Posts Tagged ‘balanced diet’

What is better than going to the barn and seeing your horse standing in the stall, shining like new money, mane perfectly pulled and laying beautifully on your horses’ neck, dapples everywhere just talking to you saying, look at me, tail free of tangles, almost reaching the floor, thick and wavy. Not to mention your horses forelock is where it should be, not too long or too short, and no dirt or dust on your horses nose and that shining look in your best buddies eyes. Wow!!!…Hah, GET REAL. These things happen only after many weeks or months of constant serious grooming and elbow grease.

A proper balanced diet as well as a regimented exercise program with a minimal amount of stress are contributing factors to a beautiful coat on your horse. Breeding will come into play but with hard work, a brilliant coat can be achieved.Successful, well groomed horses are very pampered animals. Of course they do have a price to pay, they must do what it is that is asked of them and do it well if they wish to continue this pampered way of life. Doesn’t matter whether you have a western pleasure horse, jumping horse or dressage horse, or even a racehorse, performance horses have a job to do and they will always be expected to have positive results from their performances. Nothing in life is free, not even for them.

So, let’s get down to business. First you will need a grooming box. Most of them today are made so you can sit them over the top of a board such as a fence board. You need at least one curry comb, preferably two of them, a fairly soft bendable one and you can get curry combs that look like they have small cones sticking out of a round base with a band to put your hand into on the other side.

Next you willneed a regular size soft brush, a regular size harder brush and a very soft regular size brush. You will need a smaller hard brush for brushing out the horses feet after you have picked them out. You will need a hoof pick, a mane pulling comb and a tail brush. Last you will need a few good rub rags. You will need a large spray bottle that will be used for a detangler for the tail. Old timers would not let us use anything but a hard brush on tails as you want to try and keep the tail as long as possible for swatting flies and gnats. If you are careful you can do a good job using a comb and detangler. Some eye wash in your box is probably not a bad idea, a good hoof care product and maybe an anti-thrush product. Last you should keep some type of wound care product in your box for easy access too (check out my latest blog).

After your horse has had a bath (complete details on bathing in recent blog “Giving Your Horse A Bath From Nose To Tail“) and is now completely dry, take your softer curry comb, stand in front of your horse after you have either tied him or her in the stall with a tie chain, (tie chains are not necessarily made of chain, there are rope, elastic or other varieties), or have your horse in cross ties either in a barn or outside on a wash rack. If you are right handed, use your left hand and hold the nose band of the halter lightly, and curry your horse between the eyes, very gently, currying is usually done in a circular motion, continue up towards the ears.

Now down both sides of the cheeks. Start on the left side of the horse, if you wish you can change to your other curry comb. Continue from behind of the ear, again in circular motions, straight down the neck, onto the chest. You should gently curry between the front legs and over their chest. Do this all the way down the whole side of the horse, (the curry is not for their legs but there is a soft rubber glove type of curry that is much better for horses who are shedding this type would be ok for the legs), under the stomach, close to the spine but not directly on the spine, over the horses rump, around to the tail down to the hock. Now you need to start on the other side of the horse behind the right ear and do exactly the same. You will know if you are currying too hard because the horse will keep moving away from you or will drop his or her back down low trying to get away from the curry comb, adjust to a lighter touch. Next, take your regular size soft and regular size harder brush.

Gently start brushing at the forehead, up between the ears, behind the ears making sure to move the halter back cleaning under the crown piece of the halter very well. Using the brush in your left hand, on the left side of the horse, and your brush in your right hand, alternate strokes from top to bottom covering all areas again working your way all the way back to the tail. You will use these brushes to brush their legs all the way down to the hoof. Go to the other side using the same alternating strokes with soft and harder regular brushes. Now, starting again at the front of your horses head, use the soft regular brush and your rub rag. Do exactly the same alternating strokes except that you can sometime use the rub rag in circular motions with your right hand giving your left hand a little break.

Grab your comb, comb forelock, mane and then tail using the detangler if you get a lot of resistance or excessive knotting, starting at the bottom of the tail working upwards. Now it is time to perform the very important picking of the horses feet with your hoof pick and your small hard brush. Stand by the horses left leg facing the back of the horse, asking your horse for his or her front foot by running your hand down usually the inside of their leg. This is a taught behavior to give you their foot and practice makes perfect. After you teach this to a horse and with regular practice of this important procedure, most horses have no problem with being obliging.

As they pick up their foot, use your left hand to hold the front of their foot, using your right hand, as you face the point of the pick towards the ground, run the pick on either side of their frog and clean out any unnecessary stones, manure or other things you know do not belong there. Still holding the foot with your left hand, grab your small harder brush with your right hand, brush out the bottom of the horses foot in a downward motion. Put that foot down, run your hand, as you are bent over, on the outside of the other leg and do the same.

Continue to the back of the horse, stand by his or her hind leg, start up high, running your left hand across the rump and down the inside of the left hind leg, asking kindly for their foot, clean and brush the foot and then ask for the right hind foot, you know the deal. Job well done, stand back as you will be able to see a difference. By grooming your horse in this manner on a daily basis, it will bring you great satisfaction as you will really be able to see the difference,and your horse just might give you a smile.

Beverly Jansen
http://bevshorseadvice.com
Co-Owner of BevWeb, LLC

I’m a licensed Thoroughbred Horse Trainer and a licensed Equine Message Therapist. I have devoted my entire life to horses and have over 40 years experience to share. My blog site was created to share my knowledge and will soon offer exceptional, all natural horse products that are above and beyond any other products in comparison and will guarantee fantastic results. I will also be posting “How To” videos on my YouTube channel soon.

Author: Beverly Jansen
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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At Australian Natural Health and Healing, we believe in natural feeding. This means that if possible, provide your horse with feed as natural as they can be, that is less processed and as close as possible to what a horse would eat naturally.

Of course grass is the most natural feed available. However, our lands are not as prosperous as they used to be and the variety of grass on a small acreage property would be limited. The soil is also likely to be poor in nutrients, meaning that the grass will not be very nutritious, hence the need to provide extra feed.

The closest feed to grass is hay and chaff. It is important to provide plenty of those. There are different types of hay like lucerne, barley, grassy etc.

The important thing here is that you must provide a balanced diet between roughage (hay, chaff, pasture, bran) and concentrate (grains, meals, fats etc). Although chaff is chopped hay, hay as such is a primary ingredient of the diet because it provides longer stems which help in the horse’s digestion. When horses do not have access to valuable pasture, or are fed grains, they should be provided with hay or chaff with a minimum of 1% of their body weight to enable efficient digestion (Dr John Kohnke).

Feed should be weighted and not measured in volume because it is the only way you will be able to calculate your horse’s intake. If you are using a 2 litre ice-cream container to measure your feed, take 1 measure of each feed, weigh it and record it. On average, a 2 litre container will be about 300g of lucerne chaff, 250g of white chaff etc.

Feed must be free of mould and “unwanted visitors” alive or dead! So it is important to store your feed correctly to avoid any spoilage and contamination. Mould and horses do not agree!!

Whatever ration you establish, you must monitor its effects on your horse and adjust accordingly. For example, if your horse seems to actively seek food after he has been fed, this means he is still hungry and you might need to increase the quantity. If, on the other hand, he has leftovers, then you will need to reduce the quantity. It takes around 3 weeks to see the effect of a particular feed, so if your horse is loosing weight without any apparent reason (you know he is not sick or worm infested), then you will need to re-assess his ration. The same applies if your horse starts behaving strangely.

So lets see how food can affect a horse’s behaviour.

A natural diet for a wild horse contains large amount of cellulose fibre from plants that are digested in the large intestine. This natural diet contains very little amount of starch and sugars found in grains and protein in legume plants like lucerne. Starch, sugars and protein overload in the small intestine are a cause of digestive upsets and will “heat up” a horse or cause colics as the feed ferments in this region.

Some horses are so intolerant to starch they cannot eat oaten chaff (yes, there is a little bit of oats in quality oaten chaff). A common feed stuff that is very high in starch is wheat bran with between 30 to 50% starch. If you must feed grains, it is important that you provide plenty of roughage to help with digestion and the amount of grains be minimal.

Synthetic or poor quality vitamins and minerals may also create some unusual reactions, depending how sensitive your horse is. Horses are like people, some react to red cordial, others to lactose, some to red meat etc. Unfortunately there is no black and white answer. It is a matter of trialling something and observe how your pony reacts.

The good news is that once the culprit ingredient is identified and removed from the diet, your horse should return to its normal-self within days.

A good idea is to introduce new feed one by one (if possible) and see how it goes after few days.

Of course there are other factors that might affect your horse’s behaviour and they should be eliminated from the equation before blaming its feed. Horses by nature are not mean animals. They do have a hierarchy in their herd and there is always few fights among them. The alpha horse will ensure to maintain its status and will “boss” other around if needs be. This is normal. There are few books written on the subject that might help understand their behaviour within a herd.

An aggressive horse, on the other hand, is not normal. We should ask ourselves questions such as:

• When does this behaviour happen? (feed time? During riding? Etc)
• Has he always been aggressive?
• If he became aggressive suddenly, what happened? We might need to investigate a little
• Was he abused, starved or neglected in the past? Horses have a phenomenal memory and it might take a lot of re-education to change behaviour caused by bad memories!
• Is he in any sort of pain? Like us, some horses are more sensitive to pain than others so a little thing might seem the end of the world for the sensitive ones! This is where we (or a vet) need to check his feet, back, neck, muscular tightness etc. If a horse is unbalanced, even slightly, it may cause some pain in his body and could be the cause for misbehaving. it is true that some horses will endure horrible pain without blinking an eye until they simply fall apart (or down)! This is then a shock to the owner who did not know their horse was hurting. One should take the time to really know their horse and be attuned to them to depict any abnormality. It takes time and patience.
• Does his tack fit properly? Wrong saddles can cause some musculoskeletal issues and make our pony very unhappy!
• If it’s a mare, is she in season? Some mares can get extreme during these times!
• Is he badly educated? Have we got a spoiled brat?
• Does he have an ulcer? This is difficult to determine and you will need your vet to run some check-ups. According to scientists, it is very common in horses, especially those who raced or competed as they get highly stressed and their diets might not be the best in terms of digestion. Some symptoms might be sensitivity to some feed stuff, especially starch and proteins, behavioural issues and weight loss. These symptoms alone are not sufficient to provide an accurate diagnostic, so if you suspect your horse has an ulcer, contact your veterinarian who will be able to confirm it and prescribe medication.
• Now, a very simple question which gets overlooked quite often: does he get too much food for his activity level? Food is energy, so if our horse does not use his energy in his activity, he will have some left to spare!!
• Does the horse buck when ridden (regularly)? Bucking takes a lot of effort for horses so there has to be a good reason. Assuming that it is not a horse in breaking, causes for bucking may be a painful saddle, sore back/body/feet, bad memories as explained above, too playful (too much food)?

I guess the first thing to eliminate is any physical health issues whether they are illnesses or injuries. Your veterinarian is the person to contact first and they will be able to refer you to other professionals if needs be, like farriers, chiropractors etc.

Elimination of any ill-fitted tack is the second one. If there is an issue with the saddle then you might need to get a saddle fitter in. It is not expensive and is worth the spending. Better have a good saddle than having a horse that bucks, is sore, unhappy and dangerous.

Any mental issues due to the horse’s past are better dealt with the help of professional trainers. Same applies to a badly educated horse. These professionals can help us in re-educating our horse and teach us what to do or not do.

If your horse gets supplements like minerals and vitamins, do a bit of research to see how other horses react to what you are giving yours. It is not uncommon to see a change in behaviour according to supplements given to a horse. Sometimes, it is wise to stop all supplements to see if the horse goes back to a gentler state. It is possible that these supplements might be too concentrate, or of an average quality, or that the horse has some allergic reaction to them, especially if they are synthetic. And sometimes, it might be necessary to only give natural supplements like herbs, dolomite etc.

Minerals and vitamins (supplements) should be given based on what the horse’s nutrients requirements. A good start if to check the NRC web site and John Kohnke’s book “Feeding Horses in Australia” to understand nutrients and calculate what your horse needs.

Author: Cass Martinez
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Digital Camera Times

While you might think this is a easy thing to do – feed your horse – you’d be amazed at the number of horse owners that don’t know about the fundamental principles. There is nothing called standard, when it concerns the nutrition requisites of a horse, as it would mostly be based on the amount of activity, its age and body weight. To start with, your horse by nature uses forage as a primary ingredient of their diets. This by the way is one of the most critical components of his diet, which keeps his digestive system functioning correctly, and when we say pasture we are meaning a combining of natural grass and cut hay.

Large horses normally consume about 2 to two point five % of their body size in food every day so a 1,000 pound horse will eat around 20 to 25 pounds of feed each day. Feeds rich in nourishment are what horses need and high-fiber feeds should not be give to them, as it may upset the digestive system. In fact, a horse would be happy if you fed him with a feed of hay/pasture grass amounting to one percent of his body size. For horses, which do not do much activity, a feed of forage only without any grain is sufficient. On the other hand, developing, breeding, or working horses must have supplements in addition to pasture – such as grain or a supplement concentrate. Thus, for optimizing growth and development of the animal, foraging should make up for at least half or more of the body size, as part of his everyday diet.

When you are considering a balanced diet for your horse, consider the nutrient content as well as quality criteria of the grass. This information would help you to gauge the amount of nutrients he would need. The best source, and the least expensive one for summer food is your grass fields and, in most cases good pasture by itself can provide all the nutritional requirements your horse needs. But how do you come to know how much pasture is right for your horse? Using a weight of 1000 to 1200 pounds, here is a rough guideline. This means that a mare and foal 1.75 to 2 acres – yearlings 1.5 to 2 acre and weanlings 0.5 to 1 acre.

Winter feed of course would be cut hay, and again, high quality if you can provide it. Ensure that the hay is leaf-like and green in colored and cut in a systematic way, free of dust, moulds weeds or stubble. This feed is usually rich in protein, minerals and vitamins. While alfalfa hay is food for a developing horse as the protein content is very high, but you have to be careful as it contains abnormal calcium in comparison to its phosphorus content. Too much calcium is not good for growing horses so if you’re not sure about hay quality, have it analyzed.

You will be able to locate some of the best deals on used horse trailers for sale online. There are many used horse trailers for sale, but which one is the right one for you and your horse? Well if you take your horse out only every blue moon then a simple trailer will suffice. The single most important thing to consider when buying any kind of used horse trailer is the floor. Make sure it is stable enough for your horses to stand on and that wood is still strong and not rotted away.