What’s the first thing you think of for your horse coming into winter? If you’d asked me this question a couple of years ago, my answer would have been something along the lines of… How many rugs will I need? How much fill should they have? What time should I take them off? Should I get my horse clipped? Should I be putting them in stables? But, did you ever think: should I be changing my horse’s diet?
Kikuyu is one of the common grass species found in horse pastures. But does it provide enough calcium to meet your horses needs?
The health of your car’s engine is critical for it to run efficiently and reliably. Similarly, the health of your horse’s hindgut or its engine plays an important role in your horse’s overall health and ability to run efficiently.
Take a look out the window…what’s your horse chewing on right now? Hay? Chaff? Some apparently random stick or bit of bark? Or that boundary fence post that’s slowly starting to fall apart? Hey, well at least it’s all fibre… and, importantly, it’s all different types of fibre.
Off season is the ideal time to focus on your horse's nutrition and diet, and start building a healthy gut for all around wellness. From a nutrition perspective, this period of reduced stress is a great opportunity to concentrate on feeding your horse to restore balance in their gut.
One of the most difficult things to find for your horse in a drought is forage. The problem is, forage is the most important, and therefore the least negotiable item in a horse’s diet. The horse's gut needs forage. Without it, the risk of gastric ulcers, colic, sand or dirt accumulation and other hindgut disturbances like dysbiosis (imbalance of the hindgut bacteria) is high!
Gut health can greatly influence the overall health, performance and behaviour of your horse. There are some very simple changes to make in your horses' diet in drought conditions to make sure your horse maintains its gut health. We've listed them here.
As a horse owner, you may see problems like anxious behaviour, girthiness, laminitis, poor performance, loose manure and weight challenges and accept them as ‘normal’ for your horses. But are they? And if they aren’t, what is causing them?
Part of the challenge with recognising gut health as a problem for your horse is that symptoms of poor gut health in horses can be very subtle, even when issues are severe, and horses may show different signs for the same issue.
