Preparing for the season ahead

With the competition season just around the corner, now is the ideal time to start thinking about your horse’s diet and the best way to provide optimum nutrition for health and performance throughout your spring and summer campaign. Designing a balanced diet that provides the significant nutritional requirements of a working horse in the correct amounts is vital. From the all-important energy required to perform, to essential amino acids, trace minerals and key vitamins, simple changes to the diet can mean the difference between a mediocre performance and winning.

To maintain optimum digestive health, all horses require at least 1.5% of their body weight in forage daily. As well as helping to protect the gastrointestinal tract and keep it healthy, forage supplies energy for work through structural carbohydrates. Pasture, hay, chaff and fibre sources such as beet pulp and soy hulls are great forage sources and should make up the majority of the diet for your horse.

While forage and nutrient requirements for performance remain similar for each horse, the amount and type of energy required can differ significantly between horses, and depends on individual metabolism, type of work and behaviour. 

Good-doers with slow metabolisms may not require significant calories from hard feed, in which case a concentrated balancer pellet such as NRM Equine Balancer is ideal. This meets all nutrient requirements in a convenient low dose, which doesn’t contribute excessive calories and cause weight gain.

For horses doing long slow work such as dressage and endurance, feeds providing slow-release energy through fat and fibre are recommended. McMillan Grain Free or Muscle Relieve and NRM Low GI Sport are ideal in this case. These feeds also suit the hotter, more forward types of horses as they avoid the peaks in blood glucose that can contribute to hyperactive behaviour. Horses with digestive conditions, or at risk of tying up should also select these feed options. 

To provide faster release energy for jumping and eventing, including some grain in your horse’s diet is recommended. Grains are a great energy source however require correct processing to ensure optimum digestion. Feeds such as McMillan Cool Feed, NRM Coolade or Ultimate Sport are perfect examples of feeds with an optimum blend of both slow and faster release energy sources through digestible fibre, grains and high-quality fat sources. 

Additional fat through KER Equi-Jewel, a high fat stabilised rice bran conditioning supplement, is ideal for hard working horses, especially ones that require help to maintain condition and topline throughout the season.

Information on all NRM and McMillan products is available through their respective websites at www.nrm.co.nz and www.mcmillanequine.co.nz. All NRM and McMillan feeds are formulated to complement NZ conditions and provide the correct balance of nutrients when fed at the correct level. Through our relationship with Kentucky Equine Research we have access to diet analysis software Microsteed (www.microsteed.com/nrm) to design custom diets for each individual horse.

For assistance with feeding plans to enhance overall health and performance, and a customised Microsteed diet for your horse, contact NRM and McMillan Equine Nutritionist Luisa Wood via the methods below.

Luisa.wood@nrm.co.nz 027 809 7846