Maintaining weight on your horse during winter can be a tricky balance as horses use additional energy to keep warm, combined with the lack of pasture with nutritional value. Horses need more roughage over winter to maintain weight as forage is digested in the horse’s hind gut via a fermentation process which generates the heat to keep your horse warm.
So how much roughage does your horse need?
Typically, horses require at least 1.5% of their body weight in roughage per a day. A 500kg horse for maintenance will need at least 7.5kg of forage. Depending on your horse’s workload, you will need to increase this percentage to ensure weight is maintained over winter.
Additional care for older horses
Feeding the older horse is one of those long-time struggles that has always baffled owners. You are stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to providing them with fibre and roughage but ensuring they can chew it.
MultiCube Hay Cubes can be soaked to provide a warming winter mash for older horses who need a bit of extra help. Simply soak them in warm water and add a premix or grain on top to provide a quality nutritious meal for your older horse, that is nutrient dense and easy to swallow.
Hay Cubes allow you to provide your oldies with the fibre needed for gut health and general well-being. Without a healthy gastrointestinal tract horses cannot derive the most nutritional benefit from their feed, meaning that less nutrients are absorbed. This commonly leads to weight loss, muscle loss, poor coat, poor skin, loose stools, and lethargy. And horses can’t have a healthy gastrointestinal system without fibre.
Roughage options for all horses
MultiCube Hay Cubes comes in a range of forage options to suit horses’ individual needs.
Lucerne Hay Cubes suit horses in work that need additional energy and protein. The high fibre content is ideal to maintain healthy digestive systems.
Lucerne and Oaten Hay Cubes also contain a higher energy and protein nutritional value, so they are perfect for competition horses not needing a needing a full Lucerne based feed or even soaked for easy consumption and keeping weight on older horses.
Teff and Lucerne are low in WSC/ESC making them perfect for horses or ponies that need a low sugar diet such as those that suffer from Laminitis or Cushings.
Pasture Hay Cubes (Clover, Rye & Oaten) are the perfect all round maintenance feed ensuring your horse gets adequate quality roughage without adding anything ‘extra’ into the diet.
