Winter Care for Older Horses

Owners must consider how they will meet their older horses’ nutrient requirements during the winter. Providing adequate energy is the prime concern, and how you will provide those extra calories depends on available feed and each horse’s needs.
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Owners need to consider how they will meet their older horses' (or their younger, hard-keeping horses') nutrient requirements during the winter. Providing adequate energy is the prime concern, and how you will provide those extra calories depends on available feed and each horse's individual needs.

A good place to start is assessing your horse's body condition score (BCS). Horses with a BCS of greater than 5 will have some extra fat stores that can provide insulation and serve as a readily available source of energy when the daily ration falls short as the temperature drops.

In developing your feeding strategy, consider increasing your horse's hay intake to meet his energy needs. Hay is digested in the gastrointestinal tract by fermentation, which produces heat that the horse can use to maintain core body temperature. There is a limit as to how much hay he can consume daily. In most cases, he will consume 2.0-2.5% of his body weight per day. If he can't consume enough hay, then adding grain to the diet will also provide calories.

Temperatures well below freezing, or wet snow or freezing rain conditions, greatly increase a horse's energy requirements, especially if he's maintained outside. Rain and wind can cause the horse to lose the insulating capacity of his hair coat, and he'll use body reserves to maintain core body temperature, often resulting in weight loss. Owners must increase the daily feed to meet these increased demands, but they play catch up with the feed unless they can accurately predict the weather or can put horses in the barn when things turn nasty

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Written by:

Bob Coleman, PhD, grew up showing horses and harness ponies in Brandon, Manitoba. He worked as an animal nutritionist for two feed companies in Western Canada before joining the Alberta Horse Industry Branch, where he worked for 18 years as the provincial extension horse specialist. He is currently an associate extension professor in the Department of Animal and Food Sciences in the College of Agriculture at the University of Kentucky in Lexington.

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