Horse Feed Manufacture in India

Traditional horse-feeding practices in India involve the use of crushed oats, wheat bran, horse gram (a bean), jaggery (dried molasses extract), fresh alfalfa (lucerne), and grass hay with low energy and protein content. Racehorses were traditionally fed large quantities of oats as their principal energy source. Until recently, vitamin and mineral supplements designed for cattle were used for horses, as equine-specific formulations were not available.

As feed manufacturing developed in other countries, it became common to import textured feeds from Australia or Europe to feed racehorses. But importing feed to India involves long shipping times, high import duties, and clearance delays. This limited the use of imported feed to top-end racing stables.

Reliance on imported feeds concerned some horse owners. Shantanu Sharma, who had been involved in textile manufacturing and owned a polo stable, searched for a nutritionally sound feed for his polo ponies. His inability to find a feed that met his specifications led to the establishment of Himalayan Horse in 2007. Pelleting, steam-flaking, and mixing facilities have been developed as part of the Himalayan Horse feed-manufacturing factory in Delhi.

Himalayan Horse, a Team Member of Kentucky Equine Research (KER), is dedicated to producing nutritional sound, scientifically innovative rations and providing its customers with accessible and personal service. The company offers a complete range of feed, supplements, and general care products for horses based on global and Indian conditions.

The Himalayan Horse feed range offers some pelleted speciality feeds together with a wide range of textured sweet feeds designed for different classes of horse. Oats are imported from Australia, as native oats cannot provide the energy content necessary for high-quality feeds. Locally grown corn and barley are cleaned, graded, and steam-flaked to improve digestibility. Molasses is a restricted substance in India, but it is used to sweeten feeds. High-quality rice bran is purchased for the manufacture of a stabilised rice bran, and this is used as a high-energy feed ingredient. High-quality soyabean (soybean) meal and an imported KER vitamin and mineral premix are the basis of a high-protein feed balancer pellet that is used in textured feeds or sold separately for on-farm mixing.

In the feed-manufacturing process, evaluation of the feed ingredients is important for achieving consistent quality. When Himalayan Horse started to make feed, it realized there was competition in the marketplace, as there were numerous well-known imported feeds available in India. The primary challenge involved raw materials, as some were inconsistent in quality and sometimes adulterated.

To make sure that Himalayan Horse produced a world-class feed, it established a state-of-the-art in-house laboratory. Surender Sunda, Ph.D., joined the Himalayan Horse team to oversee the laboratory. The quality of the feed ingredients is assessed before purchase and again before unloading from the truck. Physical and chemical evaluations are performed to ensure conformity of nutrient content and freedom from contamination. There is also a major postproduction-testing program to ensure that feeds meet the standards for each product. The daily checks performed at the Himalayan Horse in-house lab are moisture, crude protein, fibre, fat, total ash, calcium, phosphorus, bulk density, urease activity, aflatoxin levels, and physical parameters like color, particle size, weight, homogeneity, smell, taste, and texture.

Himalayan Horse products come with a full value-added service to design the best possible ration and determine how the feeds and available forages meet the nutrient requirements of the horse. A qualified and trained consultant will investigate the existing feed regimen and then suggest a balanced feed program based on the sophisticated MicroSteed software, designed by KER. MicroSteed allows for the assessment of each horse’s diet, based on workload, age, breed, and metabolism, in order to ensure that their energy, protein, and other nutrient requirements are being met.

Breeding farms often use the unique services offered by the Gro-Trac software, also designed by KER. By using a database of growth records created by KER over the past two decades, and a specific Indian growth database, information can be provided to breeders to assess how young horses compare with other horses of the same sex and age across major breeding countries. Thoroughbreds tend to grow slower under Indian conditions than in many other countries, so monitoring growth is especially important in India.

The Himalayan Horse feeds have only been available in India for a few years, but in that time they have found great favor on Thoroughbred breeding farms and have been fed to a number of Group 1 winners whilst they were growing and developing. The collaboration with KER has given Himalayan Horse the chance to consistently provide nutritional solutions with unique, progressive feeds that make a real difference, along with the science to support them.