Enfys
Well-Known Member
I was talking to a neighbour who breeds draught horses and he was telling me that he feeds his straight corn. I've never come across it being fed whole before, has anyone else?
Googled and this is what I came up with:
Corn
Corn has taken over the position of the No. 1 grain fed to horses in recent years mainly because of its low cost and excellent feed value for energy. If you want to fatten an animal, it is easier done with corn than oats and at a lower cost.
Corn can be fed on the cob, as whole shelled corn, or as cracked corn. Actually cracking corn is economically wasteful. Because of the size of the kernel of corn, a horse will chew the grain before swallowing. If a horse is passing a lot of whole kernels in the feces, he is either bolting his feed or may need to have his teeth floated because sharp points are preventing normal chewing. The horse bolting his feed needs to slow down. Large rocks or a salt brick can be placed in the feed pan with the feed. He then has to sort around the objects to get the feed. Another cure is to spread the feed out in a large feed bunk so it takes him longer to pick up the grain.
Corn is about 9% protein, but as with all grains, the protein quality is relatively poor. Corn contains about double the energy that an equal volume of oats contains. This has been the cause of corn getting the repetition as being a "hot feed." When people substituted corn for oats at an equal volume, their horses would sweat more and /or get fat. To eliminate the problem, corn needs to be fed at only half the volume or less than the volume of oats. There has also been a claim among draft horse breeders that corn caused bog spavins in the hocks of draft horses. There is no basis to this claim, except that if you fed too much corn, resulting in overweight horses, and then worked them hard, the added stress on the hock joint could cause bogs. However, the cause was not corn, but excess weight and stress.
Common Name Dry Matter % Organic Matter % Nitrogen % Crude Protein % Metabolisable Energy (MJ/kg)
Corn 83.15 98.77 1.36 8.50 11.85
Googled and this is what I came up with:
Corn
Corn has taken over the position of the No. 1 grain fed to horses in recent years mainly because of its low cost and excellent feed value for energy. If you want to fatten an animal, it is easier done with corn than oats and at a lower cost.
Corn can be fed on the cob, as whole shelled corn, or as cracked corn. Actually cracking corn is economically wasteful. Because of the size of the kernel of corn, a horse will chew the grain before swallowing. If a horse is passing a lot of whole kernels in the feces, he is either bolting his feed or may need to have his teeth floated because sharp points are preventing normal chewing. The horse bolting his feed needs to slow down. Large rocks or a salt brick can be placed in the feed pan with the feed. He then has to sort around the objects to get the feed. Another cure is to spread the feed out in a large feed bunk so it takes him longer to pick up the grain.
Corn is about 9% protein, but as with all grains, the protein quality is relatively poor. Corn contains about double the energy that an equal volume of oats contains. This has been the cause of corn getting the repetition as being a "hot feed." When people substituted corn for oats at an equal volume, their horses would sweat more and /or get fat. To eliminate the problem, corn needs to be fed at only half the volume or less than the volume of oats. There has also been a claim among draft horse breeders that corn caused bog spavins in the hocks of draft horses. There is no basis to this claim, except that if you fed too much corn, resulting in overweight horses, and then worked them hard, the added stress on the hock joint could cause bogs. However, the cause was not corn, but excess weight and stress.
Common Name Dry Matter % Organic Matter % Nitrogen % Crude Protein % Metabolisable Energy (MJ/kg)
Corn 83.15 98.77 1.36 8.50 11.85
