Question

I own an upper-level event horse, a 12-year-old Irish Sport Horse gelding that is ridden six days a week. He is kept in his stall about six hours each day, and the rest of his free time is spent on pasture. He is fed 0.25 lb (0.1kg) of feed per day and two or three flakes of hay when he is stalled. He gains weight very easily and is borderline too heavy for the amount of work he is in. My difficulty with him is keeping the weight off while meeting his nutritional needs. Suggestions, please.

Answer

In one way you are lucky that your horse is such an easy keeper because it saves on the feed bill. On the other hand, meeting the nutritional needs of an upper-level event horse is challenging with so little feed. In fact, with only 0.25 lb (0.1kg) per day of the current feed, you are not meeting the nutritional needs of the horse because you are feeding it way below the recommended feeding rate.

All feeds are formulated to be fed within a specific range. If you feed under the recommended minimum, the horse will be consuming insufficient quantities of most nutrients. For high-level performance horses that maintain weight this easily, we usually recommend a “ration balancer” instead of a typical feed.Here is an article explaining how ration balancers work.

The feeding rate will probably be 2 lb (1 kg) per day for your horse to supply all the minerals, vitamins, and protein he requires for optimal health. This may seem too high considering what you are feeding, but ration balancers are low-calorie feeds, so you should be able to feed more without weight gain. I would encourage you to choose All-Phase, a superior ration balancer formulated by the nutritionists at Kentucky Equine Research (KER).

The other option is to top off the current feed with a well-balanced vitamin and mineral supplement, like KER Micro-Max or Gold Pellet. Without adding calories, either product would supply the minerals and vitamins that are shortchanged by feeding below the recommended feeding rate. The major difference between a ration balancer and a vitamin-mineral supplement is the ration balancer supplies protein and balances the calcium and phosphorus better than a supplement.