Tips for health through the winter

Despite the warm temperatures in October this year, the winter weather is fast approaching. Have you remembered to check your horse’s feeding regime? Below are some top tips to help keep your horse or pony happy and healthy throughout the winter.

• During the autumn, grass growth slows and its quality falls as it becomes higher in fibre, less digestible and has less vitamin activity. From about October onwards, most horses and ponies cannot obtain all of the calories and protein they need from grass alone as they can in the summer months. 
• One of the most important considerations is to feed plenty of forage, such as hay, haylage or hay replacers to make up for the lack of grazing. The other benefit of feeding forage is that the process of digesting forage produces heat which will provide your pony with his own central heating system to keep him warm during periods of cold weather. 
• Forage not only helps to keep your pony healthy, it will also prevent your pony from being bored when his field is too muddy for him to go out.
• If your horse is prone to weight loss, it pays to anticipate winter problems and make any necessary adjustments to his diet in autumn. It’s a good idea to weigh out your horse’s current hard feed ration and check that you are feeding the manufacturer’s full recommended daily quantity, usually shown on the back of the feed bag; it could be that a simple increase in feed is all that’s needed. Make sure that the daily hard feed ration is split across at least two meals – the smaller each meal is, the more benefit your horse will get out of his feed.
• If you are already feeding a full ration of hard feed and are concerned that your horse will drop weight over winter, consider gradually replacing at least half of the current compound with a higher energy product designed to help maintain condition.
• Using a balanced feed fed at the manufactures recommended levels will also ensure that your horse or pony receives all the vitamins and minerals he requires to help keep him healthy and reduces the need for additional supplements. If however you have a pony that holds his weight well over the winter and does not need a hard feed, he will still require a full spectrum of vitamins and minerals. In these cases a broad spectrum vitamin and mineral supplement is ideal.
• Winter can be a difficult time for some elderly horses. Energy requirements may increase by 30% or more in order to maintain body temperature; veterans are often very prone to weight loss as grass quality deteriorates and the weather gets colder. Older horses with poor teeth or previous worm damage are particularly at risk.
• If your senior horse or pony is starting to find winter a little difficult to cope with, make sure that you introduce a suitable conditioning feed such as SPILLERS® Senior Conditioning Mix in the autumn. Look for a high calorie product that is designed for easy digestion. Older horses also need plenty of good quality protein; suitable compound feeds will have a protein level between 12 and 14%.

If, after following all the above measures, your horse or pony is still struggling to hold condition, try a conditioning supplement. For safe rapid weight gain look for a concentrated milk pellet, with quality protein such as EQUIVITE® Body Builder. Supplements such as this will help to build topline without excitability.

If you have any doubts about what to feed your pony in the winter please contact the SPILLERS® Care-Line on 01908 226626 or fill in the Care-Line enquiry form.