Am I feeding to much

[Lexi 123]

My mare gets haylege in the morning and night and she goes out to field with very little grass . She get a scop of speedie beet for her gut she also gets a half a scop of hard scop 13 percent horse mix once a day and salt. She is average weight do you think I am feeding to much.

 

[ihatework]

If she’s the right weight and not bonkers then you aren’t feeding too much

 

[Shay]

No way to know from that I'm afraid. Have you asked a professional to assess her condition?

As a basic rule of thumb you feed to the horse's weight, workload and temperament / type. A stressy warmblood type needs more feed than a calmer native; a larger horse needs more than a small pony and a horse in hard work needs more than a horse in light work. A thin horse needs more than a fat pony etc...

You should aim for 1.5 - 2% of her body weight in food (dry weight) in total per day. So the first step is what does she weigh? You'll probably have to guess from a weigh tape assuming that (like almost all of us) you don't have access to a weighbridge. Although not strictly necessary I think all of us would also ask how tall she is as that gives a ratio and a mental picture for us.

Its really hard to estimate how much in feed weight she is getting from grazing - I think for everyone that is something of a guess. But if you weigh your hard feed and haylage and it comes out at less than 1% of body weight (and her condition is OK) then you should be fine. If it come out at more than 1.5% then you are feeding too much.

You are also feeding a very high energy mix (Assuming your reference to 13% is the Mj/Kg?) You might need that, depending on how much it is in weight. But for many horses that much energy would send them a bit loopy. If she is a bit over excited / fresh cut that down. Either by reducing the amount fed or by switching to a less energy rich feed.