Tag Archive for: appearance

Feeding for a Brilliant Coat Shine

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There is nothing more pleasing to a horse owner’s eye than a brilliant, shiny coat. And aside from looking great, a shiny coat also usually indicates the horse is healthy inside and out. Question is, how do you make your horse shine? It’s really quite easy if you follow these simple steps.

5 steps to a brilliant coat


1. Feed a balanced diet

Many nutrients including protein, copper, zinc and vitamin A have a direct impact on the health and shine of your horse’s coat. These nutrients, as well as all of the other essential nutrients, must be provided in your horse’s diet at levels that will meet your horse’s requirements.

If you don’t keep your horse healthy on the inside you can’t possibly expect the outside to shine. This is where FeedXL comes in handy, it makes balancing your horse’s diet for good coat shine simple!

2. Add oils to the diet

If your horse’s diet is low in oils, and in particular, low in the essential fatty acids omega 3 and omega 6 it may mean your horse’s coat will be dull. Adding 1/8 to 1/4 of a cup of oil to the diet will help bring shine to the coat.

Various ways you can add oils to the diet include:

  1. Add oilseeds such as sunflower seeds, micronised or extruded full fat soybean, or flax/linseed to the diet.
  2. Add liquid oils to the diet. Almost all oils will have a positive impact on coat shine. Cold pressed flax/linseed oil, canola or soybean oil or any oils that have been fortified with omega fatty acids are particularly effective. Despite low omega fatty acid levels, rice bran oil and coconut oil are also good for coats.
  3. If you use a complete feed, choose one that contains ingredients like full fat soybean, sunflower seeds and cold pressed oils.

If you are feeding grains (which are high in omega 6) in your horse’s ration you should try to use an oil that is low in omega 6 and high in omega 3. For a full list of feed ingredients and their omega 3 and 6 levels, please read our post on Omega 3 for Horses.

3. Feed feeds known to darken coats

It is well known that feeds containing molasses will make a palomino’s coat go ‘smutty’ or dark in colour, while it will bring a deep liver colour out in chestnuts that have the genetics to go that colour. So if you are after a darker coat, try feeding a small amount of molasses (no more than ¼ cup/day for a 500 kg/1100 lb horse). NB Don’t feed molasses to horses who need a diet low in starch and sugars.

Alfalfa/lucerne is also known to darken coats so if you need a darker coat you can try adding some to your horse’s ration.

The minerals copper and zinc are also essential for correct coat color. Making sure your horse’s diet is meeting requirements for these minerals will make sure coat color remains true. If you want a really dark coat you could try supplementing with sensible amounts of additional copper and zinc to see if it helps?

4. Stay on top of worms

Nothing will take the shine off a horse’s coat faster than a heavy worm burden, so be sure to practice good management when it comes to controlling worms. Rotate your pastures, pick up manure where possible, especially if you live in a wet climate, use fecal eggs counts to determine worm burdens and worm when required. Work closely with your veterinarian on this!

5. Brush!

Brushing regularly will remove dead hair from your horse’s coat and will stimulate the horse’s sebaceous glands which release oils that cause the hair to lie flat and shine. A light rug will also have the same effect, so if you don’t have time to brush regularly you may need to throw a light rug on to keep your horse’s coat clean and shiny.

It nearly all comes down to a good diet

I can’t stress enough how important step 1 is. Balance the diet and make sure all of your horse’s nutrient requirements are met. If you build on this foundation, adding the extra touches for an amazing coat shine is simple.

Meet The Author: Dr Nerida McGilchrist


Dr Nerida McGilchrist is FeedXL’s co-founder and equine nutrition specialist. She holds a degree in Rural Science, a doctorate degree in equine nutrition and nearly 20 years of full time, on the ground experience in feeding all types of horses. To learn more about Nerida and to ‘meet’ the rest of the FeedXL team, check out our About Us page here.

 

 

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!

Click here to join the FeedXL Horse Nutrition Facebook Group

 

Bodyweight Estimation: Which Method Is Best?

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Bodyweight estimation—which method is best?

Having an accurate bodyweight 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:

    1. Weight tapes – you place a specially marked tape around your horse’s girth and it gives you an estimated weight.
    2. 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.
    3. 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 here at Equilize Horse Nutrition. 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 bodyweights 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. This is the method we use to help you estimate your horse’s bodyweight in FeedXL.

 

Meet The Author: Dr Nerida McGilchrist


Dr Nerida McGilchrist is FeedXL’s resident equine nutrition specialist. With a degree in Rural Science, a doctorate degree in equine nutrition and nearly 20 years of full time, on the ground experience in feeding all types of horses Nerida is able to help FeedXL members solve any problem they may come up against with feeding their horses. To learn more about Nerida and to ‘meet’ the rest of the FeedXL team, check out our About Us page here.

 

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!

Click here to join the FeedXL Horse Nutrition Facebook Group

 

Why Body Condition Score?

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Feeding your horse the right amount of feed is important to:

  1. Prevent unwanted weight loss or weight gain
  2. Prevent diseases like colic and gastric ulcers
  3. Prevent unruly, uncontrolled behavior when being ridden

The question is, how do you know how much to feed your horse?

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 horses 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.

Meet The Author: Dr Nerida McGilchrist


Dr Nerida McGilchrist is FeedXL’s resident equine nutrition specialist. With a degree in Rural Science, a doctorate degree in equine nutrition and nearly 20 years of full time, on the ground experience in feeding all types of horses Nerida is able to help FeedXL members solve any problem they may come up against with feeding their horses. To learn more about Nerida and to ‘meet’ the rest of the FeedXL team, check out our About Us page here.

 

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!

Click here to join the FeedXL Horse Nutrition Facebook Group

 

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