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WE’RE DEDICATED TO SEPARATING THE WHEAT FROM THE CHAFF

There’s a lot of information on feeding horses out there – some of it’s accurate, and some of it’s not. At FeedXL it is our mission to educate horse owners so that they understand nutrition better and can make more informed feed choices. We cut through all the marketing bias and personal opinion and get to the facts. Our articles are always easy-to-read and backed by science. We hope you enjoy them and can use the information in them practically, with your own horses. If there’s a topic you’d love to see an article on, please just get in touch.

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FEEDING PREGNANT MARES

Pregnant mares carry your hopes and dreams, be it for the next big champion or just a quiet riding companion.

Regardless of what you are breeding, good care of the mare during her various stages of pregnancy has long term impacts on both her and her foal’s long term health and athletic capacity.

Here are 5 tips for feeding pregnant mares to keep them healthy and breeding sound, strong and athletic foals:

Don’t let mares get fat.
Don’t let mares get skinny.
Make sure mineral and vitamin requirements are met.
Feed high quality protein.
Make the most of pasture if you have it.

Because it is so often said that a pregnant mare needs little more than a horse at maintenance, it is sometimes mistakenly thought that mares, and particularly mares in early pregnancy, can be fed diets of forage only, with little or no supplementation. However, while a pasture or good quality hay diet may be sufficient to maintain your mare’s bodyweight, it will almost certainly be lacking in critical nutrients including minerals that can determine if your foal is born structurally sound or not.