Winter is an inherently challenging season when it comes to feeding and taking care of your horse. There are unique nutritional concerns, extra energy needs that can make this time of year especially tricky. As a horse owner and lover, you want the best for your equine companion – so how do you know their additional needs during cold temperatures?

Horses, like all animals, require both sodium and chloride in their diets. Together these two minerals form the common dietary ingredient – salt. When horses don’t receive enough dietary salt they can experience dehydration, impaction colic, muscle weakness, decreased blood volume and ultimately become intolerant to exercise

All horse owners want their horses to be healthy, look good, and be physically fit athletes. Nutritional management is a simple yet cost-effective tool that we can apply to ensure, improved performance and health in our horses. Body condition scoring serves as an effective tool to determine the nutritional needs of your horse. Using a numeric scoring system from 1 to 9, we can estimate the horse’s body energy reserves.

The nutritional management of the senior horse is challenging as there are no set criteria that define “old age” or the “senior” horse. The nutrient requirements of senior horses differ from other classes of horses because of the changes in metabolic and digestive efficiency that accompany the aging process.

Metabolic issues have become widespread in the modern horse, causing obesity, insulin resistance, and laminitis in horses and ponies. Proper nutritional balance can reduce the effects of metabolic issues in our equine partners.