One of your most important responsibilities as a horse
owner is to make sure your horse is always well taken care
of and properly fed. If you overfeed your horse with too
much grain, you can give him gas colic, which is a horse's
inability to burp, which can be a serious problem. If the
horse cannot burp, they will develop gas in their digestive
system and they will experience very severe abdominal pain.
In order to avoid the problem of colic, be sure to feed
your horse at regular intervals. You will need three
smaller meals a day instead of one large one. Each meal
needs to include plenty of fiber for the horse's digestive
system, so they will need a lot of good quality hay. You
will also need to make sure that your horse's water is
frequently changed. If your horse is extremely active or
even pregnant, you will have to put in horse grain or
pelleted feed.
Fiber is extremely important for your horse. You will need
to make sure that you have the right kind of feed for your
horse at all times. You will need horse quality hay
delivered to you to avoid getting hay that wasn't cut or
dried properly for your animal. In fact, if you give your
horse bad hay, it can kill it. You will need to break a
bale of hay open and smell it before you think about
feeding it to your horse. If it looks or smells dusty with
a musty scent, do not feed it to your horse. Hay that comes
from the first or even second cutting is okay and has a lot
of nutritional supplements. The third or even fourth
cuttings are worthless to a horse.
Your horse will need to consume around three flakes of hay
every day. If your horse is getting fat from lack of
exercise, you can cut down to two flakes every day. A flake
of hay is a substantial amount of hay that weighs roughly
four pounds. Most of the time, you can mix timothy hay with
alfalfa hay for your horse. If your horse ignores the
timothy hay to get to the alfalfa, feed him his timothy
first on the next feeding when he is very hungry. The
timothy has more nutrition and is less fattening than the
alfalfa hay.
If you don't have a lot of storage room for hay bales, you
can think about giving your horse horse fiber. The hay cube
is one of the most popular versions of horse fiber. You can
get tightly compacted cubes of hay that will take up a lot
less room. The most popular version is the cubes made from
alfalfa. You can also find cubes in pet stores, but
generally, these cubes are for bunnies and other small
animals, not horses. You need to ask for at least 50 pounds
in hay cubes to get the best deal. You can also get
pelleted hay, but experienced horse owners don't typically
prefer this option.
If you compete in horse shows frequently or prefer long
trail rides, you will need to give your horse supplemental
pieces to his diet, including more grain or pelleted feed.
Most of the time, pleasure horses will just need a cup of
grain a few times a week. You can talk to your vet about
what is appropriate for your horse, but you shouldn't give
your horse grain every day or else you will end up with an
overweight animal. Definitely ask your vet if your horse
qualifies for vitamin or mineral supplements as well to
make sure that all of his requirements are being met!
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Moses Wright is the founder of http://www.petquery.com ,
you can find more pet related articles including horses on
his site.
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