As the temperature drops, horses burn more vitality to stay warm, subsequently their power requirements will increase. We can provide our horses additional energy in the type of concentrates and forage. Forages are digested by the microbes in your horses giant intestine and produce extra heat than concentrates. A terrific analogy is to match concentrate and forage to your wooden stove. Concentrates are your kindling and Forage are the logs. Ideally a horse would obtain free alternative hay throughout the winter. How much further forage does your horse want to remain warm? Then they can regulate if they need more or less in the course of the day and night time. Some of us have straightforward keepers who would not do well on free selection hay! For these horses, we have to regulate their intake. Weigh out their hay and supply it in small gap hay nets to prolong their quantity of chew time. The very first thing you might want to do is find out how a lot your horse weighs. Using body length plus coronary heart girth tends to be extra correct. I like to recommend using the next technique versus a weight tape that only wraps around the guts girth. Utilizing a soft measuring tape (the kind often found in sewing kits) measure your horses heart girth and write the variety of inches down. Subsequent, measure the physique size from point of shoulder to point of hip, and write it down. Write down the HG and BL additionally, this can help ensure you that you're measuring at kelpies statue the identical location each time. Be sure you write it all all the way down to check with all through the winter. If you are a number of inches off, most certainly you're measuring from a barely totally different location (until you can inform by looking that your horse has clearly gained or misplaced weight). Strive to search out landmarks. Paint horses have great landmarks! Now that you know how much your horse weighs, you'll be able to determine how much hay he must eat. Your common horse in splendid weight should devour 2% of his body weight. Some onerous keepers require upwards of 2.5% of body weight. When you've got an overweight horse, you possibly can drop all the way down to 1.5% of his physique weight, however no less than that or you'll be creating an entire different set of points! 23lb of hay per day. Max weighs 1,159lb and must eat 2% of his physique weight. When the temperature drops beneath 45 levels F (together with wind chill) horses begin to burn additional power to stay warm. This 45 degree mark is known as "Vital Temperature". For each 1 degree F beneath the vital temperature, your horse will require a 1% enhance in digestible power (DE). As with the whole lot horse related, there are a variety of variables to this rule, similar to wind chill, rain/sleet, your horses coat thickness or in the event you blanket. Consider digestible vitality like your horses calorie requirement. Since horse nutrition is 90% math, lets get back to that! If I proceed with the math we might calculate your horse's DE requirements, next calculate how much further DE is required in your current temperature, subsequent check your hay to see precisely how a lot DE it offers per pound, lastly calculate how much additional hay will provide the additional DE required for the current temperature. If it is 20 degrees F where our buddy Max lives he would wish a further 2 1/2-5lb of hay. This guideline is for horses at maintenance or light work. Further hay will be needed in case your horse is a hard keeper, in heavy work, or on poor high quality hay.
