Nutrition: Feeding your older horse

Six-year-old Gian and Lightning, who was in his late 20s in this photo. He’s now well into his 30s and still Pony Clubbing (Image by Jenna Bilston).

NUTRITION

Feeding your older horse

In this article, equine nutritionist LARISSA BILSTON takes a look at how to prepare an optimal diet to meet the changing needs of your aging horse.

Having the luxury of keeping much-loved horses through their retirement years is an honour many us happily perform for our equine friends. Older schoolmaster horses are highly valued for the lessons they can teach but they do need some additional nutritional support to keep them performing into their golden years.

Check general and dental health

Continue to take care of teeth, worming or other veterinary issues regularly, even in horses that are no longer ridden. This allows them to optimally utilize the nutrients they consume. When planning a diet for your older horse it’s important to know if they have any metabolic or health conditions that impact on the types of nutrients that are suitable to feed.

Provide adequate and appropriate roughage

The first step in planning a good diet is to ensure enough pasture is available for grazing and to supplement with hay when pasture is limited. This is the key to maintaining gastric health in horses of any age.

Horses need to be able to eat around two per cent of their bodyweight in dry matter per day to keep their gut functioning optimally. For a 500 kgs horse, that adds up to 10 kgs of dry matter per day, which could be 11 kgs of hay or up to 50 kgs of fresh grass!

The horse gut evolved to constantly digest a steady stream of fairly low energy, high fibre forage. When pasture is in limited supply, underweight or ageing horses need an unlimited supply of good quality grass or meadow hay. Lucerne hay should comprise no more than 30 per cent of roughage intake.

Ask your vet or equine dentist if your older horse’s teeth allow good utilisation of grass or hay. Horses with worn or missing teeth may need to be fed chaff (and lots of it!) to ensure their roughage needs are met.

If your horse is overweight, has a metabolic condition, or is prone to laminitis then limiting green grass and supplying them with low sugar hay (see sidebar) weighing 1.5 per cent of their bodyweight is often necessary. Slow feeder hay nets can help make their daily ration last so that they always have access to something to eat.

Add calories

Not all horses will get enough energy from hay and grass to maintain weight. Be prepared to increase the size of hard feeds in response to weight loss but always make sure free choice hay is available for underweight horses.

If you're looking for something to top up a diet in order to put weight on, you don't necessarily need a product that says 'weight gain' on the bag - you only need to add more calories. This is often easiest achieved by

feeding more of what you already feed. However, make sure you feed enough fibre before increasing hard feeds.

You can increase the level of energy (calories) in the diet with a cereal grain (such as oats or barley), a legume grain (e.g. lupins), a 'super fibre' (like beet pulp, soy, or lupin hulls) or oil. Or a combination of the above as plain ingredients, or in the form of a premixed pellet or muesli style feed.

Horses with equine metabolic syndrome or insulin resistance who do not maintain weight from forage alone can only consume a low GI feed such as beet pulp, copra, legume hulls, lupins or oil.

When choosing your grain or energy source, consider the condition of your older horse’s teeth and their digestive efficiency as well as how much time and energy you are willing to put into preparation.

• Whole oats can be fed raw, but other cereal grains such as barley, oats, and sorghum should be fed in a cooked form. You can boil them or buy steam flaked or micronised. • You may wish to avoid the cooked grains with added molasses - just check the labelling on the bag. • Some super fibres require a few minutes soaking. • Uncooked lupins are also best soaked to soften the seed coat – soak whole lupins for 6 hours or overnight. Cracked lupins soften if soaked in boiling water for 10 minutes.

TIP: Older horses produce less saliva. Dampen hard feeds to aid swallowing and reduce the risk of choke.

When using oils for weight gain, take care to keep the diet anti-inflammatory by providing enough omega-3 fatty acids to balance the added pro-inflammatory omega-6 oils.

The amounts of energy food required depend on horse size, level of activity, the amount of energy provided by the roughage source and the individual's metabolism. Research shows that

some older horses experience a decline in the function and efficiency of their digestive tracts but others seem to process feed as robustly as ever. If your older horse requires large hard feeds, it is better to split these into two or more meals per day.

The greying muzzle of a dear old friend (Image by Susanne Jutzeler).

Check protein levels

Adequate roughage usually provides enough protein to meet the daily needs of adult horses but some older horses

are less efficient at digesting protein and may need some supplemented.

If there is no clover in the pasture, increase dietary protein by feeding a biscuit of two of lucerne hay per day, or by adding full fat soy or legume products in the hard feed.

Balance the vitamins, minerals and fatty acids

Feeding your horse a correctly balanced diet complete with all the vitamins, minerals and fatty acids needed will allow the body to function optimally. This can result in improved ‘fuel efficiency’ and immune function. Remember that unless all minerals are provided in the correct ratios, it is possible for a horse to be deficient in one mineral even if the recommended daily intake is given.

Horses produce their own vitamin C supply from glucose in the liver, but as they age the efficiency declines and an antioxidant supplement containing vitamin C is recommended.