August 2, 2022 Sales WVF

How To Balance Your Horses Feed

Feeding a balancer to your horse has many pros, but how do you know if they are suitable for your equine?

"Quite simply put; a balancer contains the essential vitamins, minerals and protein that a horse needs in their diet that they may not be getting from forage alone or when fed a calorie restricted diet:'- Spillers

Horses that may benefit from a balancer are usually horses that aren’t receiving the full recommend portion of concentrate feed, are on low quality or restricted grazing or forage, horses in a high workload, horses that gain weight easily.

In the wild, horses would migrate and feed from lots of different sources including herbs, root vegetables, trees & shrubs. By having such a varied diet, it ensured that they received the correct amount of nutrients. The domesticated horse however, has a basic diet of grass & dry forage such as hay or haylage. These things alone are not enough to ensure a balanced diet.

On top of this, working and riding our horses means they need a higher amount of protein to cope with the increased workload. Because of this, we need to supplement them with hard feed to ensure they are getting all the micronutrients that they need.

Most hard feeds and concentrates, when fed at the recommended rate, are enough to meet their daily requirements, however, if feeding under the recomended rate (e.g to manage weight), a balancer can then be added to 'balance' the diet. For overweight horses or horses that are good doers, a low calorie balancer can be a perfect solution to ensure they are getting the necessary nutrients, without the added fats and calories found in hard feed.

Balancers can be found in powder or pellet form, and can be specialised to suit each horse- low calorie, competition, stud, veteran, gut health etc. Although they look expensive to buy, as you don’t need to feed much of them, they can last a lot longer than hard feed!