By Dr Vicki Glasgow, Harbro Nutritionist
Top tips to help with winter feeding as the weather gets colder
1. THINK FIBRE FIRST (QUALITY AND QUANTITY)
Fibre is very important to the horse, from both a digestive health and a psychological point of view. Make sure that your forage is appropriate for the type of horse that you have. As the largest part of your horse’s diet, its nutritional quality can have a massive impact on your horse’s body condition. Your horse should be on ad-lib forage first of all and then supplemented with extra feed or supplements according to workload and condition.
2. ASSESS CHANGE IN WORK LEVEL AND ADJUST FEEDING
Darker nights and mornings probably mean that the majority of horses will see a much reduced work load over the winter period. This generally necessitates a change in the hard feed component for the winter period. If your horse is a good doer and you keep him on the same type of feed as when he was in heaps of work, guess what? Yes, he will pile on the pounds! Better to change his feeding now. For good doers over winter, a light chaff alongside a decent balancer or mineral supplement, such as Harbro One Scoop will more than suffice.
For those who struggle to keep condition, you may have to consider a change in type of feed, rather than cutting back, as such. An extra feed a day is likely to suffice to keep the condition on, especially if point 1 has been taken care of correctly! If you are plagued by excess energy in the winter then switch on to a high oil and low starch (cereal), low sugar feed for the winter period (check out Harbro Conditioning Cubes and unmolassed Alfalfa Chaff). For any situation please remember not to feed more than 2kg of hard feed at any one sitting. It is better to increase the number of meals rather than the size of the meals, if your horse needs more feed.
3. BE PREPARED FOR PROLONGED PERIODS OF REST
If we get a very wet or snowy winter then there will be occasions when your horse can’t be ridden and may not even get much turnout time. Have a contingency plan for this scenario. This will mostly impact on those who have managed to keep their horse in a decent level of work over winter. In this case see point 2!! Reduced turnout time can be very tedious for both horse and keeper but a few tricks can help. Where possible try to provide different types of forage and hang haynets etc in different parts of the stable. Use haynets with different mesh sizes so that some hay is easy to get at but some requires a bit of dexterity. Jolly balls and snack balls can also add a bit of interest. Also try to give your horse some degree of turnout if you can, even if it is just whilst you muck out.
4. RUGGING AND FATTIES
Winter is the time to try to shift some pounds off a fat pony/horse. In nature ponies will always lose weight in the winter and build up stores during the plentiful months of summer and with most native and cob types, it is a lot easier to try to get weight off when drops in temperature and low nutritional value grazing are on your side.
Ponies and cobs are very good at keeping warm and even with a partial clip they are still able to keep the heat up. If your fatty is not clipped then they should be able to go without a rug most of the time. Some may need a thin rainsheet or very low fill (40-70g) rug if there is driving wind and rain and no shelter. You may also wish to keep them clean for riding etc. It is a consideration when we are all short for time. The main point would be to not over rug this winter and try when possible to let your pony or horse go without.
5. WATER
Finally, but most importantly, water. During the winter months the majority of veterinary practices will see an increase in colic cases. This is almost always due to a lack of movement, a sudden change in routine and a lack of water. Frozen water is always a nightmare during the truly cold days of winter. Water troughs should be checked regularly and ice cracked as frequently as possible. If possible offer your horse warm water in his stable, this will encourage some to drink a bit more and has the added advantage of taking longer to freeze. This can also be achieved in the field by providing a bucket of hot water and /or topping up frozen troughs with a small amount of boiled water to take the chill off. Make sure that you are still providing salt to your horse during the winter, as this will also encourage drinking. You can also feed a very sloppy mash a couple of times a day to keep them hydrated.
The above tips should help to make for a less stressful winter all round for you and your equine friend. Contact your local Harbro Country store for more information.