My 500kg show jumper is coming back into work after a long break due to injury. She is hot and needs to build topline condition. What should I feed her?
The diet you choose for your horse needs to supply nutrients and energy to support increasing workload while ensuring your horse doesn’t get too excited.
Most horse feeds which supply all the nutrients required by the performance horse such as amino acids, vitamins, minerals, and calories are based around cereal grains, which provide fast-release energy. While this is desirable for many performance horses, it is not the best choice for hot and easily excitable horses. Instead, we recommend our Cool ’N’ Conditioning Cubes, which supply calories from slow-release energy sources whilst providing a full range of nutrients.
As you will most likely be feeding only small amounts to begin (e.g. 1-2kg/ day) with in line with a slowly increasing work load after her injury, I would also recommend you ‘top-dress’ the diet with a balancer such as our PerformaCare Balancer.
When you are feeding a low concentrate diet to control calorie intake in line with workload and body condition, you are automatically also restricting amino acid, vitamin and mineral intake. Just what you don’t want to do if muscles need to be built and performance is required. Feeding a balancer will provide the nutrients required without adding extra calories. PeformaCare feeding guidelines can be found on our website www.redmills.com.
You will most likely be looking at feeding a cup of PerformaCare Balancer per day in addition to Cool ’N’ Conditioning Cubes. As workload increases and you’re increasing the amount of Cool ’N’ Conditioning Cubes fed per day, the amount of balancer can be reduced accordingly.
For detailed advice on feeding guides check our website or speak with one of our experienced nutritionists.
