hi it's josie and today i would like to talk to you about feeding your horse and probably more
about how i feed my horses and hopefully that will give you some tips and tricks that you
might be able to use i just need to preface this video by saying that i am not a vet
nor a equine nutritionist but i have spent probably 20 years trying to find the best
way to feed my horses so that they are the healthiest they can be and i'm going to
share with you what i've found suits my horses let's start with some basics horses need to eat
one to one and a half percent of their body weight in dry matter a day to keep their gut happy and
healthy you may be surprised to see how much that should be so what does that equate to that's a 300
kilo horse having three to four and a half kilos of dry matter a day or if you work in pounds a
600 pound horse having six to 10 pounds of dry matter a day if you've got a 500 kilo horse it's
five to seven and a half kilos of dry matter or a hundred sorry 1100 pound horse 11 to 16
pounds of dry matter a day my horses sit in the next realm of 700 kilos because mine sit about
720 to 750 kilos both spider and rebel and they require seven to ten kilos of dry matter a day or
that equivalent to about a fifteen hundred and forty pounds so one thousand 1 540 pound horse
requiring 15 to 23 pounds of dry matter a day so your dry matter that you're feeding your horse
is your hay and chaff so remember if you are feeding chaff chaff is just chopped up
hay i personally feed very little chaff and i prefer to increase the hay and why do i do that
because when my horses are chewing the hay as they need to because it's longer stalks they cover it
in saliva that saliva has enzymes in it which actually helps start the digestive processes and
also keeps your gut healthy so chaff is chopped up little tiny pieces obviously that your horse
can scoff and he doesn't have to chew it and so hay can help to assist the digestion process
obviously if your horse has got bad dentition bad teeth or can't eat hay you can make it up in chaff
when it comes to the amount you feed as i said it's obviously every horse is different but there
are also horses that require different rations to that a late pregnant mare or a lactating mare will
eat you out of house and home while she's feeding herself and her baby obviously a older horse
may have more requirements for feed or less requirements for feed and young and growing
horses will also require a different amount of feed that's why it's a good idea to get yourself
a good resource a good book and have some base understanding of how you feed your horse if you
own a horse the onus really is on you you don't have to have a scholars degree in it but you
really should have a good base understanding i'll link some books in the description below if you'd
like to go and have a look so the other little tip i'd like to give you with feeding your horses
particularly in if they're in pasture is if you have more than one horse in the paddock together
you should put at least one more pile of hay out you can you can get the entire feed that you're
going to feed those three four or five horses but break it up so there's at least one spare pile of
hay somewhere so that the poor horse at the bottom of the pecking order doesn't have to fight well
he's not going to fight for food he's going to go without and just keep getting bumped from pillar
to post so one thing i'd like you to know is you should feed your horse by weight his weight and
by the weight of the feed and not by volume and hopefully i will be able to explain that to you
now so how do you know what your horse weighs well unless you can actually get to a vet where you can
put them on some scales a weight tape is probably the best idea just gives you a rough estimate and
it goes around over the highest point of their wither and down underneath the girth
and if you use a weight tape and put it in the same spot all the time you may not be 100 accurate
on what your horse weighs but you'll at least at least get to see if he's fluctuating in weight
so when you're checking the weight of your horse you need to know where to check as
well to know if your horse is fat or if he just has a big hay belly i've seen so many people say
oh my gosh the horse is fat when all it really had was a hay belly so if you look at this diagram
here you will see where you need to look for the fat deposits on your horse to work out where he is
so what do i mean by feed by weight and not volume i have got here two biscuits of hay so i've got a
oaten and a meadow hay this weighs 1.3 kilos this weighs 2.4 kilos so this is
um not quite double that one but they're about the same volume but very different in weight now
if you watch my videos that will not surprise you though i'm a little bit pedantic about how i feed
my horses so i have oops sorry i have a set of scales that i use to weigh my hay my hay is fed in
hay nets so it doesn't blow away around here and i literally weigh them so i know what they weigh
i also have measuring scoops and i've written on the measuring scoops what each thing i put in
there is weight so i feed my horse although it's by volume because i'm using a scoop i know what
it weighs so this has 380 grams of speedy beet or a beet fiber when it's full so i know how much i
this weighs this one's for my pelleted feed and i know it's about a kilo and a half
and this is a third of a cup so a little tip for you is to go and get some disposable
plastic measuring containers i've also got a tablespoon which i'll show you in a minute
so that you can accurately measure your feed and you are doing it by weight rather than volume so
what do i feed my horses i feed my horses hay they get a beet they get a pellet they get some chaff
they get some vitamins and mineral mix and they get some salt i don't feed my horses any
grains they don't need it they look good enough on what they're on they're fit they're healthy
they're shiny in fact most people do not really need to feed their horse's grain
unless you're doing a very very high level athletic work with them or they're a poor doer
so what sort of hay i feed meadow hay like i said earlier the cereal hay around here
is so high in sugars that my horses were getting extremely fat so this is a meadow hay i'm not
quite sure what you call it in america in the uk you would call it pasture hay
so it's basically what grows out in the paddocks naturally they have been topped with some
oversewn rye grass and not the rye grass that gives you rye staggers i think it's an italian
rice so my horses are getting that at the moment so because i'm feeding that and now
their weight's getting better i actually feed a lucerne and rye mix so this is some lucerne
and some rye to increase the protein for my boys and my old horse who is retired he needs
more food so a higher nutritional content sorry so he gets this beautiful oaten hay that's here
i feed my guys a beet fiber the reason i feed this is not really because of the nutritional
content of it because i feed them that vitamin a mineral mix you saw and they sift it so this
has to be fed wet you must soak this sort of stuff first if you don't soak it um you'll end
up making your horse sick so this is what it looks like dry and i have some soaking here so this is
what it looks like when it's wet and of course when i mix their vitamin a mineral mix in that
they can't sift it out and they love it i feed a pelleted feed so this is not no grain this
really is just a vitamin a mineral and hay mix if you look at the ingredients in it it really
is just some cereal hay and some vitamins and minerals now the back of the bag of this tells
me what the vitamin and mineral content is so i've just topped up my horses with the
vitamins and minerals that i feed them to meet their nutritional needs because they
don't get a complete i don't feed enough of that to meet their vitamin and mineral
requirements and this is just some chaff obviously as i said chaff is just chopped up hay
this is the vitamin and mineral mix that i feed my horses it is it's equilibrium in australia i have
a measuring container and so they just get the little one twice a day and with what that holds
and what's in those pellets there my horses get their vitamin and mineral needs met they
also get some salt so i feed the salt purely to be honest with you especially in the winter to
help my horses drink enough i measure it this here is they get a tablespoon each a day my big horses
now i just want to tell you that this actually is an american tablespoon so it's a 15 mil
tablespoon those of you in australia probably don't maybe if you're not cooks don't realize
that there's two different types of tablespoons there's an australian measure and there is a
u.s measure and they suggest they recommend that the horses get 1.6 to 1.8
grams of salt a day per kilo of hay that you feed them so i've worked out with my
boys that means they require around about 14 - 15 grams of salt which is an american
tablespoon you need to do the math to yourself just don't feed your horse's salt willy-nilly
i would love it if you would let me know in the comments if you were as pedantic about
weighing and measuring your horse feeds as i am your horse is at your absolute mercy
with what you feed him he has no choice obviously except what you give him
i hope this video has helped you understand a little bit more about feeding your horses
don't forget i've popped some links in the bottom for some books if you'd like to just
broaden your knowledge a little bit more thanks for watching guys