How are you feeding your horses? Are you force feeding a uniform feed regime to all of your horses without leaving them any freedom to choose? If that is so it’s about time you retire such a feeding practice and start trusting in a horse’s inbred senses that they’d typically depend on. Many an equestrian has a strict training regimen not only for safe and disciplined horse riding but for a sport as definite and exacting as dressage. The difficulty is when an equestrian’s stringent training regime influences his holistic medical care for his horses such that he also gets extraordinarily stringent when it comes to feeding them. Sure, he would probably know lots about pony feed, but a stud or mare has its instinct directing it—and they are often right on the money.
The perfect feeding program is something close to a correctly supplemented free choice feed environment. There are headstrong steeds out there that will not take a bite of anything you require them to take. If however you let them get used to free choice feeding routine and you think that giving them liberty to choose is affecting their health negatively, then introduce supplements to their feed. What our equine friends might be really averse to are those evil shots and additional medications we always rush off to administer when they get out of condition.
And there arrives a point, particularly for horses undergoing equestrian training for such sport as dressage or physically demanding activities, that they do develop an illness of some sort. When they do, go on and take a veterinarian’s prescription, but do not expect your horse to gulp it down with pleasure. The very first thing to do is to try regular treatments of anything prescribed. If in all of your earnest efforts and methods of administering it your pony seems to find a way not to take it—from leaving just the pills and eating up the rest in her feeding box to gulping it down and spitting it out as fast as you turn around—then there just might be a good reason why.
If you have been training a specific mare for a long time now, then you know she has her very own temperament—but her hardheadedness isn’t due to merely a quirk in her disposition. Trust her instincts like she is doing, and you will see. If she indicates a certain tendency to eat more of a particular feed, then let her do so. You might be stunned she gets better on her own choice of feed even without the drugs. Or she would take the medication when she is afflicted by the symptoms of her illness, and hates it when she is not. Obviously, she knows what’s helping her along when she is ill and when it’s required.
Just as a pony trained for sport affords you the luxury of straightforward and pleasurable riding, you can at least afford them their right to trust their instincts.
Horses are Heather Toms’ passion and she enjoys sharing her extensive knowledge through her 100’s of articles with other horse lovers… like all things about cheap horse rugs