Hay slow feeders come in many sizes and designs. The principle behind them is to a) reduce waste, and b) slow intake of hay.
Our FeedXL members occasionally ask, “how do I take into account the use of a slow feeder?” The simple answer is you probably don’t need to. While slow feeders are a fantastic tool for slowing the intake of hay, they generally don’t limit your horse’s daily intake of hay i.e. it just takes them longer to eat the same amount of hay. This has several benefits including maximising the time your horse spends eating (mimicking grazing behaviour) to prevent boredom and reduce the risk of developing gastric ulcers.
To enter the amount of hay your horse is eating from a slow feeder each day into FeedXL, just weigh the hay you are putting in the slow feeder and enter this amount in FeedXL
If you’re wanting to reduce the intake of hay for weight control, you ideally need to feed a set (restricted) amount in your horse’s slow feeders per day (rather than free access to a round bale or similar). While a slow feeder will be beneficial in reducing the time taken to eat the restricted amount of hay, keep in mind that you may need to still divide the hay into more than 2 feedings per day.
To get a gauge on how regularly you need to top up your slow feeders, spend a day or two observing your horse’s hay intake (from the hay slow feeder) and take note of how long it takes them to finish the hay. Ideally, you don’t want your horses going longer than 4 to 5 hours without eating.
P.S. If you want to use a slow feeder but you can’t use anything with a net because your horse has shoes, check out The Savvy Feeder, we think they are brilliant!
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Grazing muzzles are useful for reducing your horse’s pasture intake. They can be used for easy-keepers when you are trying to reduce energy levels within the diet. Or when your horse suffers from a health condition which requires a reduction of non-structural carbohydrates (starch + sugar) in their diet. Grazing muzzles have gained popularity with many horse owners as they allow their horse to socialise, exercise and be continually stimulated through grazing.
Studies have shown grazing muzzles can reduce forage intake by as much as 80%. There are many factors which affect intake including acclimatization to the muzzle, pasture height and type of muzzle used and your individual horse’s tenacity when it comes to getting grass to poke through the hole.
To enter pasture intake in FeedXL when your horse is wearing a grazing muzzle, subtract up to 80% from the time your horse spends grazing. For example, if your horse is allowed to graze muzzled for 15 hours and is dry-lotted the remainder of the time, you might enter ‘3 hours’ as the amount of time your horse ‘grazes’ into FeedXL (80% of 15 is 12 hours; 15 x 0.8 = 12 hours: 15 – 12 = 3 hours of ‘grazing time’.
Observe your horse grazing pasture while muzzled and watching his body condition over time. This will allow you to get a better estimate of actual intake by your horse. You may find that reducing the ‘time’ grazing in FeedXL by 80% is too much, so adjust it as you see fit.
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The connection between starch and ulcers in horses
You may have heard it recommended that horses with ulcers should be fed a ‘grain-free’, low starch diet. It is believed that any starch may make ulcers worse. Or stop them from healing when the horse is being medicated to resolve ulcers. But is there any scientific basis for what has now become a popular recommendation? Let’s take a look!
Starch is fermented to volatile fatty acids (VFAs)
Like the rest of the horse’s gut, the stomach is full of bacteria. When grains AND forage enter the stomach, they are partially fermented. During fermentation, the bacteria produce volatile fatty acids. These VFAs are the same as what is produced in the hindgut during fermentation there. So they are not harmful to the horse. In fact they are beneficial.
Thing is though, in the stomach, they get mixed with the hydrochloric acid from the stomach and become ‘nonionized’. In this state, they can enter the epithelial cells of the upper part of the stomach, causing them to become inflamed, and swell, and ultimately make the stomach wall lining more prone to ulceration. This is what they understand to happen in pigs.
So everything you feed a horse will be partially fermented in the stomach. We do know however, that when we feed a grain based, high starch ingredients, higher levels of VFAs are produced. But does it increase the risk of gastric ulcers? Not necessarily.
Lucerne + grain = less ulcers than grass hay
In a study where horses were fed either lucerne + grain OR grass hay only, there was significantly higher levels of VFA in the stomach contents of horses fed lucerne + grain. BUT, the horses on this diet had less severe and fewer gastric ulcers than the horses fed the grass hay only diet. Despite the higher level of VFAs, horses on the lucerne + grain diet had a higher pH (less acidic) for 5 hours after feeding when compared to the grass hay only diet 1.
The researchers in this study suggest the high protein, high calcium characteristics of both the lucerne hay and the ‘grain’ (unfortunately, they do not specify what the grain was except to say it contained over 7 g/kg of calcium and was almost 15% protein, so it must have been a fortified commercial feed) created a buffering effect in the stomach and were able to keep the pH higher.
So here, the starch did increase VFA levels, but the diet containing the grain was also effective at keeping gastric pH higher. Combined, there was a protective effect against ulcers.
In a second study2, researchers found that of horses fed lucerne plus a commercial pelleted feed, 8% developed ulcers. Compared to 75% who developed ulcers when they were fed the same pellet, but with grass hay. In this same study, horses that started with existing ulcers all improved their ulcers scores by more than 2 when fed lucerne + pellet. But on the grass hay, only 2 out of 12 horses showed healing to the same degree. So it does appear lucerne is protective. And that feeding grain/starch doesn’t automatically mean a horse will be prone to ulcers.
What about high fibre versus low fibre?
We tend to think that a high fibre diet is always going to be better than a low fibre diet for minimising gastric ulcers. And there are varied reports in the literature. Research from the UK3 reported that a low fibre, high concentrate (32% starch pellet) diet had a lower number and severity of lesions versus a high fibre, low concentrate diet. Odd right!
The fibre fed during this study was ryegrass haylage. A trend is starting to appear with grass forage and a higher risk of ulcers! What we don’t know is why? Researchers in Denmark reported that horses with straw as their only source of forage had a higher risk of ulcers4 which may give some clues. Perhaps there are nutrients required for maintaining gut wall integrity that grass hays and straw are unable to provide.
The important point here is to realise that just feeding lots of forage is not enough to protect a horse from ulcers. And to recognise that adding grain to diets is not a risk factor in itself. It comes down to which forages are fed and how much grain/starch is fed AND how feeding is managed.
How much starch is OK?
The studies reported above show that grain can be fed without causing ulceration. So starch is not a simple ‘Cause & Effect’ with gastric ulcers. Or in other words, when it is fed in a certain way, it can be fed without causing ulcers. And can even be fed in a way to allow ulcers to heal. But is there a limit to how much starch you can feed a horse with ulcers?
The answer is YES! In a large study, 201 Danish horses from 23 different non-racing stables were scoped for ulcers. 53% of horses were reported as having an ulcer score of more than 2, with most of these occurring in the upper part of their stomach4.
Two risk factors related to the amount of starch fed were reported in this study;
Feeding more than 2 grams of starch per kg of bodyweight per day (equivalent to 2 – 3 kg of a complete feed/day for a 500 kg horse, depending on the feeds starch content) doubled the risk of ulcers; and
Feeding more than 1 gram of starch per kg of bodyweight per meal (roughly equivalent to 1 – 1.5 kg of a commercial complete feed per meal for a 500 kg horse, depending on the starch content of the feed) increased risk by more than three times.
So some starch it seems is perfectly OK. But there is a limit to how much should be fed ‘per day’ and ‘per meal’.
Feeding grain based feeds carefully is a huge consideration in managing the risk of ulcers. If your horse needs more energy than can be provided by the amounts of grain based feeds specified above, you should look at feeding oils or high energy fibres to meet the rest of your horse’s calorie requirements.
Does starch cause ulcers in horses?
Too much starch increases the risk of ulcers. But when fed in a well put together diet, research has shown that diets containing grains resulted in less ulcers than grass hay only diets. So starch, itself, doesn’t appear to cause ulcers.
My horse is prone to ulcers. What should I do?
Good question! Here are my top tips on feeding a horse prone to ulcers:
Feed lucerne hay – lucerne has been shown to buffer the stomach well and is protective against ulcers. It even seems to help them heal.
Feed lucerne as chaff or haylage with your grain based feeds – this seems to help negate the possible negative effect of starch when it is fermented in the stomach.
Feed lucerne hay before you ride – working horses on a full stomach is CRITICAL for preventing ulcers. The fibre stops the acid splashing around and the saliva created while chewing the hay helps to buffer the acid in the stomach. Using lucerne has the extra positive benefit with the buffering effect from the lucerne itself.
Feed lots of forage – the more forage in the diet the better. It makes a horse chew longer, create more saliva and keeps the stomach full of fibre to help stop acid from the lower part of the stomach splashing up onto the top part and creating ulcers.
Don’t allow more than 5 hours between meals – the longer the intervals between meals, the higher the risk of ulcers5. So make sure your horse is eating at least every 5 hours. For horses particularly prone to ulcers, keeping time without food as short as possible (no more than 2 hours) is advisable.
If you feed grain based feeds, keep the amounts small – don’t exceed 1 gram of starch per kg of bodyweight per meal. The amount of pellet/sweetfeed/cube/grain you can feed per meal depends on the starch content of the feed. The table below shows you maximum amounts that can be fed per meal of a feed, based on its starch content, for a 500 kg horse. If you are unsure of your feeds starch content, don’t exceed 1.5 kg of feed/meal (for a 500 kg horse).
Starch Content (%)
Maximum Amount/Meal for a 500kg Horse (kg)
20
2.5
30
1.7
40
1.25
50
1
Make sure horses ALWAYS have access to water – water deprivation has long been known to increase risk of ulcers. So allowing constant access to water is important to reduce the risk of ulcers.
Should I go grain-free?
While the studies above show us that feeding grains, in diets that also contain lucerne can result in ulcers resolving, if you are more comfortable going grain-free then it is certainly an option. Using high quality, grain-free products that are high in protein and fortified with calcium are likely going to work well for a horse prone to ulcers. As far as I can see there are no studies to confirm this… something for future research to work on!
It is just important to remember that this is not essential. Grain based feeds can be used, as long as they are used carefully.
References
Nadeau JA, Andrews FM, Mathew AG, et al. Evaluation of diet as a cause of gastric ulcers in horses. Am J Vet Res 2000;61:784-790.
Lybbert T, Gibbs, P., Cohen, N., Scott, B., Sigler, D. Feeding Alfalfa Hay to Exercising Horses Reduces the Severity of Gastric Squamous Mucosal Ulceration. AAEP Proceedings 2007;53.
Boswinkel M, Ellis A, Sloet van Oldruitenborgh-Oosterbaan Mm. The influence of low versus high fibre haylage diets in combination with training or pasture rest on equine gastric ulceration syndrome (EGUS). Pferdeheilkunde 2007;23.
Luthersson N, Nielsen KH, Harris P, et al. Risk factors associated with equine gastric ulceration syndrome (EGUS) in 201 horses in Denmark. Equine Vet J 2009;41:625-630.
Luthersson N, Nielsen KH, Harris P, et al. Risk factors associated with equine gastric ulceration syndrome (EGUS) in 201 horses in Denmark. Equine Veterinary Journal 2009;41:625-630.
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Don’t give a horse on ulcer treatment free choice hay
You’re probably thinking… What?!?! We know! And we agree… this sounds CRAZY! And goes against everything you might think is going to help a horse with ulcers.
If you have had a horse you have treated, unsuccessfully, for ulcers, keep reading!
Because here is the thing… horses on free choice hay have poor absorption of omeprazole (the drug of choice in treating equine gastric ulcer syndrome; EGUS). And if they don’t absorb it, it simply will not do its job of suppressing acid production. And if it doesn’t suppress acid, ulcers won’t heal.
In a study by Sykes et al (2017) it was shown that 3 out of 6 horses on ad libitum hay diets had minimal if any acid suppression (i.e. medication was totally useless).
Sykes 2019 suggests instead that horses are medicated after an overnight fast. THEN, withhold feed for 60 to 90 minutes after administration. Then feed a large feed of forage, which will stimulate gastrin which then makes omeprazole more effective. After the horse has eaten the hay it can be fed any concentrate it may require in its diet.
So overnight fast, then dose, then wait an hour, then feed lots of hay or allow access to pasture.
The research into this seems conclusive hence why we’re reporting it here, even if it seems to go against the grain (no pun intended).
Once the horse has finished its course of ulcer treatment you should immediately revert back to free choice hay and minimise and periods of time off feed.
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So, your horse gets free choice hay – that’s great! Plenty of forage is a great start to your horse’s diet. But how do you know exactly how much of that free choice hay he eats? While this might seem tricky to estimate, FeedXL makes it easy to understand how much hay your horse eats.
If your horse has access to unlimited hay (from a roundbale, for example) you can easily enter “free choice hay” into FeedXL and the system will automatically estimate your horse’s daily intake for you.
We’ve put together a video to walk you through how to enter ‘free choice hay’ into FeedXL below. If you still have any questions after watching this video, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
First, select “yes” to say that your horse has access to free choice hay, then select the number of hours of access your horse has each day. Click “Create Forage”, find your hay, and add it to the list and select it’s quality. Next, choose what percentage this hay is of your horse’s total free choice forages. When you go on to Create Diet, this will be added to your horse’s diet and you’re ready to carry on with the rest of your feeds and supplements.
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A: No. And in fact, it would be impossible to create a diet that had every nutrient in FeedXL exactly at 100% of your horse’s requirements.
Q. So if not 100%, where should the nutrient levels be sitting? And what is normal? Because some of the amounts on this graph look really high?! Isn’t that dangerous???
A. Good question! And the answer is it depends on the nutrient. Forages, for example, contain high levels of some nutrients like iron and potassium. Because diets often have lots of forage, these nutrients will almost always be high in the diet.
BUT that doesn’t mean it is dangerous. In fact, if you push a nutrient to a dangerous level, FeedXL will warn you – the bar for that nutrient will turn red, like this, to warn you that the nutrient is now at its ‘upper safe limit’ and needs to be reduced.
Q. OK, that’s good! So, I know if I get a nutrient WAY too high FeedXL will warn me. BUT I still don’t know what is normal for all of the nutrients. Where should I expect to see them?
A. Yep, let’s walk you through them! We’ll use this graph and go through each nutrient.
Digestible Energy
This should sit, for most horses, somewhere between 90% and 105% of requirements. SOME horses have a lower or higher need for digestible energy (calories) so you may see the odd horse sitting below 90% or above 105%.
BUT, if you do enter a horse and the Digestible Energy is low or high and this does not correspond accurately with what you are seeing in your actual horse (meaning if the Digestible Energy is low in the diet you enter into FeedXL, normally you would expect to see weight loss. If it is high, normally you would expect to see weight gain) you MAY need to double check the information for this nutrient that you have entered into FeedXL as this is a small red flag that something has not been entered right.
For example, if you have entered bodyweight that is too high, the Digestible Energy level will be low and vice versa. Or if you haven’t weighed your feeds and hay or classified your pasture correctly and you have entered amounts or qualities that are too low, then Digestible Energy will appear low and vice versa.
Quick Tip: If Digestible Energy in your horse’s diet is below 90% or above 105%, check that you have entered your horse’s bodyweight and weights of feed and forages correctly. You can also refer to this article on How to Check if What You’ve Entered into FeedXL is Correct which can guide you a bit further on getting it right.
Crude Protein
The Crude Protein level in the diet should always be at or above 100% when entering this nutrient into FeedXL. And it is best to try to keep it less than 200%. For performance horses that are stabled and in work try to keep Crude Protein below 160% if you can… it is not always possible!
Depending on your forages, you may see Crude Protein go very high (well above 200%). Is this an issue? Generally it’s not, but there are some situations (like very hot, humid climates or when a horse is stabled) that it is not ideal. Sometimes, if it is your pasture for example that is high in protein, there is not a lot you can do about it. If the horse is stabled and fed hay, you should try to switch some of the higher protein forage (e.g. alfalfa/lucerne) for a lower protein forage (like a meadow/grass hay), to bring the overall amount of Crude Protein in the diet down.
Lysine is your indicator of protein quality (you can read about Protein Quality here https://feedxl.com/30-understanding-protein-quality/). When entering this nutrient into FeedXL, Lysine should sit between 100% and 150%. If it is lower, it indicates your protein quality is low and your horse will struggle to do things like build muscle or make milk. In fact, when lysine is low in a diet you will likely see your horse losing muscle over his topline… it’s an important nutrient to get right in the diet.
Lysine may get quite high in some diets depending on the amount and source of crude protein. But if you follow the guidelines above for Crude Protein, you will find Lysine levels will adjust accordingly.
Calcium
Calcium should be at or above 100% in the diet and it’s good to keep it below 200%. Ideally, below 150% but depending on the feeds and forages being used, it is not always possible to achieve this. The amount in the diet shown here is lovely, more than the horse needs but well below 200%.
It is important with calcium to also check the calcium to phosphorus ratio in the diet (look in the Nutrient Table) to make sure it is within the right limits with phosphorus. And if you like to use the extra ratios, you can also check its ratio with magnesium, which as a guide, should be 3: 1 or less.
Phosphorus
Phosphorus should be at or above 90% and ideally below 150%. You may see some diets with high phosphorus ingredients like Rice Bran pushing phosphorus higher than this. If it is above 150%, be sure to check the calcium to phosphorus ratio on the nutrient table to make sure this is still balanced (there MUST be more calcium in a diet than phosphorus).
NOTE: You cannot calculate the diet’s calcium to phosphorus ratio off the numbers on the graph. It is always best to read the ratio off the nutrient table. FeedXL will warn you if the calcium to phosphorus ratio is too high or low!
Copper, Zinc, Selenium and Iodine
We group these trace minerals together because they all share the same characteristic that they are almost ALWAYS at low levels in forages. Which means they are nearly always deficient in diets before you add fortified feeds or supplements.
This means that you can aim to keep these nutrients as close to 100% as possible. The diet shown here uses a single vitamin/mineral supplement to meet trace mineral requirements.
This is what the diet looked like before I added the supplement:
You can see these 4 minerals are all low. I used the Supplement Finder (i.e. the BIG PINK BUTTON on the Results Step) to find a supplement that would fill all of these gaps. Ideally what you want to see when you use a single supplement is that at least one of these minerals is sitting very close to 100%. That is your green flag that you have the amount of supplement at the right level. Increasing the amount from this point is just a waste as all requirements are already met, while reducing it would mean the amount of this nutrient (selenium in this example, which is sitting at 101%) would no longer be meeting requirements.
The same rules also apply when using a fortified feed to meet vitamin and mineral requirements. Except that you also have to consider the amount of Digestible Energy the feed is adding.
This is not a super simple concept, so if you are confused, please keep asking questions, as the more you understand this, the easier it will be to use FeedXL effectively.
Quick tip: You can try to keep copper, zinc, selenium and iodine as close to 100% of requirements as possible. If these nutrients are above 200%, I would be trying to find ways to reduce them. This may mean switching feeds or supplements!
Manganese, Iron, Magnesium and Potassium
These minerals are almost always HIGH in forages. Therefore, you will almost always see them sitting well above your horse’s 100% level in the diet. Is this a concern? No. There are always exceptions, but for the majority of horses, no, it is not a problem when these minerals are well above 200%.
Thing is, because these nutrients are rich in forages, it is almost impossible to get them closer to the 100% mark. You could reduce the amount of forage, but the downside of that (higher risk of ulcers, boredom, compromised hindgut health, higher risk of dehydration and colic) far outweighs any potential upside. In fact unless levels in the forage are extreme and the bar for a nutrient goes red, there really is no upside to reducing forage.
If you are concerned, because sometimes it does look scary, just read the notes in the FeedXL Nutrient Table or the hover box on the graph to put your mind at ease. For example, Iron in this diet is at 331%. Which seems really high! But, the notes will tell you:
“While this horse’s iron is higher than it needs to be it is still within the safe range. His upper safe level for iron is 6,019 mg or 943% of his RDI”
So, the upper safe limit is 943%. This diet is a long way off that, so even though 331% seems high, it is very much within the safe zone!
For those of you who like to look at the iron: copper: zinc: manganese ratio, it is calculated for you in the Nutrient Table.
Sodium and Chloride
Sodium and chloride are the two components of ordinary table salt. So together they can make a feed taste very salty. If a feed gets too salty your horse may stop eating it, because it simply doesn’t taste good (and can’t blame them!). So, I like to keep sodium as close to 100% as I can, by adjusting the amount of salt in the diet.
There are a few exceptions. If your horse is in a very hot and humid climate you may need to feed more (more info here https://feedxl.com/40-electrolytes/) or if you are trying to increase water intake for some reason, more salt is useful. But under normal conditions, sitting sodium at or very close to 100% is best. BUT also, always make sure your horse has access to free choice salt!
Chloride is a bit of a lucky dip and its final level in a diet will depend on the amount in your forages. I don’t pay too much attention to where chloride ends up. In fact I don’t think I have ever had to adjust a diet specifically to change the level of chloride (for any dairy nutritionists reading this, it does play a big role in DCAD, but that is another story for another day 🙂 ).
Vitamin A
If you are obsessive about getting nutrients close to 100% in your FeedXL nutrient chart, Vitamin A is your friend! You will notice it is nearly always sitting on 100% of requirements. Why?
Well, in forage, the ‘vitamin A’ content is not active vitamin A. It is in the form of Beta Carotene which can be converted to vitamin A IF your horse needs vitamin A. So, they will only convert it if they need it.
FeedXL models this physiology and takes into account ALL vitamin A from feeds and supplements as this will be an active form of vitamin A (which can become toxic, so we need to count all of it). But then FeedXL will only convert vitamin A to active form from forages IF your horse needs more vitamin A.
For example, if your feed + supplement provides 80% of your horse’s requirement for vitamin A, FeedXL will just top up the remaining 20% of vitamin A from forages to meet 100% of your horse’s requirement. Which is why Vitamin A is very often sitting right on 100%.
If your feeds and supplements provide more than 100% of your horse’s requirement for vitamin A you will see it above 100%. This is OK, as long as it is within safe limits (though personally I would keep it under 200%).
Vitamin E, Vitamin B1 and Folic Acid
These three are grouped together because they will often be low in diets before you add some kind of fortified feed or supplement. And they are all relatively expensive nutrients, so for the sake of cost, you want to make sure your horse’s requirement is met, but if levels of these vitamins go above 200%, you may be paying a lot for nutrients your horse doesn’t really need. Keep them between 100% and 200% if you can. In the case of this diet, the supplement used was rich in Folic Acid, so it has tipped above 200%, but the E and B1 are at nice levels so nothing to worry about with the Folic Acid in this case.
Quick Tip: Keeping these nutrients below 200% will make sure the diet is not excessively expensive!
Vitamin B2, Niacin, Vitamin B5 and Vitamin B6
This crew are all grouped together because forage is OFTEN high in these vitamins so you will normally see levels WELL ABOVE 100% for all of these vitamins. Is that something you should be concerned about? Not at all. In fact all of these except vitamin B6 are considered non-toxic. And the vitamin B6 upper safe level is very high (in this diet the upper safe limit is 5000%!!).
Quick Tip: You can ignore these nutrients as long as they are ‘green’. They will almost always be well above 100%, but it is nothing to be concerned about!
I hope that helps you a little to read the graph and to put your mind at ease about what is and is not normal for certain nutrients. If you have questions, please be sure to ask in the FeedXL Horse Nutrition Forum on Facebook!! We truly want you to know as much as you can about what FeedXL is showing you!
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This is something we often hear… and 99% of the time it is WRONG!
Forages are (almost) always too low in trace minerals to meet a horse’s requirements and leaving them un-supplemented on forage only diets usually results in problems with their hooves, joints, immune system, muscles … everything really!
They may look OK, but there is usually a bunch of stuff going on inside that you can’t see until a deficiency is quite pronounced.
BUT, there are always exceptions to the rule and here is one example. This is a pasture from New Zealand that is able to meet all trace mineral requirements without any additional supplementation.
Even for selenium, which is something we don’t expect in New Zealand!
Sodium is a bit low (nothing unusual there) and iodine was not tested, but the fact is it is actually a pasture that horses would do OK on without extra supplementation. Just need a bit of iodised salt!
The horses on this pasture were being fed a selenium-containing balancer pellet and recently tested with blood selenium levels just in the high range (nothing scary, just high).
The lesson in this, forage analysis is a wonderful tool when assessing your horse’s diet and FeedXL makes it so super easy to really see what forage is providing and what you need to add, which in this case is very little.
If you’d like to have your forage tested, we love to recommend Equi-Analytical.
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!
If you are looking at your foal’s diet in FeedXL it is crucial you include mum’s milk. It is a goldmine of nutrients for your foal and must be taken into account. Forget the milk and you will end up overfeeding, which will then cause problems with growth that is too fast.
OK you say, I will include the milk, but how? I know right, it’s a bit tricky because the foal just drinks it and you have no way of measuring how much he drinks. But lucky for you, your mare produces a reasonably consistent amount of milk for her foal, so depending on the age of the foal, you can calculate how much milk he is probably drinking. It won’t be perfect, but it is a lot better than not including it at all.
Here at FeedXL we don’t recommend you balance a diet for a foal until he is at least 3 months of age. Up until this age, his mother’s milk and stores of minerals in the liver will fully meet requirements. So even though he will start to eat with his mother as early as a few days of age he doesn’t need this extra feed to meet his nutrient requirements.
After 3 months of age your foal will start to rely on nutrition outside of milk to meet his requirements, BUT milk still provides a lot of nutrition, so it must be included in his diet in FeedXL.
Here’s how to include milk in your FeedXL diets:
1. Calculate the amount of milk he is getting from his mother. At 3 months of age her milk production will be around 2.5% of her bodyweight per day.
To calculate 2.5% of her bodyweight:
2.5/100 = 0.025
0.025 x BW = amount of milk per day in kg or lb
So for a 500 kg (1100 lb) mare this would be:
0.025 x 500 kg = 12.5 kg per day
(or 0.025 x 1100 lb = 27.5 lb per day)
2. Create your foal in FeedXL with his correct date of birth and bodyweight. It is so important to get bodyweight correct! The only real way to do this is to weigh your foal (sorry, no easy tricks on this one).
3. Enter your foal’s pasture and/or hay, then add the milk at 2.5% of his mother’s bodyweight using the calculation above.
4. Check the diet to see what is missing and add a balancer pellet or feed to fill in the gaps. TIP: Use the supplement finder to find a product that will top up the required mineral and vitamin levels.
The images below show a January born, 200 kg thoroughbred foal’s diet with:
Pasture Only – note the LARGE deficit in required digestible energy. If you tried to fill this entire gap with feed you would be feeding waayyyyyy too much and make your foal grow too fast! This is why you need to add the milk!
Pasture + Milk – note now the deficit in digestible energy has been filled by the wonderful milk, so he doesn’t actually need extra calories in the diet. But there remain many mineral deficits. This is what you need to top up.
Pasture + Milk + 600 grams of Balancer Pellet (that I found using the Supplement Finder) – and you are done, requirements met without exceeding digestible energy requirement! Note FeedXL may warn you that forage requirement is not met. For foals, you have my permission to politely ignore FeedXL on this one as long as he has constant access to pasture and/or hay!
It is so super important to remember the milk! If you don’t, you run the risk of overfeeding your foal and that will almost certainly cause you to run into issues with developmental disease in the bones and joints.
In addition to feeding your foal properly, you need to make sure the mother has a balanced diet as well. Read more on how to feed the lactating mare here: https://feedxl.com/46-feeding-the-lactating-mare/
If you are balancing a diet for your foal with FeedXL and are having trouble getting it right, be sure to pop over to our Facebook Nutrition Forum and ask for help. We are here and we want to help you!
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!
Did you know that with your Standard or Premium plan, you can add your own hay with complete data to FeedXL?
The easiest way to do this is to upload an Equi-Analytical XML forage analysis file and FeedXL will add all the data for you.
Getting your forage tested
To learn about Equi-Analytical and their forage analyses, visit their website here. We recommend either the (601) Equi-Tech package ($32/analysis) or the (604) Equine Complete package ($103). When testing pasture or hay, we also suggest you have Selenium tested for an additional $55.
If you have an analysis from another lab or you only have the PDF file from Equi-Analytical, the video below will show you how to add the data to your hay so you can use it in your FeedXL diets immediately (and don’t have to wait for one of us here at FeedXL to enter data for you).
Some things to keep in mind when uploading your forage analysis into FeedXL:
Use the ‘As Sampled’ data and not the ‘Dry Matter’ data.
Watch the per amount unit. The data in this example is given per 1 lb. If your analysis is in a different unit (e.g. per 1 kg) change to the appropriate unit.
Watch your units on each nutrient, they can vary.
The hay will show ‘Waiting for Data’ in its name until we accept it as a private ingredient. BUT, you can still use the hay in your diets, it will work perfectly!
Water Analysis? To have water analysis results added to FeedXL, simply email them to support@feedxl.com
Watch this video for a step-by-step tutorial on how to add your own forage:
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!
Have you ever got the results back from a pasture or hay analysis and been left scratching your head trying to figure out what the numbers mean? Frustrating isn’t it!?
That is unless you have a tool (like FeedXL) to interpret the numbers for you.
The analysis below shows the analysis result numbers a pasture, but they are kind of meaningless unless we look at them in terms of how much of that pasture a horse eats and how much nutrient is provided compared to the amount of nutrient the horse actually needs.
Take phosphorus for example, the pasture contains 1.45 g/kg of phosphorus, which is only enough to meet 39% of a late pregnant (month 11) mare’s requirement if she was given full time access to this pasture.
This pasture is native pasture, and the soils are low in phosphorus, so the pasture is lower in phosphorus than most pastures. BUT point is 1.45 g/kg of phosphorus was only a number until we put it in terms of what our late pregnant mare needs each day to meet her requirement.
You will also see from the diet readout from FeedXL below that the pasture only diet (bar graph with the green and red bars) is not meeting requirements for multiple other nutrients for this late pregnant mare, which also would have been difficult to determine just from reading the analysis numbers alone.
So with FeedXL we can see what is not in your pasture that your horse needs. You can then also add other feed ingredients to the diet to meet those requirements.
The second bar graph with the green and blue bars shows a diet for a late pregnant mare on this pasture. The diet uses 2 kg of prime lucerne hay (shown in the darker green) and 3 kg of a commercial broodmare feed (shown in the blue). All requirements are now nicely met!
Pasture analysis made that bit more useful! Using FeedXL to assess your forage analysis also means you will only supplement with the nutrients you need to add, potentially saving yourself a lot of money by not adding unnecessary products and nutrients.
You can upload as many pasture and hay analyses as you like into your FeedXL account, just click the ‘Add my own forage’ link in the Create Forage section of the diet wizard, or directly from the Feeds list (see below). Click here to log in and give it a try!
If you’d like some help finding a forage analysis lab, you can click here to download our free ‘Lab List’ with laboratories in Australia, New Zealand, United States, Canada and the UK.
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!
