SPRING FEEDING TUNE-UP

SPRING FEEDING TUNE-UP Valerie Gaudette Cole Spring is coming! Yes, I know it’s still early, and we will likely deal with mud, wind, maybe more snow and ice, but it will happen. Nice riding weather will return. Whether you ride for pleasure, are a trail rider, a competitor, instructor, or breeder, now is a suitable time to evaluate your horse’s diet as you make plans for the upcoming season. First, let’s talk about pastures. They can take a beating over the winter, especially a winter like we just had. When growing season is over and the ground is still soft, grass suffers. Here in the southern part of the state, we had a very mild start to the winter. The ground didn’t really freeze until January, and we had rain instead of snow until mid-January. It was great to be able to run water hoses to the stock tanks, but it was the worse possible scenario for our pastures. Horses want to graze, and if allowed out to pasture, they pulled up dead grass by the roots. Their constant moving and searching for grass also compacted the mud around the remaining grass roots. I don’t expect the pastures to be in good shape this spring. So, what can you do? First, keep your horses off small pastures and paddocks, if you can, and let the grass get a head-start. Remember though that you will have to be extremely careful when you start allowing him to have grass. If you don’t give him time to adjust to this change in his diet, you have the risk of laminitis and colic. The microbes in the horse’s GI tract need time to adjust. Too much rich spring grass leads to an overload of sugars and starches. This starch overload gets moved to his hind-gut, where the microbes are overwhelmed. They may produce gas, leading to colic, or may outright die, releasing toxins that can lead to laminitis. Talk with your veterinarian if you are unsure how to gradually introduce your horse to grass. Perhaps you have large pastures and aren’t worried about the horses overgrazing, or you are unable to commit to the time needed to introduce your horse to pasture slowly. (I have vivid memories of years when I lived by the clock, going home to put horses out or take horses in. Worse than juggling a school schedule!) If you allow your horse to eat the grass as it comes in, you still need to monitor him. Grass can grow very quickly in the spring, faster than his gut microbes can adjust. Perhaps you can divide your pasture into smaller areas with temporary fences so that his grazing is restricted. Watch carefully though, as this can lead to overgrazing and damaged ground. If the ground is especially muddy, the grass won’t grow anyway, so try to keep your horse off that part. Sounds like a no-win situation, doesn’t it? We want to grow healthy pastures. We want to keep our horses safe and healthy. We can’t control the weather nor can we control the sugars and starches in the grass. And every year presents a different scenario because the weather changes and our horses change too as they age. What can we do? We can practice both pasture and feed management. It’s great if you have enough room that you can rotate pastures and give some areas time to recover while your horse grazes other patches. If you have a place for winter turn-out, even better. Your summer pasture can rest and recuperate while your horse alternately compacts and churns up the sacrifice area. If your pasture is limited and you want to make the best of it, consider not turning your horse out while the ground and grass are vulnerable. Yes, this is more intense management, and you will have to determine what works best for you. And, of course, if your horse isn’t on pasture, he’ll need some other food source. What do we do about that? To answer that, let’s look at what the horse needs and how we manage it. First and foremost, horses are grazing animals. They need forages. They need a large amount over the course of the day but can only eat a little at a time. Consequently, they need to cover a large area to find this forage. It is common for wild horses to cover 20-30 miles a day, over hundreds of acres. We don’t have that kind of open land here in the east. If we have a hundred open acres, we produce hay, not pasture. We put up fences and confine our horses to small areas. They may have ten acres; they may only have a few hundred square feet. This puts the responsibility on us to make sure that they are eating a proper diet. That diet should be based on forage, which means grass and/or hay. When we confine them, we also reduce their ability to eat different grasses and take in a sufficient variety of vitamins and minerals. They can only eat what is in their pastures. If we ask them to work harder than they would like, then we probably need to give them additional calories too. So here are the basics of horse feeding. Forage first, as in pasture or hay. Have your hay analyzed so that you can determine the protein, calories, carbs, vitamins, and minerals that it contains. It likely won’t meet all of your horse’s nutritional needs, so you will need to add to it. If your horse is in good weight, has a low metabolism, or doesn’t do much work, a good quality ration balancer will likely suffice. Remember though, ration balancers don’t add weight. If he is active, works hard, is part of a breeding program, or has a high metabolism, you may need to add more calories in the form of fats and/or carbs. This will likely be in the form of a commercial or concentrated feed. Talk