meet a horse’s vitamins and mineral requirements, but unlike complete feeds, they only meet part of a horse’s energy and protein requirement. They can be in the form of pellets or sweetfeeds and have a feeding rate of between 0.5 kg and 2.5 kg/day. Concentrates and Balancer Pellets are designed to be fed in conjunction with other protein and energy sources like grains, legumes and oilseeds. They can also be fed alone when the horse has access to good quality pasture or is an easy keeper that doesn’t need the additional calories or protein.
The major advantage of a concentrate or balancer pellet over a complete feed is that it allows you more flexibility within your feeding program. Once you find the required rate of concentrate or pellet your horse needs to meet vitamin and mineral requirements you can then customise the rest of the diet to suit your horse’s tastes and your budget. They also allow you to adjust the amount of calories or protein you feed according to your horse’s workload, weight or temperament without affecting vitamin and mineral intake.
A diet for a working horse using a concentrate or balancer pellet might look like this:
1 kg/day of Balancer Pellet
0.5 kg/day Lupins
2 kg/day Oats
Plus chaff, hay and/or pasture
The minor disadvantage of feeding in this manner is the time it takes to mix the feed.
Supplements
Supplements are designed to be fed with grains, legumes and oilseeds, when needed, to make up a complete diet for horses. They may also be fed alone (mixed with a small amount of chaff or some other tasty base so the horses will eat them) to easy keepers when only vitamins and minerals need adding to the diet.
Supplements are also commonly fed with a “complete feed” when the complete feed is being fed at less than the recommended rates to make up any shortfalls in vitamin and mineral intake that may be present.
A diet for a working horse using a concentrate or balancer pellet might look like this:
100 g/day of Vitamin and Mineral Supplement
0.5 kg/day Lupins
1 kg/day Extruded Barley
2 kg/day Oats
35 g/day Salt
Plus chaff, hay and/or pasture
The major advantage of using a supplement‐based diet is the amount of flexibility you have in creating the diet, both from the horse’s perspective and your budget. The major disadvantage is again, the time it takes to source the ingredients and mix up the feeds. Vitamin and Mineral Supplements are fed to meet a horse’s vitamin and mineral requirements and do not contain any appreciable amounts of energy or protein. They have a feeding rate of up to 0.5 kg/day, with most supplements only fed at rates of 20 to 100 g/day, depending on the brand.
As for other commercial products, not all supplements are created equally. Some will do a very good job of meeting a horse’s requirements while others will do a mediocre job at best. Again, this is where FeedXL can be a big help in working out which do and which do not meet a horse’s requirements. When choosing a supplement, also be conscious of how much they are costing per dose (don’t look at the cost per pound/kilogram).
Summary
Depending on your horse and your own personal preferences you can choose to feed your horse either with complete feeds, concentrates/balancer pellets or supplements.
Complete feeds are simple to feed, provide good variety in the diet and are readily available. However they give you very little flexibility in how much you can feed, as not staying within recommended feeding rates will mean some of your horse’s requirements may not be met.
Concentrates/balancer pellets and supplements give you more flexibility, can be fed alone to easy keepers and allow you to customise your feeding program according to your horse’s tastes and your budget. However, they can make the time taken to mix feed longer and you will often have to source more ingredients.
Regardless of the feeding or mixing method you choose, always balance your horse’s diets. Weigh your horse to get the feeding rates right and so that FeedXL can correctly estimate your horse’s requirements. Only in this way can you be sure that the complete feed, balancer or supplements you choose are working correctly for you and your horse.
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Having an accurate bodyweight, or at least an accurate bodyweight estimation, for your horse is critical when formulating your horse’s diet. Overestimating your horse’s bodyweight may mean you feed too much, resulting in weight gain and wasted money on feed that is surplus to your horse’s needs. Underestimating could result in underfeeding your horse, possibly causing weight loss and nutrient deficiencies.
How to do it … better!
Weighing your horse on a set of livestock scales is by far the most accurate method of obtaining your horse’s bodyweight. However, few of us have the luxury of a set of scales. Thus, we turn to various methods that allow us to estimate our horse’s bodyweight. There are 3 generally well accepted methods for estimating your horse’s bodyweight:
Weight tapes – you place a specially marked tape around your horse’s girth and it gives you an estimated weight.
Height and Condition score – using your horse’s height and body condition score and a published weight table, you can look up your horse’s estimated weight.
Girth and Length measurements – measure your horse’s girth and length from point of the shoulder to point of the buttock and then enter them into the equation:
kg of bodyweight = [ girth (cm)2 x length (cm) ] ÷ 11,880
But how accurate are these methods?
We ran a very small test on the accuracy of the 3 methods and compared them against actual bodyweights of horses. Our results showed the following:
Method of Weight Estimation
Horse
Actual Bodyweight
Weight Tape
Height / Condition Score
Girth and Length
Poet
475 kg
500 kg
490 kg
468 kg
Quilla
444 kg
500 kg
463 kg
446 kg
Cass
430 kg
460 kg
437 kg
422 kg
The weight tape was the least accurate method, overestimating the weight of these horses by an average of 8.3% (meaning all nutrient requirements will also be overestimated by 8.3%). The Height/Condition Score method was a bit better, only overestimating the weight by 3%. The Girth and Length method is the best, underestimating the body weights by an average of 1%.
Take home message…
An accurate bodyweight is essential if you want to balance your horse’s diet correctly. Be very careful when estimating your horse’s bodyweight. If you cannot weigh your horse on livestock scales we recommend you use the Girth and Length method to estimate your horse’s bodyweight as it will give you the closest estimate to your horse’s actual bodyweight.
Join FeedXL today and take control of your horse’s nutrition
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Feeding your horse the right amount of feed is important to:
Prevent unwanted weight loss or weight gain
Prevent diseases like colic and gastric ulcers
Prevent unruly, uncontrolled behavior when being ridden
The question is, how do you know how much to feed your horse? Keep reading to find out how body condition scoring can help you answer this crucial question.
How much should you feed your horse?
The first golden rule of horse feeding is always feed your horse a minimum of 1.5% of its bodyweight per day of forage. So, for a 500 kg horse, the absolute minimum amount of hay, pasture and chaff it should have access to per day is 7.5kg. Your horse should preferably be fed around 2% of its bodyweight per day as forage. Feeding this amount of forage will keep your horse’s gut healthy, keep your horse happy and help prevent colic and gastric ulcers.
The question then is, is this amount of forage enough to maintain your horse’s bodyweight? The only way you can answer this question is by regularly condition scoring your horse. Condition scoring is a practice used to determine the amount of body fat your horse is carrying and will give you an indication over time whether your horse is gaining, holding or losing weight. This in turn helps to fine tune your horse’s diet.
Condition Scoring
Condition scoring of horses involves an assessment of certain parts of a horse’s body for ‘fatness’. The most commonly used sites are the along the neck, along the withers, the loin, tailhead, ribs and behind the shoulder as shown below.
Once an assessment of these areas of the horse’s body is made, a system developed by researchers at the Texas A&M University, USA (Henneke et al. 1983), may be used to assign a ‘score’ to reflect your horse’s level of body fatness. This condition scoring system presents condition scores on a scale of 1 to 9, with 1 being extremely emaciated and 9 being extremely fat.
Here’s a description of all the body condition scores (with pictures):
Score 1 — Poor
The horse is extremely emaciated. The bone structures of the neck, wither and shoulders are easily visible. The ribs, backbone and tailhead project prominently.
Score 2 — Very Thin
The horse is emaciated. The bone structures of the neck, wither and shoulders are faintly discernable. The structure of the ribs, backbone and tailhead are prominent.
Score 3 — Thin
The structure of the neck, wither and shoulders are accentuated. There is a slight fat cover over the ribs but they remain easy to see. The vertebrae of the backbone are easily discernable and the tailhead is prominent but the bone structure of the tailhead is not obvious.
Score 4 — Moderately Thin
The neck, wither and shoulders are not obviously thin. A faint outline of the ribs is visible, the backbone projects upward slightly and some fat can be felt around the tailhead. The prominence of the tailhead will depend on the horse’s conformation.
Score 5 — Moderate
The neck and shoulders blend smoothly into the body and the withers are rounded. The ribs cannot be seen but are easily felt, the area over the loin is flat and the fat deposited around the tailhead begins to feel spongy.
Score 6 — Moderately Fleshy
Fat is beginning to be deposited along the neck and withers and behind the shoulder. The ribs can still be felt but the fat cover over the ribs feels spongy. There may be a slight crease or gutter down the back and the fat around the tailhead feels soft.
Score 7 — Fleshy
Fat is deposited along the neck, wither and behind the shoulder. Individual ribs can still be felt but there is a noticeable filling of fat between the ribs. There may be a crease or gutter down the back over the loin area and the fat around the tailhead will be soft.
Score 8 — Fat
The neck is noticeably thickened with fat, the area along the wither is filled with fat and the area behind the shoulder is flush with the body. It is difficult to feel the ribs, there will likely be a gutter down the horses back and the fat around the tailhead will feel very soft.
Score 9 — Extremely Fat
The neck, wither and the area behind the shoulders are bulging with fat. Patchy fat can be seen over the ribs, there is an obvious gutter down the centre of the back and the area around the tailhead bulges with fat.
What condition score should your horse be in?
Depending on what your horse is doing, its optimum condition score will be somewhere between a score of 4 and 7. The table below gives you an indication of the best condition score for your horse.
Class of Horse
Suggested Condition Score
Notes
Growing Horse
5
Higher condition scores indicate that the diet contains too much feed. The increased body weight at a higher condition score will put excess pressure on immature joints and increases the risk of developmental orthopaedic diseases.
Pregnant and/or Lactating Mare
5 – 7
Lower or higher body condition scores can reduce fertility and conception rates and decrease milk production.
Breeding Stallion
5
Lower or higher body condition scores may decrease a stallion’s reproductive performance.
Performance Horse
5
Horses with lower scores will not have sufficient body fat to use as a reserve source of energy during prolonged or frequent physical activity. Horses with higher condition scores will have increased body heat production, reduced body heat loss and higher heart and respiratory rates. All of these factors will reduce performance. Excess weight also increases the strain placed on the skeletal system.
Idle Horse
4 – 6
Will vary depending on the individual horse, climate and season.
If your horse has a lower condition score than it should, you need to feed more. If your horse has a higher condition score than it should have, you need to feed less.
FeedXL helps you to adjust your horse’s diet according to the horse’s body condition score and whether it needs to gain or lose weight, making knowing how much to feed and what to feed to your horse simple.
FeedXL helps you adjust your horse’s diet to manage its weight
When entering your horse’s details into FeedXL it asks you your horse’s body condition score, if your horse is an easy keeper (gains weight easily), normal keeper or hard keeper (loses weight easily) and if you want your horse to lose, hold or gain weight.
Using the answers to those questions, FeedXL will adjust your horse’s estimated energy (calorie) requirements to help you achieve your horse’s body weight goals. All you need to do is meet these estimated energy requirements with a green bar in FeedXL and then continue to monitor your horse’s condition score to keep track of progress.
Join FeedXL today and take control of your horse’s nutrition
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Score 2 — Very Thin
Score 3 — Thin
Score 4 — Moderately Thin
Score 5 — Moderate
Score 6 — Moderately Fleshy
Score 7 — Fleshy
Score 8 — Fat
Score 9 — Extremely Fat
