The Scoop on Grains and Concentrates
Sweet feed pelleted feed oats corn ration balancer oh my! In a perfect less complicated world all horses from pasture pets to growing yearlings to horses in heavy work could all be fed the same feed. In reality our horses changing nutritional needs throughout various life stages make this concept impossible and require specific diets for each horse.
There are a variety of types and forms of feed that can be fed to horses. The sheer number of choices in the feed store can be overwhelming! Many horses are fed a combination of forage typically hay or pasture with a grain mix. Our choices are guided by our horses requirements availability of forages and cost of feed. Some horses look great on a simple diet of mainly forage while for other horses finding the right diet to keep them healthy can be difficult. For example the horse may have a hard time gaining or losing weight. It is important to learn how to feed your horse so that they get all the nutrients they need. Factors that influence a horses nutrition requirements include breed weight body condition age growth stage breeding status for both stallions and mares and performance and training levels. The foundation of any horses diet should be forage.
Concentrates include feed such as sweet feed grains and pellets and they are typically added to a horses diet to compensate for any nutrient insufficiencies in forages. Working growing and pregnantlactating horses typically need more energy or protein than hay or pasture can offer alone. It may be necessary to provide these types of horses with concentrates. Many easy keeper horses do not need grain at all if they are on highquality forage and many simply require a vitaminmineral supplement or ration balancer. Horses should be fed concentrates as a supplement to their
foragebased diet remember that horses should be given 2 of their BW as feed daily and at a minimum at least 50 of that feed should be forage.
Grains
There are a number of different grains that are commonly fed to horses. Grains referred to as cereals or cereal grains are the edible seeds of specific grasses. The most common are oats corn and barley. Milo sorghum and wheat are other grains that are fed to horses as well. Grains such as oats barley and corn can be fed whole though many are typically processed to increase digestibility. Examples of how
