All About Feeding Your Horse! Beginners Series AD | This Esme

moments like this hello everybody this is me and today's video i thought i would do another episode in my beginners series you guys have really been enjoying it which is great so anyway today i thought i would do an episode all about feeding because there is quite a lot of information out there so anyway i thought i would first start talking about what i feed my horses and why and also go over the rules of feeding because there's quite a lot of stuff that you need to know so anyway as i'm by my feed room how about i take you inside and show you what i feed all right guys welcome to the feed room you've probably seen this quite a few times before in my videos so anyway this is very self-explanatory is where we keep the food we also keep the horses medications so one of our donkeys willow has arthritis so we have our arthritis medication we also have mickey's cushing's medication as well which is very important that they get that um also in here behind you guys we have um our wall of hailage which you guys will see very soon so anyway when it comes to the rules of feeding um there are three sort of main things that you need to do number one access to clean water so at all times your horse should have access to clean water if it's in their stable or out in the field this is also really important when you're feeding your horse as well if it's their breakfast or their dinner they always need to have water available and also it's really important to check your water troughs especially in the winter they can get frozen and also in the summer they get so dirty i don't know if your horses do this but mind you this thing where they'll eat a bit of grass and they'll still have a bit of grass in their mouth and they'll go for a drink and then there's all this sort of grass at the top of the water shop which is just a bit nasty also caspar is so fussy when it comes to water especially in his stable sometimes i think well i have to like feed him bottled water for him to drink it so we sometimes put apples in there to attempt him to drink especially if it's a really hot day so yeah water is very important number two we have roughage so yes this is the donkey's field um grass is a really great source of roughage um if you don't have much grass you can also feed hay or haylage so as you can see even though it's winter the donkeys still have a little bit of grass unlike the horses now the horses as you can see their field is just just a little bit more muddier so they have a lot less grass bye joey so anyway because they are bigger animals they do like to tear up the field a little bit more um so because they don't have much grass we feed them haylage so we are super lucky to have our hailage provided by silvermore you can also feed hay as well i've found since we've fed haylage mickey's respiratory problem has been so much better just because hay tends to be a little bit more dusty when haylage is dust free which is great also because our horses can get a little bit porky quite easily and we also have the light version which is very low in sugar which is great as well haylage tends to have a higher water content too so that's also good especially in the summer when it's pretty dry out there if you have horses that don't like drinking like casper too so anyway roughage is really important in your horse's diet um it should definitely be more than 50 of your horse's diet as well because horses are trickle eaters or trickle feeders they need to eat little but often because their stomach is actually around the size of a rugby ball so it's pretty small so they always need to have basically they always just need to be eating which my horses are very happy with so yeah when they're in their stables they always have forage available which is the hailage so yeah that is a very important part of their diet so because i need to actually make a few hairless nets now i thought i would give you a little bit of a horsey hack and this is this weird looking contraption here now this is what i used to put my hailage nets in because it is so much easier to make the nets because i always find when i'm putting putting it in you can never find the hole to put it in so you're just kind of like shoving the halogen around the net so this make sure it's nice and open i also don't have to worry about having one hand holding the halogen the other hand holding the hailage so here is the haylage i always find this stuff that smells so good so anyway i just plop it in and it's so much easier also because my horses are absolute pigs they eat their hay and their hailage so quickly if i didn't put it in a net joey i think he could probably just inhale a whole hailage bag i don't even know how they eat so quickly so we have really small little holes here we have really small um tightly woven nets so this means that they eat it a lot slower and sometimes even mickey has a bit of haylage left in the morning which is brilliant because it shows that the whole night he has had roughage um for him to have but yeah it does it goes to show that these really do slow down how quickly they eat there we go third and lastly we have substrate so this is the food that i give the horses in the morning in their buckets um so as i said before roughage should be the main part of your diet so this is actually a very small percentage of what they eat in a day so all of my horses are on bailey's i'm very lucky to be a sponsored rider for them last year you might have seen the video where katie from bailey's came out i'll leave a little i card if you want to go and watch that after this one and she came out and she weighed all of the horses she did an assessment on their body score condition and what they're like what work they're in because all horses need to be fed different feeds no horse is the same so for example when you feed you need to feed according to age for example joey is a very young horse so he's on the performance balancer because he needs something with a bit more protein in to help build up his muscles and mickey is a older horse so he's just on a local balancer he doesn't need extra protein he is a bit of a good doer so he's on a very low calorie diet you also need to feed according to work so for example joey is in full work he's ridden almost every single day i think he only has one day off a week um compared to mickey who's retired and isn't in work joey's gonna need a little bit more energy compared to mickey also you need to feed according to breed as well so for example casper is a native he is a very good doer he can just smell food and he'll put weight on i don't know how he does it but he has always been pretty chunky so casper is also on the locale balancer as well so it's a very low calorie feed but make sure he still gets all the vitamins minerals and proteins that he needs and obviously you're going to need to feed according to size as well so joey is a 16 hand horse he is gonna need quite a bit more food compared to mickey who's a 13 13-hand pony so baileys have put them on a very strict diet that they've all been doing really well on so i feel according to these little cups this is how i measure out all their food so i make sure they have the same food every single day it's very accurate rather than using a scoop which is good um so anyway i'm now going to show you the horse's feeding routine and what i feed them every single morning so casper has two and a half cups of bailey's locale balancer so i'm just going to pop that in the second one and then for the half what i like to do is i put half in here and then the other half goes in mickey's because mickey has one and a half cups of local balancer so he's got the half in there already then we've got the one now on to joey so joey has three cups of performance balancer so i'm just gonna put that in there we go and lastly for the horses i like to give them a little bit of roughage to go with that as well so i like to give them the light chaff um so this just bulks out their dinner a little bit more but it's also low in calorie um so caspar has two handfuls of this i have to be careful not to spill it everywhere a bit messy when it comes to making feeds just give that a little bit of a mix around and then mickey has one big handful and this is great especially for mickey who likes to wolf down his food because the chaff being a rough edge it just makes him chew a little bit more so he's less likely to choke and actually chew his food properly rather than hoover it down and then joey gets around three handfuls because he is a little bit on the bigger side and last number three and this isn't strictly feeding but um it's very important that mickey gets his medication every day so he has half a tablet of perglide for his cushing so i just put that in his food um this is great because i give the horses their breakfast at the same time every single day because it is really important to um feed at the same time because horses are animals of habit they like things to be done at the same time every day i know mine if i'm a little bit late to breakfast they do get a little bit hungry they're not very happy they like to have their breakfast on time i think they'd be happy to have their breakfast a little bit earlier if i'm honest but um no they get fit at the same time which is really good um mickey also he is not fussy at all i'm so lucky that i don't think he even notices that we've been giving him medication because every single day he likes to lick his bucket out completely there is no food left in the bowl it's also really nice to give your horse something succulent each day so here i have a bag of carrots we actually don't have too much left usually this bag is completely full and has so many in we buy the ones that you can get at most like horse feed stores or shops because um they always are a little bit funny looking or misshapen um which the horses don't mind so i just like to put a carrot in each of their buckets to go with their food i cannot find the hole to the bottom where are the carrots here we go so mickey can have a carrot and casper can have a carrot also it's really important when you buy your food to keep it somewhere safe so i like to put mine in feed bins i think the metal bins are probably the best you can get out there that's next on my list for my feeder and i'd love some metal bins but anyway you need to make sure that your food goes in a nice cool and dry place and also somewhere that you're not going to get pests that's going to want to eat your food because you don't want to be opening up your feed bin and there being a rat in there and i can tell you in the past that happened to me with one of my old feed bins and it gave me a bit of a shock so anyway i actually need to refill my feed bins now so i'm just going to get that out so another little hallsy hack i have is to make sure when you're going to be putting the feed in your feed bin to actually remove the cup from the bottom if not this is going to get buried and you're probably not going to see it for a good couple of weeks so anyway now it's time to put the performance balance in because that is the one i am refilling um so i love how bailey's bags are actually made of paper so this is really good for the environment these can be recycled so i'm just opening this up now you basically just unroll it it's very easy to do you don't actually need a knife or scissors or anything like that and then just open it up there we go and then the waterfall of feed comes out if for whatever reason you decide to change your horse's feed for example joey is quite a young horse now and maybe a few years down the line i'll need to feed him something a little bit different it's important that you do it gradually especially as horses have really sensitive gut bacteria so over around two weeks need to slowly increase the amount of new feed while you decrease the amount of old feed lastly once your horses have eaten it's really important to wash up your buckets it's also important before you feed to use clean utensils for example i have all of my buckets color-coded which i know it looks pretty you know having a green one for joey a purple one for caspar but it's actually really useful especially because mickey has medication so make sure that i'm using the same bucket for the same horse and also by washing out the buckets it just makes everything nice and clean especially if you do have a picky eater sometimes if you have any food that's sort of left in the bucket it can go a bit sour and it can really put your horse off their food so anyway time to get cleaning so another rule of feeding is to make sure that you never feed straight before or straight after working or exercising your horse for example if i've been doing some jumping with casper he's going to be pretty pumped up and all the blood is going to be in his muscles if i give him a bucket of food all of that blood's going to be in the muscles and not around the stomach so that would not be good and can actually lead to colic so make sure that you never feed straight before or straight after exercising a horse okay guys i thought i'd do a quick little recap on everything we've talked about today so i thought i'd go through again the rules of feeding so you need to make sure you feed little bit often that you feed plenty of roughage that you feed according to work age size and temperature slash time of year slash if they're in a stable out in the field you also need to make sure that there is plenty of water for your horse they always have access to water when they're being fed you also need to make sure that you have clean utensils so your buckets are nice and clean and washed out every time you've fed and you also need to make sure that your feed is kept in a cool dry place you don't want it to go off or go mouldy you also need to make sure that you always feed at the same time because horses are creatures of habit you need to make sure you never feed straight before or straight after work especially if your horse is puffing you need to make sure that you change feed gradually if you do decide to change their diet and lastly a little fun one is to feed something succulent because you know horses do love carrots and apples so anyway guys i really hope you enjoyed today's video and maybe you learned a thing or two especially for the beginner series if you're new to all things halsey um i'll leave some links below to bailey's if you want to check it out and if you'd like to see their feeding guide so anyway guys thank you so much for watching today's video if you're new or have not done this already please like and subscribe because it really does help me out and i really do appreciate it and i'll see you all next time bye you

Channel: This Esme

Views: 120,467

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Id: Tpb_FO9lZuw

Length: 16min 16sec (976 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 05 2021