Feed & Nutrition

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When you have finally found the perfect horse to take you to the winner’s circle, it’s tough to realize that he or she might be getting old. Many horses are now competing well into their late teens and early twenties, especially in certain disciplines such as dressage or show jumping where it takes many years of training to reach an elite level of competition. However, from a veterinary perspective, horses are considered geriatric as they reach the age of 15 to 20 years, which is when their physiological functions start to decline. The management of these horses becomes crucial to keep them competing at their best.

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And what is natural, anyway? The terms “natural” and “organic” are widely used in today’s horse world. The use of the term “organic” in the manufacturing and marketing of products aimed at horse owners is regulated by government agencies. The use of the term “natural” is not, and so a great deal more caution must be exercised by horse owners when sourcing these kinds of products for their horses.

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Given the extreme weather in many parts of Canada in the summer of 2017 – hot and extremely dry in the west; rain and flooding in other areas - hay supply for the coming winter has been a top-of-mind concern for many horse owners.

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How many of us remember the days when the only way to find out the facts on a subject was to go to the library and look it up? Answers to questions we had about the care or feeding of our horses might have been found in one of the many reference books we all owned. Or, maybe we would find the information we were looking for by perusing the many equine magazines we kept “just in case.”

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Equine Metabolic Syndrome (EMS) and Equine Cushing’s Disease (also known as Pars Pituitary Intermedia Dysfunction, or PPID) are reasonably common conditions we encounter in our horses. This article will deal primarily with EMS, but because PPID can be a cause of increased insulin levels in horses, it needs to be mentioned as well.

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The advice to allow free access to food for an obese horse is doomed to failure. Too much food is how they got that way in the first place. Things like age, metabolic rate, and activity level can influence what calorie requirements are, but it still boils down to too many calories in versus calories burned. The same is true for overweight cats, dogs, and people.

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You chose both the mare and the stallion, and you have waited almost a year during the gestation of your anxiously anticipated foal. Now the foal is here and approaching the age to wean. The mare has done an admirable job of supporting that young life for the past 15 months during pregnancy and nursing, but now you must take over the task of meeting the nutritional requirements of your growing horse.

The Best Time to Feed Your Horse Before Competition

By Joe Pagan, Ph.D. - One of the most common questions asked about feeding the performance horse is when to feed before a competition. Theoretically, feeding should be timed so that all of the nutrients from a meal have been digested, absorbed, and stored before starting exercise, but not so long before exercise that the horse begins to mobilize fuels just to maintain its resting body functions.

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Topline is the term used to describe the muscle coverage over the top of the horse’s neck, withers, back, loin, and croup. Because topline is muscle, a horse with a good topline will be stronger and more athletic, and will present a more pleasing appearance. What should we feed to develop the perfect topline? First we must understand that the shape of the back can vary greatly from one individual to another, and so the topline will vary in length and in curvature, with some relationship between the two. Horses with toplines that are sunken in over their withers, concave along the back and loin, or dished in around their hip bones and hindquarters will have diminished strength in those areas.

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Enteroliths are mineral accumulations of magnesium-ammonium-phosphate (struvite) around a foreign object (a piece of metal, pebble, baling twine, hair, rubber) that form round, triangular, or flat stones inside the bowel, usually over the course of multiple years. They form in the large colon of horses, where they can remain for some time until they move and cause an obstruction in the large or small colon, resulting in colic.

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