We all want to do the best for our horses, but as any horse owner knows, making your budget balance can sometimes seem harder than balancing their diet. So is it possible to do both? Quite simply – Yes!
Firstly, it is important to remember what is best for the horse to meet their needs. Horses evolved as trickle grazers, grazing and foraging for around 16-18 hours a day. That is how their gut is designed to work healthily and most efficiently, so forage should always be the largest part of the diet. Over winter that means relying on preserved forages such as hay or haylage. Forages should be a minimum of 1% of their diet, by dry matter, but ideally much higher.
We should always remember to feed to work done. That means being honest about how much work our horses and ponies are actually in. With shorter daylight hours and poorer weather, realistically most horses owned by busy, working, owners are in light to medium work at this time of year. In this level of work energy requirements will be well met by a predominantly hay or haylage diet. This high forage diet has the following benefits:
Forage Based Diet
Remember when establishing their forage requirement that diets are calculated by dry matter (DM), and that level will change markedly with the forage. Hay is typically around 85% dry matter, whereas haylage may be between 50% and 70% DM. What does that mean to the actual amount we put in the haynet?
| DM % | DM weight | Actual feed weight | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hay | 85% | 5kg | 5.9kg |
| Haylage | 60% | 5kg | 8.3kg |
We do recommend knowing the DM of your forage, and weighing nets so you know exactly how much you’re feeding. This is essential to avoiding waste, and avoiding unwanted weight gain in your horse over winter.
Five The one problem with the preserved forage diet is that it will certainly be micronutrient deficient. Modern grassland and horse pasture is increasingly lacking in some essential nutrients all year round, but once you preserve that grass to make hay or haylage the problem is worsened. For example, fresh grass is a good source of the essential antioxidant, Vitamin E, but vitamins are significantly depleted on preservation and their winter forage will have very little Vitamin E or Vitamin A. As Vitamin D is largely gained by skin exposure to sunlight, it stands to reason that through the shorter days of winter that is reduced, and stabling and rugging could compound that issue. Micronutrients which are low in the soil, for example selenium, zinc, copper and magnesium deficiencies are all common in the UK, will also be low in preserved forages.
Therefore, we start to see that while preserved forages are the essential base to the winter diet, they do not provide everything that is required for health and vitality. Supplementation is needed to balance the diet, but best advice is to keep it simple. Using one, broad-spectrum, vitamin and mineral product, such as NAF General Purpose Supplement or NAF Optimum Balancer, will ensure that your horse receives the right amount of required nutrients in the correct ratios. It is best to stick to one broad-spectrum rather than mixing multiple vitamins and mineral products, which could easily unbalance the diet – as well as being far more expensive. If you believe your horse has a particular nutrient deficiency, then contact us and we can advise on how best to resolve that without upsetting the rest of the diet.
By sticking to a forage base, balanced with a broad-spectrum product we are able to keep feed times simple and economical. Using typical feed prices (UK 2024), we calculate a saving of just over £1/day, or around £30 per month, by swapping from concentrate feeds to a forage and NAF Optimum balanced diet. Further savings could be made by using a powdered supplement rather than pelleted balancer.
| No Balancer | Av £/kg | kg/d | £/day | Av Mj/kg | Mj/day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hay | 0.3 | 5.5 | £1.65 | 8 | 44 |
| Alfalfa Chaff | 0.9 | 2 | £1.80 | 8.1 | 16.2 | Leisure Horse Mix | 1.1 | 2 | £2.20 | 10 | 20 | Optimum Balancer | 10.27 | 0 | 11 | 0 | 9.5 | £5.65 | 80.2 |
| With Optimum Balancer | Av £/kg | kg/d | £/day | Av Mj/kg | Mj/day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hay | 0.3 | 9 | £2.70 | 8 | 72 |
| Alfalfa Chaff | 0.9 | 1 | £0.90 | 8.1 | 8.1 | Leisure Horse Mix | 1.1 | 0 | 10 | 0 | Optimum Balancer | 10.27 | 0.1 | £1.03 | 11 | 1.1 | 10.1 | £4.63 | 81.2 |
The energy provided (MJ/day) shows that just as much energy can be fed from forage alone, without the need for additional hard feed.
Interestingly, neither of these two terms are actually legally recognised, so it is important that we understand what is generally meant by them. Legally they are both simply types of feed, and come under all the same rules and legislations that your bagged feed does too. So how do they differ?
A ‘supplement’ is a complementary feed fed in a very concentrated way. Typically that may be from 10g up to around 100g per day. They may be in several forms, with powder, pellet or liquid typical for the broad-spectrum product. A supplement will usually need to be mixed in with a small amount of feed, such as a high fibre chaff, to be fed.
A ‘balancer’ is really just a type of supplement. Typically pelleted (though doesn’t have to be), and usually fed at higher rates from 500g per day for a 500kg horse, down to a concentrated balancer at 100g per day. The other key difference is that balancers usually include gut support from probiotic yeast and prebiotics to help the horse get the most from their diet. Balancers can be fed alone, though, again, your horse may appreciate a small amount of chaff to mix them in.
The choice is largely personal preference, and will come down to what suits you and your horse. If your horse or pony struggles to maintain weight over winter, or is working hard and travelling regularly, then a concentrated balancer, such as NAF Optimum, with its additional gut support would be recommended. For good do-ers and those in light work, a simple broad-spectrum supplement, such as General Purpose Supplement is ideal.
For specific lifestage requirements look out for products that suit those horses, such as NAF Veteran Supplement or Mare, Foal and Youngstock.
