Tag Archives: Feeding the Horse

Cuckoo For Coconuts; Coconut Meal & Oil in Your Horse’s Diet

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While I believe that following fads in equine nutrition is all too common and sometimes risky, every once in a while, something comes along that has the potential to really add to value. Coconut meal and oil is such a product.

What is it and where does it come from?

Copra meal, or Coconut meal, is a feed ingredient that is the by-product of the oil extraction from dried Coconut kernels.  It comes from the white part of the Coconut, not the shell or husk.  The nut is split and the kernel is removed and dried to below 6% moisture.

The dried Coconut is ground, flaked and cooked until moisture is brought down to 3%. The oil is mechanically extracted from the flakes using an expeller machine, resulting in low-colored oil and a copra cake containing about 7% oil.

Coconut oil for alternative therapy

Coconut meal is rarely a main ingredient in horse feed. Currently it seems to be fed primarily as a supplement in regions where Coconuts are grown and processed or where the product is easily available.

Coconut meal can be pelletized and used as a feed or be used as a protein supplement for grass-fed animals, either alone or in combination with other protein sources.

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Carbohydrates in the Equine Diet

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You know we can’t discuss equine nutrition without covering Carbs.  Especially since Carbohydrates pretty much make up your horse’s entire diet including forages, grains, and by-products of forage and grain.  

sugary-grain-n-treats2.jpg                                                                                                                                                                              I want to keep it simple so you finish with a good understanding of what all the fuss is about regarding Carbohydrates.  Carbohydrate (CHO) is the collective term for starches, sugars and fiber in your horse’s diet.  If you are feeding correctly, this diet should be composed mostly of forage, as in grass, hay, haylage, beet pulp, etc.  Forages provide the structural CHOs a horse can ferment well.  Forages also provide a horse with some simple Carbs such as starch and sugar.

There are two kinds of Carbohydrates; Structural and Non-Structural. Continue reading →

Counting Calories in the Equine Diet

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How many of you have counted Calories in your own diet?  Probably most of you are at least familiar with the term and that it provides your body with energy.  A Calorie is actually a measure of energy provided by the food we eat. It is the basic unit of heat energy defined as the amount of heat required to raise one gram of water one degree Celsius.  

All living things have energy requirements. The goal for health (and a healthy weight) is to balance the energy obtained through eating with the energy required by the body. You know, “Calories in/ Calories out.”  This is also true for your horse.

All animals need a certain amount of energy for basic body functions like keeping their hearts beating, digestion, and to maintain body temperature.  This maintenance level of energy is considered the basal metabolic rate. In general, when we refer to “maintenance” levels it usually refers to a mature horse (not growing) that is not in any work, breeding, reproducing or under any weather stressors. But that isn’t very realistic because as we all know there are “easy keepers” and “hardkeepers” with very different “maintenance “needs.

So, in reality this amount of maintenance energy is really related to body size and disposition, for example a hot 17 hand thoroughbred will have a higher energy requirement than a laid back Shetland pony.

Equine Nutrition Nerd_Horse and Shetland standing next to each other in front of white background

In 2007, The National Research Council (NRC) finally updated The Nutrient Requirements of the Horse (the nutrition bible) and they added three levels of “maintenance”; high-level (think hard keeper), medium level and low level (think easy keeper).

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ASSESMENT OF YOUR HORSE’S HEALTH & DIET

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Assess Your Horses Weight, Condition and Needs:

In order for any nutrition program to be effective it has to serve the purpose for the animal you are feeding.  Feeding a Shetland pony a draft horse diet is not only incorrect but also dangerous.

Curiositiesbydickens

To know what and how much to feed you first need to know your horse’s weight, his current body condition and his nutritional needs.

I say it 20 times a week “Feed by weight not volume” and you will see it again under “W” later in the year.  If the rule of thumb is 1.5-2% of your horse’s body weight in feedstuffs per day then you must know the body weight to calculate the percentage.

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The ABCs of Equine Nutrition: An A-to-Z guide to better understanding, The Letter A

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I originally thought of this as a single blog post but after I started researching I discovered enough information for each alphabet letter to write a book!  With that idea in mind I decided to write a post each week using a different letter of the alphabet.  So at the end of 26 weeks (assuming I can find enough nutrition topics starting with X and Y!) I will have written the book! 

Some letters will have quite a few topics and others not-so-much. If you think of any topics beginning with a letter I have not covered PLEASE send them to me via email.  The more comprehensive the book is the better.

So we will take this journey together beginning with the letter A and progress through each letter discovering, explaining and learning more about the wonderful, confusing, challenging world of equine nutrition.

Let the journey begin…… Continue reading →