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Components of an Equine Diet

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The Horse Course: Introduction to Basic Care and Management

University of Florida

4.9 (453 ratings) | 24K Students Enrolled

There are over 100 million horses, donkeys and mules in the world today and owners of these animals can be found on almost every continent and in almost every society. The Horse Course will cover many unique aspects of equine ownership and touch upon the science behind many of today’s management practices.

Skills You'll Learn

Disease Management, Nutrition, Animal Behavior, Vital Signs

Reviews

4.9 (453 ratings)

5 stars
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AK

Jun 25, 2017

Such a good informative course about Equids. I look at them in a completely different way now, than how I used to see them earlier. All credits to the course and the Professor.

AL

Jun 04, 2016

Excellent course! The course content was informative and the instructor kept the flow going at a nice pace and was interesting to listen to. I highly recommend this course!

From the lesson

Feeding Management

The topics this week will focus on equid nutrition. Understanding how and what to feed these animals is one of the most important aspects of basic care. We will start with digestive anatomy, how to evaluate your animal’s nutrient requirements, and then jump into feeding management. We will round out the week discussing colic and other nutritional disorders.

Nutrient Requirements15:28

Components of an Equine Diet16:01

Pasture Management16:27

Taught By

Chris J. Mortensen, Ph.D.
Professor

Transcript

Alright, welcome back, and continuing on this discussion on nutrition, and

I forgot to mention this in the, in the other lectures.

If you really want to get more into nutrition, I

highly recommend Doctor Jo-Anne Murray's equine nutrition course through Coursera.

It's a wonderful five week course that delvs in,

more deeper into equine nutrition and their digestive anatomy.

So, if you really want to learn more I, I highly recommend you

sign up and there should be another offering here in the near future.

Now, in this discussion we're going to kind of talk about what makes up the

diet of the horse, and, and, and really the components of the feed stuffs.

So just as a review, it's always good to

review you know, how much we feed the horse.

Again, like I've said throughout, we're,

we're going to constantly remind you on this,

that we base how much we feed on the weight of the animal.

And that's anywhere from 2 and a half to 3% per day.

And we really base our diets off forage and then go from there.

So, we'll kind of talk about each component

and the first one obviously is, is the forage.

And this can be in the form of pasture or hay.

And in the next lecture, we're going to

really jump into, get deeper into pasture management.

But pasture can be the only source of forage for these animals.

And it's actually, you know, excellent source of forage.

Now the other, next component is some sort of concentrate or gr, or grain.

Now, again, especially for these horses on these maintenance

diets, you don't always have to provide grain or concentrate.

Don't think you have to.

And the reason we do provide this in the diet

is because we're asking these animals to do things that they

normally don't do, you know, they're going to go riding, they're going to

go jumping, they're going to go dancing, dressage, those types of things.

And those, those increase the caloric requirements and the protein requirements

and other nutrients, so that's why we introduce grain in concentrate.

Now, I will say this and this will get into some health management, too.

It may be worth while to, to, even on a

horse on a maintenance diet, that should be purely forage.

Maybe a good idea to give them a little bit of

grain twice a day, you know, or at least once a day.

But, you know, if you could, twice a day, to have them come up

and you can inspect them daily, and see them daily, and interact with them daily.

So, it's a good management ta, tip or tool to use.

Now, the other things that we may add to the diet could be some supplements.

And this is if we have any nutritional deficiencies,

you know, which we're going to get more into, you know,

with deficient soils or if you're not meeting certain

nutrient requirements through forage and concentrate or forage and grain.

Then you would introduce some supplements to, to

allow that, that animal to meet their requirements.

And then I always say and I always

tell my students water is the most important nutrient.

We cannot leave water out.

It is the most important because without it, horses would perish really quickly.

So, we can always, you know, even for us

we could live, you know, weeks, you know, without food.

But without water, we would be dead within a few

days and the same thing holds true with the equids.

So water's the most important thing you can provide to them on a day to day basis.

Now, we're going to jump into these a little

bit deeper and just to start going back to forage.

How forage differs from the other parts of the diet is they're

higher in fiber, lower in energy than say your grains or your concentrates.

So that plant fiber is not normally digested in, in the small intestine.

The, the horse doesn't have natural enzymes to break down that plant fiber.

So, that plant fiber is passed on to the

hind gut, where it's broken down by those billions of

microbes that break down the fiber in the, in the

hind gut and then provides additional nutrients to the horse.

[NOISE]

Now, it is again we'll, we'll go into

Pasture Management in the next lecture, much deeper.

But a well maintain pasture can meet the horse's daily forage

requirement, or the donkey's, or the other mules hybrids, would have you.

So, your pastures, could, the horse will regulate, and

will meet their daily forage requirements, just with the pasture.

But if you are providing hay, the minimum

requirement, the absolute minimum requirement, is 1% body weight per day.

So if, if you're basing your diet, and you have to give

a, you know, more of a concentrator grain with, with higher energy.

Always remember you need at least 1% total body weight of,

of forage and that's really to help maintain digestive health, gut health.

So, in ex, in our example here a 1,000 pound or 450 kilogram

horse, that's 10 pounds of hay a day or four and a half kilograms.

Now, ideally we would provide more forage and if you had a horse just on a, on a

maintenance diet, at 3% body weight per day, that's 30 pounds of hay or 13.5 kg.

Now, what types of hay is there, there is many types of hays throughout the world.

So we, we break this down into two types,

there is the grass hays and then the legume hays.

So, your grass, grass hays can be anything

like Timothy grass, Bermudagrass, orchardgrass, rye grass and there

is probably some others throughout the world so

you know, these are, are, are grass based hays.

And then the legumes, these are just different types of plants.

They're, they're plant structure's different.

And the legumes, it's important to remember,

are generally more nutritious than are grass hays.

They have more energy, more protein, and some other nutrients.

So, you know, let's always remember, you,

sometimes you'll hear someone say called a hot

hay, and that just means there's more energy in it compared to a grass hay.

So, some of our legume hays are alfalfas and

the different types of clovers you see listed there.

Now, switching gears to the concentrates or grains, how these differ is

they're higher in energy and then lower in fiber than your forages.

So, if we looked at a list of just some common feed stuffs that,

that we give horses, if you, if you see here, the percent crude fiber right

here, percent CF, and then here's our, our, our, concentrates, and then going

down to our hays, you can see the fiber increases as we get into the hays.

But then you can see the digestible energy is a lot lower

with those fibrous feeds, and actually goes up in those, those grains.

So, that's how they, they differ pretty sharply between the two.

Now, protein is, is, is very important in a diet and if you, you

increase the protein in a horse's diet, you're actually increasing the energy.

It's just the way those amino acids are broken down.

Now, I added this picture here, because you'll

see the percentages and most commercial feeds, people will

call them by their percentages, oh that's a

10% horse feed or that's a 14% horse feed.

What that is, is referring to is the amount of crude protein in that feed.

So, you see it as CP.

And that's the percentages that you typically see with most commercial feeds.

So, you know, a, a 12% horse feed's going to be 12% crude protein.

Now, if you looked at those ingredients again that we showed you with the fiber

and the digestible energy, you can see your typically, your

concentrates or your grains don't have as much protein as say your legume hays.

Now, our grass hays typically aren't super high in protein and then you see this

one right here, soybean meal has the highest

crude protein of, of any type of concentrate.

Now, soybean meal is typically used in your

commercial feeds to balance the protein in that feed.

So, soybeans are actually very, very important

in providing protein in our own diet.

Now, just to kind of show you to, to give you some, some comparisons.

If we go back to nutrient requirements, and this is

the nutrient requirements of a 500 kilogram horse or, 1,100 pounds.

And you can see the different stages that we've talked about.

So in a maintenance, their energy

requirements and protein requirements are pretty low,

so, you know, you can meet those

requirements with your, you know, grass hays.

But you can see at different stages of life, you know especially

our weanlings have really high protein, really high energy requirements, so, we

need to find some balance, you know with our grass hays and

our concentrates until we can find the right balance to meet those requirements.

[COUGH]

Now, jumping into some of the supplements

that, certain supplements most people might feed.

Vitamin mineral mixes are probably the

most popular, because, you know, basically what

they're doing is, is ensuring that

animal meets its mineral and vitamin requirements.

I will say this with minerals, you have to be careful because you can overdo

it with minerals and get, you know,

what we call mineral toxicity with these animals.

So, always be careful when you're adding minerals to

follow directions, and appropriately give an animal the minerals.

But, you know, especially with, with forage, minerals

are, are really important because a lot of

our forages are, are dependent, their mineral content,

is dependent on the soil and for example

you know, in the United States, we, you can see there in this image that there

are many parts of the Americas that are,

that are deficient in the selenium in the soil.

So, that means there's not as much selenium in the forage.

And if we're feeding a foraged based or a,

you know, wherever that forage is grown or a pasture.

You know, they could be not be meeting their selenium requirement.

Likewise, in other parts of the world, like

in India, there's nitrogen and zinc poor soils.

So, in that part of the world they, they

would maybe have to, you know, augment their diets

with, with some more nitrogen or zinc to make

sure, you know, our animals are, are meeting their requirements.

Now with the vitamins, generally you don't need to provide extra vitamins.

You know, they're, with a well balanced diet, the vitamins are in there.

You know, they're getting Vitamin A from the forage.

Vitamin D from being out in the sunshine, you

know, hitting their coats that's helping produce Vitamin D.

B vitamins produced in the hind gut.

Where you may see people supplementing is with your exercise horses you know, you

may give them some vitamin C and E and that's really for, for what

we call oxidation or antioxidants that actually

help to the recovery phase and those

animals might have, have sweats some of those, those out so you would see that.

Now, the next type of supplement that I always like to talk about is fat.

And, and I know I've, I've kind of already talked

a little bit more and we'll continue with this story that

fat is, has being recommended more and more in equine diets

because they do so well on it and they tolerate it.

So well, you know we are getting away from feeding these

carbohydrates simple sugar rich diets, because we are seeing a higher incidents

of either overweight or obesity with these animals and then also

insulin resistance which is very similar to Type II diabetes in humans.

So fat is an actual you know, excellent source

of calories for the horses or your other equids.

And it could be fed up to 10% of the total diet.

So, if I'm feeding 30 pounds per day, three pounds can actually be fat.

Now, sources of fat that you would feed you

know, especially to a lot of people, is you can

feed simple vegetable fat that you get or vegetable

oil you get from your, from your local food store.

You know, if as long as it's human-quality food,

oil, you can actually do what we call top dressing.

And that's what, this is going on right here.

Is they're just pouring it on top of their, the

feed, mix it in and feed it to their animals.

And I've seen horses devour this.

They really do like it.

And in my experience when you know, I had a, I came across an animal that was

in a two and a half body condition, almost you know, a three, two and a half, three.

I, you know, talked to the owner, put' em on a high fat diet.

Started feeding em vegetable oil.

Within a month that horse almost gained a full body condition and

within two months, it was, it was almost up to a five.

So, it safely added weight to the animal.

So, this is how you would safely increase weight.

Just increase their fat content in their diet.

And horses tend to digest it really well.

Now, getting back to water, again the most important nutrient.

On average, horses need about eight to 12 gallons per day, or 30 to 45 liters.

Now obviously things, different things are going to affect that.

So, you know, hotter portions of the year, especially here in

Florida during the summer months when it's really hot and muggy.

You know, those horses might drink upwards of 20 gallons plus per day.

You know, or during the winter when it's a lot cooler, you

know, they may not drink quite 10 gallons of water per day.

So, so it's good to monitor their, their water intake.

And ensure they have enough water during that.

Things like exercise is going to increase, you

know, their water intake and then dry matter.

If they eat a dryer hay, their going to

salivate more, their going to want to drink more,

if their eating more lush forage which has

more moisture content in it they may drink less.

And then pregnancy, lactation, again, is going to increase water intake.

Now finally, in the slide set, and I kind of felt it,

it, it fit in here, was the special class of geriatric horses.

And then I also think this table is pretty neat.

So, this table is comparing horse to human years, and there's a ratio next to it.

So, you can see with, with horses, especially younger

horses, this is the highest ratio and horses you

know, or the donkeys or mules or other hybrids,

they grow really quickly you know, in comparison to us.

So, you can see a 10-year-old horse is almost 30 to 40 years in our age.

So, a 4 to1 ratio.

Now, these geriatric horses, you know, once they get

20 plus, their nutrient requirements are going to start shifting.

So, that's where we're going to start you

know, supplementing their diets and changing things up.

So, again, one of the recommendations for

feeding geriatric horses is to feed more fat.

Because their metabolisms aren't as efficient.

So, they're going to need more energy in the diet because

they're not digesting their food as well as a young horse.

And their protein requirements are going to go up a little bit.

Because again that metabolism is not as efficient.

So, could you know, get up to the 14% range.

And you can meet some of this by you know, kind of

feeding them grass, alfalfa hay mix, you know, a legume, grass, hay mix.

You know you have to be careful sometimes feeding geriatric horses too much

legume hay because it can stress the kidneys a little bit with nitrogen

content and what not so you know you do want to make sure

they are eating some grass hays mixed in with, with some legume hay.

Less energy dense grains and I always like to tell students and owners oats

are always a good option for horses, whole oats they are very high in fiber.

They're not quite as energy dense as say corn, so oats

are al, always a good option, if you can get 'em.

And those are just some considerations for your geriatric type horses.

So, in the next lecture, we're going to, kind of jump into

pasture management and how we manage you know putting animals on pasture.

So, I'll look to see you then.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

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