Pets and More Pets ? Feeding The Elderly Horse As Well As Horse ...

The right food and horse supplements will help your horse live much longer. The calories, vitamins and minerals given by your horse?s diet are his life-support program. Along with supplying the energy and raw materials to maintain fundamental body functions, nutrients help support a healthy immune system that wards away illness. A horse fed well throughout his life and into his mature years will likely be healthier and live more than a chronically undernourished horse. The horse?s dietary needs, regardless of his stage of life, rely largely with his lifestyle. Young, growing horses require larger amounts of vitamins, minerals, proteins and other nutrients than do middle-aged creatures, and lively athletes need more ?energy? than recreational trail mounts.

Fortunately, you do not need to spend hours with health charts and a calculator to ensure that the horse?s diet plan suits him. These days, you need only begin with a good-quality hay and, if needed, add any of the numerous commercially produced horse feeds. There are plenty of good feeds designed for horses in various stages of life and work that finding one which your horse does well on really should not be difficult. If you?ve got a horse who is holding his weight and has the proper level of energy, that?s a good indication that you?re on the right track nutritionally.

As the horse ages, his requirements change. As the years pass, the horse digestive system has increasing trouble digesting fiber?a function of dental wear and intestinal adjustments?and becomes much less efficient in absorbing certain nutrients such as phosphorus and making use of tissue-building protein. The basic rule for feeding horses is to feed little and often. The more foods you can split the day?s feed into, the better for the horse. Stick to a regular schedule. For good reasons, most people feed 2 or 3 times a day.

More mature horses need more protein and fat inside their diet than their middle-aged counterparts. They will also do better if you could provide them with fibre in their diet that?s very easily digestible, as an older horse?s gut is usually less capable at digesting this material. Vegetable oil is a good add-on to an adult horse?s diet regime. Horses digest it well and it is a great resource of energy. Horses need good quality hay, and this is very so for older creatures. Stay away from any that is stemmy and too aged. If their older teeth can?t grind up stemmy hay well, it won?t be digested well. This may well show in poorly broken down food in their droppings.

How?s this ?easily digestible fiber? recognized? Generally speaking, feeds which feel softer to the hand will generally have a lot more digestible fiber. So a sweet-smelling hay that?s soft and pliable to the grip will be in an entirely different league to coarse-feeling stemmy rubbish. Good hay will cost more, but it is a great investment, no matter the age of the animal. For horses that have trouble keeping weight on, good hay is unlikely to be enough by itself to keep up condition. If the horse needs more calories, unprocessed grain will normally not be the best resource.

Give food to your senior horse correctly and use horse supplements. The fields of the world?s grain belts have never been the natural home of the horse. They?re adapted to lower quality feed ? and lots of it. Feeding an excessive amount of grain runs an increased risk of laminitis, colic and stomach ulcers, brought on by changes needed in the horse?s gut to digest the food. Yes, your horse needs calories. How you go about giving them for the animal is the critical thing. The calories should not be at the expense of plenty of fibre (roughage). And, as discussed earlier, the important thing is that it?s effortlessly digestible.

Horse Supplement specialists have different advice and expert opinions on how you take excellent care of your favorite equines when using the best horse supplements in their day-to-day diet regime.

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