The idea of feeding a horse may appear easy but may horse owners are uninformed about the fundamentals. There is no real rule of thumb for feeding, as each horse’s nutritional requires will change depending on age, weight and level of activity. To start with, your horse naturally uses grass as a primary component of their diets. It is one of the MAJOR requisites for a properly functioning digestive system so when we talk of grass, we normally mean natural pasture and cut hay.

big horses usually consume about two to 2.5 % of their body weight in feed every day so a one thousand pond pound horse will consume around twenty to twenty five pounds of food each day. Feeds rich in nourishment are what horses require and high-fiber feeds should not be give to them, as it may upset the digestive system. In fact, a horse would be happy if you fed him with a food of hay/pasture pasture amounting to one percent of his body weight. If your horse doesn’t do much work, they will do nicely on strictly grass, with no grain thrown in. However, horses which are at the growing or breeding stage or they are very active would need to have supplements to their grass diet, like grains or concentrated supplement. Thus, for the correct growth and development of the animal, his daily diet should consist of pasture amounting to one half or more of his weight.

The food content and the quality of the grass are important considerations when you are planning to give your horse a stable diet. This knowledge would help you to gauge the amount of nutrients he would need. One of the best and most affordable sources of summer feed is pasture, which if it is good quality, can satisfy all the nutritional necessities of the horse. How do you figure out how much pasture is required to feed a horse? Here is a rough guideline to help you: (using a weight of one thousand pound - 1,200 pounds). Roughly the requisites are as follows: a mare and foal would need 1.75 to 2 acres; yearlings would require 1.5 to 2 acres and weanlings 0.5 to 1 acre.

Winter feed of course would be cut hay, and again, high quality if you can provide it. The hay which you feed should be cut uniformly and have green leafy appearance and there should not be any dust, moulds, weeds or stubble accompanying the hay. This food is ordinarily rich in protein, minerals and vitamins. Yes, you can use alfalfa hay, but be careful about the higher protein content if you are feeding to young developing horses, as it may contain an excessive amount of calcium in relationship to phosphorus. Too much calcium is not good for developing horses so if you’re not sure about hay quality, have it analyzed.