Nutrition 101: What to Feed When Pasture is Poor?

As winter continues on you may be finding by now that the quality and quantity of pasture available to your horse is dropping.

At this time of year it is really important to keep an eye on your pasture and adjust your horses' diets as necessary to make sure they continue to receive all the nutrition they need. 

We ask Peter Pryde - from Prydes EasiFeed - about the best way to ensure all our horses' nutritional needs are met at this time of year...

Peter advises, "the most important 'feed' to add to the diet at this time of year is extra hay, especially if there is not a lot of pasture left in the paddock. It is best to feed grass hay but you can also add 0.5 kg of lucerne hay for every 100 kg of your horse's bodyweight to improve the overall quality of the forage available in the diet. If you have plenty of low quality pasture available you can just add lucerne hay to boost the diet's forage quality. Pryde's EasiFibre could also be used in place of lucerne hay to boost the quality of the fibre in the diet."

"With pasture quality dropping, winter is also a really important time to balance your horses vitamin and mineral intake. If your horse is holding his condition well on pasture and hay alone you should consider using a pasture balancer pellet like the Pryde's 150, 200 or 250 Pellets to simply top up vitamin and mineral intakes."

"If your horse is starting to drop condition a high energy and readily digestible feed like the Pryde's EasiResponse for working horses or Pryde's BioMare Cubes for older horses will help them to hold weight for the remainder of winter."

"But really the most important thing is to make sure they have lots and lots of forage available, so if there isn't much pasture left in the paddocks make sure you feed plenty of extra hay."

Quick Link

• Find out more about the feeds mentioned above and view the full range available from Prydes EasiFeed at the Prydes Website.