A common question we get here at Pryde's, should you feed your horse before exercise? YES! Horses are designed to run on a full stomach.

What should I feed?

Things like hay will fill up the stomach and makes the horse produce a lot of saliva. Ideally, Lucerne hay is best as it also buffers the stomach.

How much should I feed?

Feed between 200 - 300 grams of hay per 100 kg of bodyweight. Use the larger amount if your horse hasn't eaten for more than 2 hours.

What should NOT be fed before exercise?

Grain base feeds! These feeds will cause blood glucose and insulin levels to increase. The insulin makes it difficult for a horse's muscle to mobilise and burn glucose and fatty acids to fuel work. This is particularly important for horses undergoing short duration, high-intensity exercise.

Horses often lose weight in winter for the simple reason that when it is cold they burn more calories to maintain body temperature, therefore calorie requirements are higher during this period. Some simple solutions could be:

- feeding additional fibre as hay helps to keep horses warm as fibre fermentation produces heat and increases calorie intake.

- if your horse can't maintain weight on additional forage you may need to introduce some higher calorie feeds into the diet. Pryde'sBioMare Cubes would be an example of this.

- rugging your horse during this period. This reduces the amount of calories a horse needs to burn to stay warm and reduces calorie requirements.

- Don't be afraid to let horses lose some weight in winter! Some horses, especially those that get very fat during spring and summer can benefit from losing weight in winter.

Managing horses nutrition through changing seasons is a concept that is important for all horses! What is the trick? It's being able to change how much you are feeding to control body fatness and behaviour as pasture quality changes WITHOUT causing mineral deficiencies in the diet.

There are two main ways you can do this:

1:53 Feed a balancer pellet (eg Pryde's 150 pellet) together with 'energy feeds' like oats or Pryde's PowerPak, keeping the amount of Balancer Pellet constant while adjusting the amount of oats/PowerPak being fed according to pasture conditions and your horse's requirement for additional calories.

or

2:57 The 'Sliding Scale' concept. Using a feed (eg EasiResult) together with a concentrated 'Balancer Pellet' (eg Pryde's 150 Pellet) and adjust the amounts of both according to pasture conditions and your horse's requirements.