The Horse Report Balancing your horse’s feed ration

 From page 16

Balancing a feed ration to suit the horse's individual needs is not complicated but essential to achieve optimum health.

Feeding a diet containing predominantly pre mix or pellets is not only unbalanced but also incredibly expensive.

Pellets have an inherent problem that can certainly cause problems. Most horse owners dampen their feed and in many cases too much, when you add water to a pellet, it becomes soggy.

Horses consuming feeds like this are not encouraged to grind the feed efficiently as it is too wet to begin with. Even dry pellets have a problem in that once the grinding begins - they readily become powdered. We already know that if we consume partially digested food it can lead to health problems. If your horse does not grind the feed correctly, two things can happen.

1. The horse does not benefit fully from the nutritional content of the feed.

2. Partially digested feed can lead to digestive problems.

Pre-mix feeds also present problems, as they are not designed to suit the biochemical individuality of each horse and are also very expensive.

If you increase or decrease pellets or a premix feed you are increasing the total amount of ingredients contain in the bag of feed.

This may not suit your horse.

Feeding a natural diet has many advantages and benefits such as:

1. More suited to the species

2. Easily altered to suit circumstances such as age, workload or disease.

3. Encourages correct digestion.

4. Ease of use and time saving

5. Very cost effective

6. Outstanding health benefits

There are many factors that can influence your horse’s life. I believe that nutrition is the key to achieving optimum health and well-being.

This can be achieved by simple controllable feeding methods and supplements that deliver their promises.

Generally speaking a natural diet including whole oats, chaffs plenty of good quality hay and a supporting supplement is all that is required, or perhaps investigate our Hi Form Complete feeds being released end of February offering a foolproof way to feed your horse.

For further free feeding advice please visit the feeding pages of our website www.hiform.com.au or contact us via email enq@hiform.com.au or phone 03 9798 1000.