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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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.
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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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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.
Do you have a question or comment? Do you need help with feeding?
We would love to welcome you to our FeedXL Horse Nutrition Facebook Group. Ask questions and have them answered by PhD and Masters qualified equine nutritionists and spend time with like-minded horse owners. It’s free!
