How Do You Know What To Feed Your Horse?

Today was another hot day and my mom brought me a piece of watered melon. I love watered melon, especially when it's hot. It's such a nice, juicy treat. And it made me think about one of my favorite subjects - food!

Horses need to eat a lot of food because we're big, but we can't eat just anything because that would make us sick. One time some people came walking by with their kids and my mom let them pet me which was nice and the man saw the sign on my stall that says "Double Grass Only."

He thought it meant that I only ate grass like the grass that us horses graze on but my mom explained that it meant grass hay and that some horses get alfalfa but I don't. So the man asked, "How do you know what to feed your horse?"

Well, I thought that was a really good question and my mom explained a little bit to him. My mom says there's no such thing as a dumb question but I'm not sure she's right because I ask Sparky dumb questions all the time. He doesn't say so but I usually know they're kind of dumb. I ask anyway though because Sparky is smart and almost always knows the answer.

Anyway, I'll tell you my experience about being a horse and eating food, and some of what I know about other horses, and you'll see that feeding a horse is something you have to really think about.

When my mom brought me home, she had the guys feed me the same kind of hay that everyone else was getting. Here at our place, most of the horses get grass hay in the morning and alfalfa at night so that's what I got. It was yummy and I liked it but there is a difference between the two. Alfalfa is a richer type of hay. It gives a horse more energy too. I loved eating my alfalfa - it had lots of little flowery things in it that I called blossoms and they were so sweet and tasty - but it did make me feel a lot more bouncy than the grass hay. After I got hurt and had to go on Stall Rest for a long time, my mom decided that I should just have grass hay because I was just too bouncy, but she also decided that I should get twice as much as some of the other horses because I'm a Big Girl. So now I get Double Grass hay.

I was mad at first. I really missed the alfalfa and I sulked and kicked my walls and made faces and stuff. But I got used to the grass hay and now I like it just fine. Every now and then, my mom lets me have a bite or two of alfalfa but not too much. She calls it Pony Crack and says it's not for me. I have to admit, I'm a lot less bouncy and anxious now.

That was an important choice. Horses have to have Forage. It's their main food and the most important one. Forage can be grazing like wild horses do, or it can be hay but we need to have it and the best thing is for us to have it all the time. We're made to be eating small amounts all the time instead of just having a big meal a couple of times a day. It's hard to people to feed us like that sometimes though, so that's another reason I get double feed. That way it lasts longer and my tummy isn't empty.

Another thing I was eating when my mom first brought me home was a pelleted food. It was yummy and I liked it and since I was used to it, she kept me on it but after a while, she switched me to another one because she thought I was getting too many "hot" calories from it. What that means is that it was another thing that was giving me lots more energy than I needed. I have a lot of energy without needing any help.

The second food was good too but then she switched me to Beet Pulp. Beet Pulp is actually considered kind of a forage type food because you can't really feed too much of it. Unlike those pelleted foods or other grains, horses don't get sick if they eat lots of beet pulp. My mom told me about one of her horses that she had a long time ago who got out of his pasture and ate a whole bunch of grain and got a bad Colic. She had to get the vet out to give him medicine and she had to stay with him and keep walking him for a long time. That's what too much grain can do.

Beet pulp isn't like that but when I first started eating it, I didn't like it much. It's kind of smooshy and wet, and it feels funny in your mouth, kind of like Bran Mash does. I've never really liked Bran Mash though lots of horses do. Sparky does. He likes beet pulp too and used to always eat a handful of it when he lived next door to me.

Beet pulp is mushy because it's mixed with water. When you let it sit in the water, it sort of foams up and makes a big bucket full. That's one thing I like. I get to eat a lot of food and now that I'm used to it, I like it. One thing my mom did that made it taste better was to add a scoop of grass pellets. It makes the texture nicer and it's lots like my grass hay. It doesn't add lots of hot calories or anything like that.

My mom decided she liked the way I did on the beet pulp so she kept me on it. She adds some different things to it. She always puts a little bran in it, and some salt. It's good to get salt in your diet and bran's good for you too. She also adds a Supplement that's good for my tummy and my coat. I have a really soft coat and it's because of the good care I get and the good food, including that Supplement. She gets it from Dooley's mom. When she noticed how soft Dooley was, she asked about it and decided it sounded like something that would be good for me. It's yummy too. Sparky gets some too and since he doesn't need lots of food like me, he'll eat it right out of his mom's hand.

My mom also feeds me a Supplement that's especially to keep my feet healthy. I had really bad feet when she brought me home. They were brittle and soft and I was always losing shoes. My mom worked with my Shoe Man to get them in better shape and she also started giving me this Supplement. It really seems to have helped. My feet are just fine now and I haven't thrown a shoe in ages.

As you can see, it's important to choose a horse's food based on what her needs are. I need food that doesn't raise my energy level too high, that helps keep my tummy and my feet healthy, and that keeps my nice and round. My mom has chosen what she feeds me in order to do all that.

Sparky is different. Sparky is what's called an Easy Keeper, which means he doesn't need a lot of extra stuff to stay nice and round. He eats the regular grass hay in the morning and alfalfa at night, and since he's in the pasture, he can graze when the grass is fresh. His mom feeds him a little bit of pellets in the winter when he needs more energy to keep warm, and sometimes if it's really cold, she makes him a Hot Dinner. That's when she puts hot water on some alfalfa cubes, which are just alfalfa packed into little, hard squares, adds some bran and his pellets, and his coat supplement and mixes it all up. He loves that and it really does help keep him cozy. But most of the time, he gets by just fine with hay and grazing.

Old horses need special food. My mom and SparkysMom used to help take care of an older mare who had trouble eating regular food. She got soaked pellets that were specially made for older horses. And horses that don't seem to get fat no matter what you feed them, like Healey, get lots of extra supplements to add weight.

I'm not as much of an Easy Keeper as Sparky is, but I don't get thin like Healy or Warren and I'm glad of it. I like getting lots of food but it would be dumb to be skinny. When my mom brings me my dinner, it's my favorite time of the day. She puts lots of carrots in it and my favorite thing to do is dump out all the beet pulp and nose around so I can find the carrots. Then I eat every scrap of the beet pulp.

All this talking about food is making me kind of hungry. Luckily I kept a little bit of my dinner hay so I could have a snack. I think I'm just about ready for it now.

Spreading my Wings

Lately my mom and I have been doing a lot of different things. I like it. For quite some time, we worked mainly in the Dressage arena, doing a lot of the same stuff over and over again. Things like Transitions - that's when you go from one gait to another, like from a walk to a trot, or a trot to a canter, or the other way, from a trot to a walk for example. Or stuff like Laterals - shoulder-in and leg yielding and circles and stuff. All that stuff was fun and I like doing it and we still do it, but now we're doing other stuff too.

I know why we worked on that stuff so much. It's the Basics. Horses need to know how to do those things correctly. All horses do, not just Dressage horses like me. Lesson horses, and Trail horses, and Jumpers and Show horses all need to know how to do those Basics. So they're very important and we worked on them a lot because when you do that, they kind of become Habit. I realized that today when we were in the Main arena and my mom asked me to trot. I used to get really excited about going fast when I was in the Main arena, and I'd bounce, or go sideways, or try to buck. But today, I just moved right into a trot without thinking about it because I know my Basics.

Working in the Main arena is one of those things we've been doing more of. It's fun and I like it. There's usually some other horses working in there and that's always interesting, and lots of times they're having a lesson. We try to keep out of the way when horses are having lessons but it's pretty easy in that arena because it's so big. So you can move in your own big circle while they move in theirs, but you still get to watch them and pass them sometimes and stuff.

I like it too because I see lots of horses that I don't normally see. It seems like certain people take their horses to certain arenas. So while me and Sparky and Dooley and Misty and some other horses ride in the Dressage arena a lot, a whole other set of horses go in the Main. And that's fun.

Today, Sparky's Mom was there too and she took Sparky so we both rode in the Main arena together. That was great. My mom is really happy with me because I'm nice and relaxed in there now and pay good attention to her. I don't even get bothered when other horses trot or canter right past me. I just keep walking or doing whatever she had me doing. We did some good trot work and watched some kids having a lesson and then we rode home. But yesterday, after we rode in the Main arena, we went on a little bit of a Trail ride.

My mom rode me out the gate on the side by where the string horses live. We don't usually go that way so it was kind of exciting. There's a little trail that branches off and goes along the hill above the Main arena and below the Jump arena. It can be kind of scary because if there's a horse in the Jump arena, you can hear it but can't see it. But I'm lots better about those things now because I trust my mom so I just walked along happily, though I was alert and looking around. She lets me do that because she knows I'm Curious.

That little trail comes out right near Misty's stall, by the gate to the Jump arena. We rode toward the Gremlin arena and then my mom asked me to go through the gate and up toward the Trail! That was terribly exciting. I had to stop a few times and look around a lot but I did it and was good about it too. I didn't try to run or spook or bounce or anything.

Partway up, there's a spot where the ground levels off and there's a big hole full of water. My mom calls it a Pond. Usually when we go on Trail rides, we go past it and up the big long hill, but this time my mom headed me toward the Pond and I saw that there's a little trail that goes along beside it. I remembered that I'd been that way once or twice before but it's been a long time so I was pretty interested.

I could see down the hill right into the Jump arena which was strange, and the Pond was right next to me down a little hill. There were birds sitting right on top of the water and that made me feel funny. I wondered how they did that. My mom called them Ducks and said they were swimming but they looked like they were just sitting there. I didn't really trust them but I do trust my mom so I kept going.

Then we saw a Jump. It was like a tree lying down on the ground and we walked around it but up ahead there was another one and it was smaller. My mom asked me to walk over it and I did and she told me I was a Good Girl. I felt like one. It's pretty exciting to go over Jumps, even if you're only walking.

When we got to the end of the Pond, the trail curved around to follow it but we went straight, across a hill covered with dried grass and weeds and stuff. It led to another Trail that goes up the same way as the big hill Trail but we went down it and ended up right back at the place where the string horses live! I was surprised. I didn't think we were anywhere near there and it was kind of funny. But I was relieved because it's a little stressful to not know where you are.

That's the sort of stuff we've been doing and it's been fun. Another kind of odd thing is that Sparky's Mom has been coming out and cleaning my stall and stuff but instead of that meaning that my mom isn't coming, my mom just comes later and rides me. It's nice of Sparky's mom to do that and I'm a little less frantic when she does now because I know it doesn't necessarily mean I won't see my mom. Sparky's mom even brought me a stall snack one of those days, a peppermint one which is my favorite. That's me eating it in the picture.

The only bad thing is that I have a dumb lump on my elbow. My mom calls it a Capped Elbow and she said it comes from lying down lots and maybe pressing against it with the back of my shoe when I curl up. She's putting more shavings in my bed - and I generally have a nice bed anyway so now it's really soft - and she put bell boots on me to try to keep my hooves from hitting it. I hated wearing them in my stall though, and today she brought me something else. It's a boot for just the one foot on that side, and it slips on over my hoof and tightens up around my ankle. It's not annoying like the bell boots - I hardly notice it's there - and it covers the whole shoe and not just part of it. I hope it helps because I don't like having this ugly lump on me, even if it doesn't hurt.