What Do You Feed Your Horses?

John, I taylor feed to the horse. Since I have all sorts of breeds (minis, TB, QH, warmblood, belgian) I have to sort through what they need. I base my feed around free choice forage, pasture in the summer and timothy hay in the off season. I’ll add soaked alfalfa cubes before adding any grain. That said most everyone (except the minis) gets a cup or so of grain and a vit/mineral supplement once a day. Dinner is sort of a ritual for me. Its the time I get to check everyone over for injuries and make sure everyone is accounted for, lol. My TB gets 2 quarts of an organic mix of oats and corn and my warmblood who is carb intolerant gets a whole extruded soybean pellet when needed. I put out bins of loose free choice minerals (4 varieties), which mostly go untouched, but I noticed that when Peanut got home, he went to town on them…catching up I guess. Horses eat for minerals, so I really believe having the free choice minerals available cuts down the feed bill considerably.

I also like to give them probiotics from time to time, with heavy work or travel or with rapid changes in the weather. I use a pricey formula, but Jason (I believe) feeds his horses yogurt. Haven’t tried it yet but it sounds way cheaper.

I sometimes will add soaked beet pulp when dehydration might be an issue. For instance, right now I have put the water heaters on and the horses will sometimes refuse to drink from the trough for a few days (must taste different), so I am feeding some at night with dinner. Once they figure out the heater won’t kill them (which they always do), I’ll take the beet pulp out. I’m not a fan of beet pulp to add weight. It mainly adds water weight and is helpful for endurance and hydration mainly.

Anyhoo, that’s my take on feed. Always looking for ways to stay sustainable, I’d love to figure out how to grow my own horse feed. I like your ears of corn stradegy…I could do that, I think…though I would have a hard time parting with the corn when it came time. I grow carrots for the horses…a whole patch of them, but I manage to put several quarts on the dinner table as well. I harvest wild apples as well, and they enjoy those well into the winter. I make a few pies with the nicest apples and the rest go in the barn. They are much to look at, but according to my horses they are delicious!

Jennifer

I just discovered dry corn stalks from the garden as a filler or treat feed. The horses love them and sometimes find an ear which we missed. Thinking about growing some extra corn next year just for this purpose. I put the whole stalks right in the feeder.

I feed good first cut hay, a bale a day, and Pacer sweet feed 12% prot-7%fat 10-15 lbs depending on exertion, salt and kelp by the tablespoon in the grain.

Jen, I have noticed the same with tank warmers. I wondered if it was a low voltage shock, because when I unplug them, they will drink right away. I lead my horses to water much of the time, if they are working, or in the tie stalls so I unplug the heaters first to ensure consumption of water.

Carl

We feed good grass hay, at least a bale per horse per day, a little sweet feed once a day when they come in the barn -more for the growing colts. Oats when they are working hard plowing and such. A few ears of dry ear corn in the winter to help with energy to ward off the cold. In the fall we feed 8 of them several armloads of green cornstalks from sweetcorn or opening up a field of cow corn. The old timers say it helps horses get rid of worms which may be true because when we worm twice a year we don’t see the horses pass any worms. All of them are fat and slick and give 150% just for the asking and we have had very few health problems.

In this altitude our grass hay is pretty good feed. My teams get grass hay free choice and if they’re working down a little I’ll throw them some oats. UNLESS its mules. They work well on about half what my draft horses use and I normally cut out the oats (just enough to catch them). If it gets lower than -30 I may give a little alfalfa and I may weaken and give the mules a shot of grain.

My horse I just feed him hay and a bit of a mineral/vitamin pellet. He gets really fat out on pasture and it takes me forever to get him back to a reasonable weight after he’s been on pasture. Right now though he’s out in a paddock that has ben chewed up and muddied up with a few other horses getting free access to round baled hay. In the evening when we bring him in we give him a further 3 flakes.

He’s a 1500 lb belgian so not extremely large or small.

@kiwiloggr 4008 wrote:

Over here we get a biproduct from the palm oil process called palmkearnal its a great cold feed and real cheap I was wondering if you folk get it over your neck of the woods.Its mainly used for dairy cows here but horses seem to do well on it.

Hi kiwiloggr, I’ve never heard of palm oil used as horse feed. How well do your horse(s) go on it? Do they manage to digest it better than we do?
I’m giving a little sunflower and colza oil in with germinated barley as hard feed this year….they seem to be doing ok but I’m not sure that it’s particularly helpful. It’s interesting, the different feedstuffs given on different continents. A