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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Sunbleaching in horses appears to be influenced by a combination of sun exposure and sweat.
An unintentional experiment
One of our Nutritionist’s horses lives in a region where flies are prevalent, so the horses wear fly masks during the daytime. They also experience extreme heat, reaching temperatures upwards of 40 degrees Celsius (100°F), which has caused significant sweating behind the ears where the mask straps sit.
A striking observation from this experiment is evident in a liver chestnut horse prone to summer bleaching. Areas where the horse sweated around the mask strap have bleached severely due to the combined effect of sweat and sunlight exposure. Interestingly, under the strap where no sunlight reached, the coat color remains unaffected. This phenomenon highlights the role of sweat in enhancing sunbleaching patterns.
Additional bleaching could be found around the flanks and shoulders, areas where sweating is more pronounced. This reinforces the correlation between sweat, sun exposure, and the resulting bleaching effect, despite adequate dietary intake of copper and zinc, as confirmed by FeedXL and pasture analysis.
It’s notable that another horse, with a distinct coat type characterized by different color, length, thickness, and texture, does not experience any bleaching whatsoever. This suggests that certain coat types are more susceptible to bleaching than others, influenced by both genetics and environmental factors such as climate.
In conclusion, sunbleaching in horses appears to be a complex interaction involving sunlight, sweat, specific coat characteristics, and regional climate conditions. Understanding these factors can help horse owners better manage and protect their horses’ coats during periods of intense sunlight and heat exposure
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We often talk about copper deficiency in horses, and specifically its role in coat color. Copper is part of an enzyme called tyrosinase which is essential for the production of melanin. Melanin is what gives the skin, hair and eyes their color.
So it makes sense that copper deficiency would cause a change in coat color! If an animal doesn’t have enough copper, they don’t make enough melanin and if they don’t have enough melanin they can’t color their coat.
Hereford cattle can make good ‘copper deficiency canaries’… their coat color fades quite quickly when they become copper deficient. So they can indicate areas around the country that are low in copper (which is almost everywhere) provided they are not being supplemented. Where Herefords should normally be a rich liver red color, copper deficient Herefords become a burnt orange color.
The ones shown in the photo here have been in drought conditions for well over a year and they are likely deficient in almost everything, but certainly the copper deficiency is showing in their coats!
Copper deficiency is one of the most common deficiencies seen in equine diets. And unfortunately copper deficiency affects many things including hoof and joint health in all horses, increased susceptibility to uterine artery rupture in foaling mares and higher incidence of OCD joint lesions in young horses. It’s easy to check your horse’s copper intake using FeedXL and get those diets balanced.
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Many people wonder about how high sugar or high NSC forages affect their horse’s weight, so this is a question we are often asked. Our standard response has always been ‘well, it depends on the calorie content of the forage’, which then begs the question about the relationship between forage NSC and digestible energy content.
What exactly is the relationship between high sugar forages, digestible energy, and horse weight?
In looking at 13 pasture samples from one farm, it seems the higher the NSC content, the higher the digestible energy (calorie) content. The pastures shown here were all sampled between 11 am and 2 pm on the same day. They were all dried at the same time and all were analyzed by Equi-Analytical.
A graph of Digestible Energy (calorie) value versus pasture non-structural carbohydrate (NSC = starch + water soluble carbohydrates) content is pretty clear for this particular set of pastures; as NSC increases so does digestible energy… which makes very logical sense given the NSC is a source of calories so the more NSC, the more calories.
So perhaps the answer should be ‘yes, high NSC forages will make your horses fatter faster than low NSC forages!’. And therefore yes, it makes sense to feed a low NSC forage when you are trying to achieve weight loss or avoid weight gain in your easy keepers.
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Well… happily, this is one of these easiest things to assess in horse nutrition because you can actually SEE if your horse is eating enough and getting enough feed by using body condition scoring.
If your horse is getting enough feed, he will maintain his weight. If he is not getting enough, he will lose weight. Or if he is getting too much, he will gain weight. Simple, huh?
The trick is assessing this consistently so you can adjust how much you are feeding as weight changes. To assess weight gain or loss we use the Henneke Body Condition Scoring System. We have detailed information on using this simple system here.
It’s a quick and easy way to get a better understanding of your horse’s overall body condition and whether or not they’re the right amount.
Get in the habit of running your hands over your horses and mentally assessing condition. You will find in a very short space of time you will start to pick up small changes in body condition that might alert you to the fact your horse may need an adjustment in his feed program.
Here’s a neat (and very colorful) little cheat sheet that you might like to keep handy as well.
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The previous article was about the 3 things you need to build muscle in your horse; work, to stimulate the muscle to want to grow; leucine, the branch chain amino acid that switches on muscle protein synthesis; and a ready supply of the other amino acids needed to build new muscle.
Which left us with the question of which feed ingredients contain the best source of leucine to help switch on the muscle protein synthesis process.
The best ingredients to help your horse build muscle
1. Whey protein concentrate. This ingredient contains around 80% crude protein (depending on the brand) and has over 10 grams of leucine per 100 grams. Certainly, the richest source of leucine (and all of the other important essential amino acids) you can get. It works, but it is not cheap. If you use whey protein, be sure to use it very strategically and feed it to your horse within 15 to 30 minutes of finishing a work session.
2. Soybean. Soybean is well known to be the richest plant source of essential amino acids, including leucine. Soybean meal contains 47% crude protein and will give you 3.5 grams of leucine per 100 grams of meal. Full fat soybean is 36 to 38% crude protein and will give you about 2.7 grams of leucine per 100 gram serve.
3. Brewer’s Yeast. Brewer’s yeast is also a handy source of leucine. It contains 50% protein and will give you 3.2 grams of leucine per 100 gram serve. Like whey though, it’s a relatively expensive option.
Other common feedstuffs and their protein and leucine content are shown in the table below.
There are also of course BCAA supplements available (for humans and horses) that can be used. You should be able to find information on these in FeedXL, in the Blue ‘Supplements’ tab, under ‘Protein & Amino Acid Supplements’.
Happy muscle building!
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If you want to help your horse build more muscle, you might need to pay more attention to your horse’s branch chain amino acid intake.
Muscle is a beautiful thing, be it on your horse or yourself. It provides strength, power, speed and it looks great. It is also very functional, providing stability and balance and a whole host of really important metabolic functions like the storage and utilization of glucose (which for us humans is very important).
Apparently as a human we build muscle until we are about 30 years old, and then we start to lose it… UNLESS we use it! I am not sure of the statistic for horses with regard to when they might start to lose muscle mass, but we have all watched horses turned out for extended periods of time starting to lose their muscle.
So, muscles need work to be maintained or built! BUT, they also need the right building blocks to be able to grow.
Building Blocks of Muscle
Muscle is made from protein. And protein is made from amino acids. So, to build muscle, a body needs access to the amino acids it needs to put muscle together. Muscle also needs a signal to start building muscle. In other words, muscle protein synthesis needs to be switched on before anything will happen.
Back to the amino acids for a minute… There are 20 amino acids. Ten of them we call non-essential amino acids as our bodies and our horses can make them, so we don’t pay these a whole lot of attention in nutrition.
The other 10 we call the essential amino acids and these must be provided in the diet. Within this group of essential amino acids there is a group called the ‘Branch Chain Amino Acids’ or the BCAAs (which include leucine, isoleucine and valine). In human muscle BCAAs make up to 18% of the amino acids in our muscle protein, making them super important when it comes to building extra muscle mass!
But there is more to this story… research in humans and rodents has found that one of the BCAAS, leucine, has a particularly important role with regards to SWITCHING ON muscle protein synthesis. In fact, it appears it is almost singularly responsible for doing this.
There are 3 major things needed in order to build muscle in horses:
1. Work! Muscles won’t grow unless they are given work to do.
2. Leucine. This branch chain amino acid switches on muscle protein synthesis.
3. Plenty of the other amino acids. Between work and leucine, muscles are stimulated to grow. So, they then need a ready supply of all the other amino acids they need in order to actually grow.
That’s enough to digest, and when you’re ready, check out Part 2 of muscle building here.
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Many individuals mistakenly believe that restricting feed drastically or feeding low-quality diets, such as straw, is the only solution for overweight or easy keeper horses. However, while this approach limits calorie intake and promotes weight loss, it also severely restricts essential nutrients like protein, vitamins, and minerals, potentially leading to various health issues.
Important steps for managing an easy keeper on a calorie-restricted diet:
Manage Pasture Access: Many pastures today are too rich for some horses and result in weight gain. Limiting access to pasture by either using a grazing muzzle or stabling the horse during certain periods can control intake. Grazing muzzles are particularly useful as they allow the horse to graze with their head down and interact with others while moderating feed intake, crucial for digestive and respiratory health.
Provide Low-Quality Hay: Since pasture access is restricted, supplementing with high-fiber forages like weather-damaged lucerne hay or cereal crop straw is essential. These provide necessary roughage without excess calories. A minimum of 2% of the horse’s body weight in hay (e.g., 10 kg for a 500 kg horse) should be fed daily if pasture access is unavailable. Depending on the quality of the pasture and how much access is available, you will have to adjust your horse’s hay intake. Use FeedXL to work out how much hay is needed to meet your horse’s feed intake requirement without overfeeding digestible energy. Using multiple hay nets slows consumption, preventing boredom and supporting healthy digestion.
Incorporate High-Quality Protein: While reducing calorie intake through restricted access and low-quality forage, it’s crucial to meet protein requirements to prevent muscle loss and maintain coat and hoof quality. Full-fat soybean or soybean meal, in small amounts (up to 400 grams daily for a 500 kg horse on a poor hay diet), provides high-quality plant protein. Adding a small quantity of lucerne hay or chaff further supplements protein intake.
Meet Vitamin and Mineral Needs: It’s essential not to compromise the overweight horse’s health by restricting vitamin and mineral requirements. Look for a complete vitamin and mineral supplement that can ideally be fed at a dose of less than 100 g/day to meet requirements without adding unneeded calories.
Include Quality Oils: Horses on restricted diets often lack shine in their coats due to a lack of omega fatty acids, even on otherwise balanced diets. Supplementing with ¼ cup of oil that contains the proper balance of omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids to the diet per day can make sure their essential omega fatty acid requirements are met and keep their skin and coat healthy.
Provide Access to Salt: All horses, including easy keepers, should have constant access to a salt lick as well as constant access to clean, fresh water.
An example of what to feed an easy keeper (weighing 500 kg):
Restricted pasture access (grazing muzzle or yarded overnight)
2 kg/day (approximately 4.5 lb) poor-quality meadow hay
Up to 100 g/day (approximately 3.5 oz) balanced vitamin and mineral supplement
If pasture quality is “poor” (visibly dried, brown, with seedheads present), full-fat soybean could be supplemented for additional protein.
Why Addressing Weight Matters:
Overweight horses face numerous health challenges similar to humans, including insulin resistance, laminitis, increased joint wear, reduced mobility, and heat stress. A carefully balanced diet not only helps manage weight but also promotes overall health and well-being. Simply restricting calories without meeting other nutritional needs can lead to an unhealthy, undernourished horse.
It’s essential to approach weight management in horses with a balanced diet that restricts calories while ensuring all nutrient requirements are met. This approach supports optimal health and longevity, avoiding the pitfalls of extreme dietary restrictions that compromise overall well-being.
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While many of us struggle to keep weight off our horses (and ourselves!) it seems a large number of horse owners have equal trouble when it comes to putting weight on their horses. Putting weight on and keeping weight on a horse that is a “hard keeper” can sometimes be a frustrating task for the horse’s owner. But it needn’t be a difficult thing to do. This article will walk you through the most important things to consider, including the best horse feed for weight gain.
Here are 7 simple steps you should take on the journey to putting weight on your horse:
Step 1: Worms
Make sure your horse is wormed with an effective wormer. If you are not sure which wormer to use, ask your veterinarian and make sure that you are worming for Bots as well as Tapeworms at the appropriate times of year.
Step 2: Teeth
Have a qualified dentist correct any issues with your horse’s teeth. If it is painful or difficult for your horse to chew, he/she just physically won’t be able to consume the amount of feed needed to gain weight.
Step 3: Health
Ask your veterinarian to carry out a full health check to make sure there is no underlying disease like gastric ulcers (which will be common in off the track or spelling thoroughbreds) that are going to prevent the horse from eating and gaining weight. If you do discover your horse has a problem with ulcers have them treated with appropriate medications. Likewise, if any other disease conditions are found work with your veterinarian to resolve them.
Please note that if your horse is emaciated and has come from a starvation situation, you should follow the guidelines published by the American Association of Equine Practitioners for caring for starved/emaciated horses. Introducing feeds too quickly into the diets of these horses can result in ‘refeeding syndrome’ and death. The guidelines can be found here:AAEP Rescue and Retirement Guidelines – AAEP
Step 4: Free choice forage
Weight gain occurs when the amount of calories provided in the horse’s diet exceeds the amount of calories the horse ‘needs’ on a daily basis – the excess calories are stored by the horse and thus contribute to weight gain. Many horses have problems gaining weight simply because they aren’t being fed enough to gain weight.
After addressing worms, teeth and health, the most important feeding step when you want a horse to gain weight is to provide as much pasture or grass/meadow hay as the horse can eat. You can do this by either giving your horse 24-hour access to pasture or by feeding just enough hay that a little is left over each day. If you can devise a way to feed the hay at ground level without the horse walking all over it will mean the left-over hay isn’t wasted. If you can’t find grass/meadow hay, oaten hay is a suitable substitute.
Step 5: Lucerne (alfalfa)
Feed lucerne hay. Lucerne (known as alfalfa in North America) is a high energy forage and makes a valuable contribution to raising a horse’s calorie intake above their daily requirement to encourage weight gain. Lucerne will also provide your horse with good quality protein which will facilitate muscle development. This is particularly important if your horse suffered muscle wastage at the time that weight loss occurred.
It is difficult to make a recommendation as to exactly how much lucerne should be fed as each horse’s requirement will vary depending on the degree of weight gain required, their temperament (as occasionally lucerne hay will cause behavioural changes in some horses) and the quality of grass/meadow hay being fed. Between 0.5 kg and 1 kg of lucerne hay per 100 kg body weight per day is a good place to start.
Step 6: High energy feeds
Add high energy feedstuffs to your horse’s diet. If the desired rate of weight gain is not achieved after implementing the steps above, your horse still requires additional calories over and above that provided by the pasture and hay being fed. To increase your horse’s calorie intake even further you now have three high energy feed options to consider adding to your horse’s diet. These are:
High energy fibres—including soybean hulls, copra meal and sugarbeet pulp. These feedstuffs are similar to pasture and hay, however the fibre they contain is more readily digested by the bacteria in the hindgut meaning they contain a similar amount of calories as cereal grains. These feeds are particularly well suited to horses that become excitable and hyperactive when fed grain-based feeds.
Cereal grains and grain-based feeds—cereal grains are well known as being high energy feeds and are useful in the diet of horses that need to gain weight. However, some grains and grain-based feeds are more suitable than others from a weight gain perspective. When selecting grains to feed to encourage weight gain it is critical that the starch within the grain (which is the high energy component) is digested in the small intestine.Grains that are digested in the small intestine will provide your horse with more calories (and therefore more weight gain). Grains will also ensure your horse avoids problems with hindgut acidosis which can cause laminitis and will also reduce the amount of energy your horse can extract from its pasture and hay. To ensure the starch is digested in the small intestine, select grains or grain based feeds that have been cooked (such as via extrusion process Pryde’s use). Cereal grains should not be used in the diets of horses with Cushing’s disease or those susceptible to laminitis.
High fat feeds or oils—high fat feeds and oils are the highest energy feedstuffs you can give a horse. Fats and oils hold two major advantages over high energy fibrous feeds and cereal grains. The first is they are energy dense – for example 1 cup of vegetable oil contains as many calories as 1.2 kg of oaten chaff. This has obvious advantages for finicky or small horses that won’t eat large meals. The second advantage of high fat feeds and oils is they don’t tend to make a horse as hyperactive as the same quantity of energy supplied in the form of cereal grains. In addition, they do not carry the risks of digestive upsets that accompany cereal grains. High fat feeds include rice bran and rice bran-based feeds, copra meal, and any of the full fat oilseeds such as soybean and sunflower.
The ‘correct’ balance of these feeds is going to depend on your individual horse. (Hint: that’s where FeedXL comes in!)
Step 7: Balanced diet
Make sure the diet is balanced—if your horse’s diet is unbalanced from a protein, vitamin and mineral perspective it is likely that this will prevent your horse from gaining weight, regardless of how much you are feeding it. Using the FeedXL nutrition software will make sure your horse’s diet is balanced and that there are no deficiencies which may be preventing weight gain. If you’re not already a member, click here to learn more about our plans and get started for free today.
A warning about “Weight Gain” diets
Unfortunately, when we start feeding our horses a well-balanced diet with calories in excess of their requirements, they tend to try and find gainful employment for all their newfound energy which often results in unruly, undisciplined and at times dangerous behaviour when we ride them.
The question then is, how do you feed your horse for weight gain without having them trying to kill you when you ride them? The answer to this million dollar question is … you can’t, unless your horse is well disciplined to begin with. If you own a horse that you can only just control when it is not being fed for weight gain, then you should not expect that you will be able to feed it gross amounts of feed to encourage weight gain AND still ride it safely, because it is just not going to happen. The golden rule is education first, feeding for weight gain second. The exception to this rule is when you have an emaciated horse that needs to be fed to gain weight before you can begin riding it.
You may still find that a well-educated horse becomes a little more difficult to handle when being fed a high energy weight gain diet. In this case, altering the types of feeds you are using may help. The high energy fibrous feeds and high fat feeds and oils tend to have the ability to promote weight gain without having as much effect on their behaviour. But this isn’t always the case, so you still need to be careful.
When will your horse start gaining weight?
You should not expect that your horse will instantly begin to gain weight once you have placed him on a ‘weight gain diet’. Some horses and particularly those who have come from an emaciated state will have internal damage caused by weight loss that they must repair before visible weight gain will occur. Even if this is not the case visible weight gain may take weeks to appear. In short, make sure your horse is healthy, develop and feed a well-balanced diet using your preferred ingredients, don’t skimp on feeding hay and be patient.
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!
It doesn’t matter which equine discipline you are involved in, building and maintaining a strong topline on your horse is important. Strong toplines attract judges or buyers and also help ensure the horse’s back remains strong and healthy.
While work and correct muscle conditioning play a huge role in developing and maintaining topline, nutrition plays an equally important role. To build topline you need to provide the right nutrients. Here are some tips on feeding for topline.
5 Tips for Building Topline in your horse
1. Feed enough energy (calories) for the work your horse is doing
Underfeeding means your horse will need to dip into its stored energy reserves to fuel the muscles for work. Horses will quite quickly break down their topline to use it for fuel if they are underfed.
2. Feed high quality protein
To build topline you must provide the building blocks your horse needs to make muscle. Using feeds with protein provided by soybeans, lupins, faba bean or canola meal will give your horse access to good quality sources of protein, which builds muscle. Feeds with one or more of these protein sources are best.
Avoid feeds containing cottonseed meal as the protein source. Cottonseed is a poor source of protein that is deficient in the most important amino acids (amino acids are the building blocks of protein).
Feeding some lucerne hay will also contribute good quality protein to the diet.
3. Use top-up feeds designed to build top-line
There are feeds such as many of those based on rice bran or soybean that are designed to provide extra calories and protein to build topline. You can also use whey protein isolate or soy protein isolates. It is often wise to strategically feed whey protein based products immediately after work for the best timing to allow these products to assist in building muscle.
4. Feed a balanced diet
Once again it really is so important to ensure your horse’s diet is meeting all of its nutrient requirements as any deficiency will stop your horse from reaching its potential and this includes its potential for building topline. Also, minerals like zinc are needed to effectively build muscle; failing to provide these nutrients will inhibit muscle growth, no matter how well the horse is being worked and fed with quality protein.
Again, this is where FeedXL is so useful; knowing that you are feeding a balanced diet that does meet your horse’s nutrient requirements.
5. Avoid or treat back injuries
Use properly fitted saddles at all times and quickly treat any back injuries that may occur. A horse with a sore back will avoid using its back muscles correctly, in turn preventing it from building a strong topline.
Feeding a good diet with quality protein, in conjunction with exercise aimed at strengthening the topline should give you noticeable results in 4 to 8 weeks.
Do you have a question or comment? Do you need help with feeding?
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