How much to feed your horse

Hello! To work out how much feed your horse needs, you first need some basic information:

• The horse's age (young horses need more feed than adults, while older horses may need a slightly different ration because they struggle to absorb nutrients and to chew high-fibre feed)
• Condition. Is the horse over- or underweight, or does it already hold the ideal condition you want to maintain?
• The horse's breed and type. Is it a good or a poor doer?
• Is it an in-foal or lactating mare that needs extra nutrition for both herself and the foal?
• How much you work the horse. In some cases you need to add a work allowance on top of the horse's maintenance needs.

With that information in hand, use the results of a forage analysis on your horse's feed to calculate a ration and find out whether you need to add any supplementary feed. Forage is often short of protein, and you can choose different supplements to even out the balance between protein and energy. The ratio of digestible crude protein to energy (MJ) should be around 6. Swedish soils are low in selenium, so you usually need to add selenium and often other minerals too to get a good balance. You will see this in the mineral section of the forage analysis. A starting point is that the calcium to phosphorus ratio should be at least 1.2, and you can then choose a mineral feed matched to your forage.

Remember too that horses need to eat at least 1.5 kg of dry matter (the weight of the feed minus its water content) per 100 kg of bodyweight to avoid stress-related behaviours such as crib-biting and weaving, and to avoid ulcers. Choose a forage you can feed plenty of, and add supplements or hard feed only if it is genuinely needed. Good luck!