I have a 15hh Cob x Hackney, what should I be feeding him?

Question

He is on heavy work, jumping some days and flat work on the other days. He has at least one day off a week and when he is not ridden his is in the field on grass livery. What should I feed him to keep his energy and condition healthy?

Answer 1

hmmm

Answer 2

Depends, on how old, and whether he is a good doer?

He may not need to be fed during the summer, other than the usual grass and hay.

Answer 3

Every horse is different. Feed whatever it takes to maintain your horses weight. Lots of grass and hay is always first choice, and probably feed him some horse feed (sweet or pellets or mixed) if he needs it. Even if he doesn't *need* feed to stay fat, most horses enjoy getting a little anyway. Be sure to provide him with a free-choice mineral block to get him all the minerals he needs. If he is low on energy, I definitely recommend you give him some sort of feed. You just have to feel your horse out and set up a program that is right for him.

Answer 4

Ah, the question I get asked the most where I work.  There is never a simple answer to this so I will give you the information you will need to formulate what you will need to feed your equine.

A few things first, we all like to think that our horses get heavy work.  Truth is, most horses are at moferate to light work.  It sounds like your working your horse moderatly.  A typical hunter is classified as light work while a jumper would usually be classified as moderate work.  Being ridden for half an hour and jumped around is light work for an animal who is fit.  Heavy work would be something like 45 minutes flat work while having the horses heart rate at its maximum level before exhaustion and then jumping another 45 minutes.  Thats an awful lot of work and most horses, except your endurance horses, dont usually get worked that much.

The second things you need to consider are age, weight (very important), what you want to do with him, and what you want the feed to do, and most important of all... the health of the animal.  

Age is a factor since you can feed a foal a senior feed nor can you feed your pasture "lawn ornimant" a performance feed.  The result would be a disaster.  Im going to guess your horse is not a senior in  this case.  

The biggest factor is his weight.  When you feed it is by weight and BY WEIGHT ONLY.  So many times my customers tell me they feed a scoop of this and two scoops of that.  There are so many different feed forms that a scoop of one thing will weight very differently as a scoop of something else.  Feeds are formulated by weight.  The manufacture produces a feed and prints the reccomended amout to be feed on the back.  Those feeding guildlines are important and should be followed.  They are fomulated so that the animal will get to proper nutritional needs met as long as properly fed.

What you want to do with him is another factor. Are you going to be taking him to shows and competing?  If so you will probably need a performance feed so that he is getting enough energy.  Are you riding for fun and dont plan on taking him to shows?  You would probably be fine with a sweet feed for an active pleasure horse.  Are you going to retire him soon?  You would probably need a compleate feed.  Basically you want to look at the calories your horse is consuming.  You want to keep them balanced so that your horse does not consume more then he uses (wieght gain among other problems) nor do you want to be "starving your horse" by not providing the proper amount of calories.  When your horse does not consume the calories he needs, his body will use calories that are stored in his body.  This is what you dont want since muscle, specifically the top line, is where those calories are taken from (basically).  If you noticed his top line dissapearing, he probably needs more calories if he is a healthy equine with no health issues.

What do you want the feed to do?  Is your horse a little lazy and you feel like you have to constantly ask him to move forward?  You will probably need a sweet feed.  Is he too forward and you need him to level out?  You might want a pelleted performance feed designed to level out "hot" horses (Stratagy is an awsome one for this.)  Do you want a compleate feed with forage "built in"?  This would be ideal for poor pasture or poor hay quality, seniors who might have problems chewing, you cant get hay, etc.  Compleate feeds are formulated so that your equine gets all the nutrition they need without having to be fed forage/roughage.  But they need to be fed properly and BY WEIGHT to maintain the nutrition the animal needs.

Last but not least, the health of the animal must be factored into all this.  Is your horse insulin resistant, over weight, under weight, cushings, founder, etc?  Im assuming your horse is healthy since no medical issues were mentioned.  When you do have health issues you want a feed that will meet all the nutritional needs that dont "upset" their condition.  For example a cushings horse would need a low starch and sugar diet.  The new WellSolve L/S is a great one to try for that.

Now that you know the basics, lets figure something out for you.  Im going to guess your horse is about 1000 pounds.  A 1000 pound horse with, from what you described, a performace lifestyle of light work would need about 20,000 calories.  Any of the following diets should work for your horse-

For a compleate feed:

-18 lbs of Equine adult (a compleate feed, does not need forage supplemented, but reccomend 1-2 flakes to help with boredom)

-14.5 lbs of compleate advantage (same as above)

The following concentrates are reccomended with feeding forage (hay).  You will want to feed 10-15% of the horses body weight in forage on top of the feed.  

Performance feeds

-7 lbs of Stratagy supplemented with hay

-5.5 lbs of Ultium with the forage

Sweet feeds

-6.5 lbs of omolene 200 with the forage.

-7 lbs of horsemans egde with the forage.

Now these are guidlines to get you started.  You will want to monitor your horse and adjust as needed since ever horse is different.  If you do adjust, no more then 1 pound of something; either adding or taking away.  If youre using alfalfa hay reduce the feeds reccomended by 1/2 -1 lb.  You will want to make any feeding changes gradually over 7-10 days.  Dont forget to weigh the feed out.  You can use a fish scale available at most fishing stores and a plastic bag.  And as always, water and salt should always be available at all times.  Dont forget to consult your vet if you have any concerns and they can point you in the right direction as well.

Hope you find a program you like and if you have any questions my email is [e-mail]