Balancing Your Horse’s Diet With Supplements

Horses are grazers by nature, constantly foraging for optimal gastrointestinal health. While their ancestors had to search far and wide for feedstuffs, today’s horses are often given lush pasture and good quality hay that forms an excellent base diet without having to travel far to get it. In this article, we’ll discuss ration balancer options for low activity horses whose diet is mainly forage, and on the flip side, high-fat supplements for high activity, performance, and sale horses.  

Forage Comes First 

No matter the life stage or activity level of the horse, the core component of any diet should always be access to good quality forage. Forage is what the equine digestive tract was built to process — designed for grazing small amounts 18 or more hours a day. Ideally, forage would be available 24/7, but between the activities we participate in with our equine pals and the inevitable turn of seasons here in Canada, that ideal may not be feasible. There are, however, many horses that we would consider easy-keepers or who engage in low activity — whether they be companion horses, retirees, or a variety of others — who seem to do well on their seasonal forage diets alone. From the outside, a good quality hay may appear to provide all the nutrition your easy-keeper needs, but on the inside there are still certain nutrients that even the best forage may be lacking and which need to be made up with a ration balancer.  

When balancing your horses’ rations, one of the most useful tools at your disposal is a hay analysis, which should be done on new cuts that arrive at your barn. There can be stark differences in the quality of the hay from one year to the next, even if it comes from the same field and is grown by the same supplier. Don’t let your eyes or hands trick you — just because the hay looks and feels great does not necessarily mean that it has the nutritional value required. The benefit of a hay analysis is knowing approximately what nutrients your horse is getting through the bulk of their diet, and which nutrients are below the recommended amounts. These portions can then be topped up with a recreational complete feed that is low in fat, or by a concentrated vitamin/mineral supplement that has elevated