Calcium and Phosphorus Ratios in Equine Diets

Ensuring your horse maintains a balanced calcium and phosphorus ratio in his diet is critical, as horses with
Share
Favorite
Close

No account yet? Register

ADVERTISEMENT

Ensuring your horse maintains a balanced diet is one of the most important aspects of horse care. In particular, ensuring your horse maintains a balanced calcium and phosphorus ratio in his diet is critical, as horses with calcium or phosphorus deficiencies or toxicities are prone to various disorders, according to Ramiro E. Toribio, DVM, MS, PhD, Dipl. ACVIM, associate professor in the Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences at The Ohio State University, who recently composed a literature review on the topic.

In horses calcium helps maintain normal brain and nerve function and aids in heart, skeletal muscle, and intestinal contraction. Phosphorus helps regulate muscle and heart contraction, cell integrity, and glucose use.

The calcium to phosphate ratio in the equine diet is important because the two work closely together: "A balanced equine diet must have 0.15-1.5% of calcium and 0.15-0.6% of phosphorus in feed dry matter," Toribio explained. "A calcium to phosphorus ratio of less than 1:1 can have negative consequences on the skeleton." Simply put, a horse needs at least as much calcium in his diet as phosphorus, never the reverse

Create a free account with TheHorse.com to view this content.

TheHorse.com is home to thousands of free articles about horse health care. In order to access some of our exclusive free content, you must be signed into TheHorse.com.

Start your free account today!

Already have an account?
and continue reading.

Share

Written by:

Related Articles

Stay on top of the most recent Horse Health news with

FREE weekly newsletters from TheHorse.com

Sponsored Content

Weekly Poll

sponsored by:

Where do you primarily feed your horse?
300 votes · 300 answers

Readers’ Most Popular

Sign In

Don’t have an account? Register for a FREE account here.

Need to update your account?

You need to be logged in to fill out this form

Create a free account with TheHorse.com!