Question
We have a motley herd of horses: a couple Miniature Horses, an Arabian, a 23-year-old Appaloosa, a draft horse, a couple of Welsh Ponies, and an ex-racehorse, a Thoroughbred. I would like to have them on the same feeding plan. They would all be considered light work, as they are ridden or worked three or four days a week. We currently feed alfalfa hay in the morning, pasture in the afternoon, and pellets in the evening.
Answer
It is difficult to take a commercial feed and make it fit all the horses on a farm because they are usually formulated for a specific type of horse and need to be fed within a recommended range in order for the horse to benefit from them. This doesn’t usually work for horses that are on the extreme ranges of size or metabolism (easy keepers and hard keepers). However, with such a variety of sizes and ages on the farm, I think basing your feeding program around a ration balancer and forage would fit the best.
The beauty of using a ration balancer is that it complements the forage, filling in the nutritional gaps (protein, vitamins, and minerals) of what might be missing in that hay or pasture. It is flexible because you feed each animal an amount based on its body weight, so you can use it for the Miniature Horses as well as the draft and all the others in between in size.
A ration balancer is usually pelleted but is much more concentrated than the average horse pellet so can be fed at a much lower feeding rate and still supply all the nutrients. Just about every large commercial feed company has a type of ration balancer.
Ration balancers are great for Miniature Horses. They are usually such extreme easy keepers that they do not need anything but a little forage. With less than a cup a day of a ration balancer, the animal consumes the nutrients needed for healthy growth and development without all the extra calories that will cause it to become obese.
Once each animal gets the forage (hay, pasture, hay pellets, etc.) and the right amount of ration balancer, then if any of the animals need more calories (lose weight on this diet), you can add a source of calories to their individual diets.
For example, if your former racehorse can’t maintain his weight on the forage and balancer, then feed him individually more calories by offering any of the calorie-dense feedstuffs you have available with the ration balancer, such as oats, steam-rolled barley, beet pulp, rice bran, commercial concentrate, alfalfa pellets, or vegetable oil.
With a feeding program like this, it is important to individualize the program to each animal. It will take a few minutes to get a weight of each animal using a weigh tape and to weigh the ration balancer so you know how much to feed. It will not work well if they are group fed the ration balancer; in fact, it may be dangerous if one animal gets all and others get none. But the benefits on the health and well-being of the animal will be worth the little extra time it takes to get the program set up.
