[RC] feeding young horses - Susan E. Garlinghouse, DVM
I agree with Ed’s comments, that overfeeding and early
riding causes a lot more joint and lameness problems than almost anything else
in young horses. A halter breeder once told me that there’s no
trick to feeding young horses---you just “bury them in straight alfalfa
until their knees buckle, then back off 10%”. He had very
successful quarter halter horses, but not one of them was sound or even
rideable.
You don’t mention what type of hay she’s getting at
the barn and during the winter. If it’s a nice mixed, high quality
grass, great. If it’s straight alfalfa (or more than about 25%
alfalfa), it’s too rich. A yearling doesn’t need much
additional protein, but if the grass hay tests out less than around 16%, you could
add a very small amount of a broodmare/foal pellet or some other balanced
soybean meal-based protein supplement. Do NOT overdo the protein!!!
No horse on earth needs more than 5 lbs of alfalfa a day regardless, and most
need less than that. Most good quality grass hays will supply adequate
amounts of protein, but just a pound of a protein supplement won’t go
amiss if there’s no alfalfa at all in the hay. A large number of
the growth commercial formulas are labeled to feed a pretty large amount on a
daily basis, sometimes exclusively. IMO, you can’t develop a great
fermentative vat hindgut on anything other than by lots and lots of real
(quality) forage or pasture. I wouldn’t recommend Ultium for a
young horse---I’d probably go with TizWhiz, or Omolene (it’s either
200 or 300 that’s for broodmares and babies) or something similar like
that. There are plenty of great lines out there. If you have Triple
Crown in your area, they have good formulations.
Of course, here’s the management disclaimer that you
don’t know exactly what’s in the ration unless you get your hay
analyzed. Skip the hair analysis gimmicks, they’re a total waste of
money unless you suspect heavy metal poisoning.
Regarding young horses growing to a shorter mature height on
less-rich rations---actually, unless so undernourished that they are stunted,
horses will grow to the height they are genetically programmed to grow.
On a high-octane diet, they get there faster, but often with lesser quality
bone quality. So, diet affects the quality and speed of growth, but not
so much the quantity of mature growth. On a proper ration, they will
still grow every bit as tall---it just might take longer to get there.
But, since endurance people (or at least the smart ones) don’t put their
horses to serious work until much later in life, that’s perfectly okay,
even very desirable. Slower bone growth generally means the matrix has
adequate time to lay down quality bone and that’s GOOD. Very rapid
bone growth generally means lesser quality, plus in a young, growing horse, also
means a higher likelihood of developmental orthopedic disease.
