Feeding a horse may appear easy, but you would be amazed if you knew about the ignorance level of various horse owners. It is a fact that there is no golden rule relevant involving the nutritional needs of a horse, as it mostly depends on the age, body weight and the level of activity, which the horse goes through. Grass is the most fundamental part of a horse diet. It is one of the MAJOR necessities for a properly functioning digestive system so when we speak of forage, we normally mean natural pasture and cut hay.

The quantum of food a big horse requires is close to 2 to two point five% of their body weight, so when a horse weighs a thousand pound, it would require 20 to 25 pounds of feed per day. Horses require feed, which is high in nutrition value and not high-fiber, food which tampers with its digestive system. In a perfect world, your horse should consume a minimum of 1 percent of his body size in hay/grass grass daily.

In fact, a horse would be happy if you fed him with a feed of hay/pasture forage amounting to one percent of his body weight. In case your horse is not employed in much activity, then the right feed is only forge without any grains. However, horses which are at the growing or breeding stage or they are very active would require to have supplements to their grass diet, like grains or concentrated supplement. Think about it this way, grasses should offer at least one half or more of the total weight of the feed eaten everyday for best growth and development.

The nutrient content and the quality of the forage are crucial considerations when you are planning to give your horse a stable diet. When you are aware of this, you can easily figure out the correct amounts of nutrients that would meet his specific needs. One of the best and most affordable sources of summer feed is pasture, which if it is good quality, can satisfy all the nutrition requisites of the horse. To know the correct quantity of pasture that your horse needs, use this rough guideline, which uses the weight of 1000 to 1200 pounds. Roughly the necessities are as follows: a mare and foal would need 1.75 to 2 acres; yearlings would need 1.5 to 2 acres and weanlings 0.5 to 1 acre.

During winter the food could be cut hay, but mind the quality. The hay which you food should be cut uniformly and have green leaf-like appearance and there should not be any dust, moulds, weeds or stubble accompanying the hay.

There is plenty of proteins, vitamins and minerals contained in this food. Yes, you can use alfalfa hay, but be mindful 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 growing horses so if you’re not sure about hay quality, have it analyzed.