Feeding horses in the wet season and grass quality

Feeding horses in the wet season and grass quality

Isn’t the wet season great, green grass in the paddock , horses happily chomping away. Don’t need to buy any feed, after all horses just need grass right?

A lot of people make the mistake of not giving it another thought. (They still need their vitamins and minerals in some format)

There are a few very important points about your horses diet at this time of year.

1. Generally horses are not competing, and are generally fed less or no complete hard feeds such as Pellets, Mitavites, Hygains etc. When you reduce or remove these , you remove the vitamin and mineral intake too.

2. Townsville grass when it does grow is very poor quality grass. We don’t have regular rainfall and fertile soil, so the grass is low quality. That is ok as their roughage, but they will not do as well. Grasses that shoot after drought conditions are not good for horses who suffer laminitis, the first shootings should be cut and let them have the second shootings.

3. Horses just on grass or hay need vitamin and mineral supplements in some format. When horses have a balanced vitamin and mineral supplement they are able to get all of the nutrients available in the food they are eating. When they are lacking vitamins and minerals a lot of the available nutrients pass straight through them without being absorbed.

One of the easiest ways to provide these to the horses is by giving them access to lick blocks. Barastoc’s Horse Block now called Rebalance is a mix of molasses, vitamins and minerals. You can also use the popular 007 Block which is salt and minerals.