Feeding Overweight Horses

It is estimated that over 50% of horses in the United States are overweight. In this week’s podcast we discuss how to adjust your diets to reduce a horse's weight safely. We start off with discussing how to diagnose if your horse is overweight. We then provide a brief review of the Body Condition Scoring System and what is the healthy range for horses. When adjusting diets for any horse it can be tricky. Thus, we outline some basics for owners to consider with regards to adjusting the concentrate and forage portions of their overweight horse’s diets. Since all diets are based on forage, we do spend some time on discussing how to adjust this portion of an overweight horse’s diet. It is also important to remember that even high quality forage can not meet all of a horse’s daily nutrient requirements. So even overweight horses will generally need a supplemental feed, usually in the form of a ration balancer, and we explain why this is important. Finally, we give some other tips and tricks to help your overweight horses get back to a healthy body condition.

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This podcast was brought to you by Tribute Superior Equine Nutrition