My basic horse feeding plan

Some of the best advice I have heard on feeding horses comes from one of the mills I worked with in Lancaster county:

"Feeding your horse can be like driving through Lancaster County; there are many different ways to get to the same place and many different ways to get lost."-RH Rohrer

This post is about what I feed my individual horses, I'm not trying to say that this is right for your horse or that it is what you should be doing, just sharing what has been working for me.

1. Fresh water always, no matter what
The most important (and sometimes overlooked) nutrient for horses is water, they can't survive without it! My rule for water troughs is that if I wouldn't drink it they probably won't either. If water is scummy, warm, etc. it gets changed. I only fill my troughs (100 gallons) about 1/4 or so full in the Summer so it is easy to dump water every few days to keep it fresh. If the tank gets green I scrub and rinse with a small amount of bleach. I use stock tank heaters in the winter to keep the tanks from freezing and horses drinking.

2. Forage first
The pasture my horses are in is crap (will probably do a post about this later) so they got hay year round this year. My horses do better on good quality forage than on any grain or supplement out there. Right now they are getting some (not so good) pasture and our own meadow grass hay.
This is a great link for easy to use advice on pasture and forage for horses: PSU pasture and hay for horses.

3. Balancer and salt
If my horses are on good quality pasture they don't get any supplemental fortified grain. However, stored forage sources (hay) can be low in certain nutrients, particularly vitamins A, D, and E which are abundant in fresh pasture. Since my horses are fairly easy keepers I don't feel the need to keep them on a full fortified grain ration but still want to provide some supplemental nutrition which is why I chose a ration balancer. A ration balancer is designed to be fed at a low feed rate and provide protein, vitamins, and minerals without adding a lot of calories to the diet. I feed by the directions on the bag and weigh my feed with a small kitchen scale for accuracy. My horses also have 24/7 access to a plain white salt block which they particularly enjoy in the summer.

And that's it! The take home message from me here is that high quality forage is the cornerstone of a healthy diet for horses. I don't use any additional supplements for joints, calming etc. because I have not seen convincing peer reviewed research that these products would benefit my horses. I work in the animal feed industry so my education and work experience up to this point is the basis for the decisions I have made for feeding my horses.

Ponies on pasture last year