What To Feed Your Horse?

Should you feed your horse grain?

There is a lot of debate about whether or not horses need to be fed grain but the truth is that horses don’t necessarily need to be fed grain.

Many horse owners just assume that their horse needs grain in its diet when, in reality, horses can live very well on grass and hay.

Hay is far more essential to a horse’s diet than grain is. Not every horse needs grain but practically every horse needs hay.

Some horses do better if they are fed grain and hay and in some situations it is necessary to feed horses grain or supplements.

Show horses, or horses that are exercised hard and train regularly, or pregnant mares and new mothers all need the extra nutrition and the extra calories that grain can provide.

Sometimes, horses that are recovering from an illness or recovering from abuse also need to be fed grain so that they put on weight after a long period of not eating or not eating properly.

Horses that are fed too much grain are far more likely than horses that just eat hay to develop colic, so if you’re going to feed your horse grain you need to keep an eye on how much grain your horse is given to eat every day.

If you are going to feed grain to your horse the grain shouldn’t make up more than 40% of your horse’s daily diet. The other 60% should be hay and grass.

There are three types of grain that are commonly fed to horses; oats, sweet feed, and pellets. Each has pros and cons and each horse will respond differently to each type of grain. Here’s a brief overview of each grain to help you decide which one is right for your horse if you decide to feed your horse grain.

Oats

Oats are a good source of roughage and are very light. Horses that are fed oats tend to stay slimmer than horses that are fed sweet feed but not all horses like oats. Oats are relatively inexpensive and are a good choice if you want to feed your horse a good all purpose type of grain.

Sweet feed

Sweet feed is a mixture of grains and a bit of molasses usually, too. Most horses love the taste of sweet feed so sweet feed is often used for horses that are picky about their food or horses that are recovering from an illness. A mash made of warm water and sweet feed is a treat that can tempt almost any sick horse into eating again. Sweet feed is higher in fat than the other types of grain so if your horse has a tendency to gain weight quickly, sweet feed probably isn’t the best kind of grain to feed your horse. But if your horse has a hard time keeping weight on then sweet feed will probably be a good grain to feed your horse to help it gain some weight.

Pellets

There are a few different styles of pellet foods. Some have vitamins and minerals added to them and some are straight grain pellets. Pellets are good filler when a horse needs extra calories and extra energy but pellets really aren’t that nutritionally sound and don’t give your horse a lot of useable nutrition.