The Dry Matter Intake Of Grazing Horses
All diets for horses are formulated to meet energy requirements based on the premise that the dry matter intake of horses is 2.5% of their bodyweight…
The majority of the UK’s 1.2 million leisure horses are pasture fed for a greater part of the year (National Equestrian Survey 2006) and the abundance of nutritious herbage often exceeds their immediate nutritional needs resulting in acute and chronic overfeeding. Until recently it has been impossible to predict how much grass a horse eats and indeed the techniques to measure intake where not available.
However the alkane method has been validated as a method that can be used to accurately measure how much grass a horse eats at pasture (Smith et al.,(2007). Validating the alkane pair technique to estimate dry matter intake in equids. Journal of Agricultural Science, 145: 273-281).
This study utilised this new technique to investigate how much grass horses eat when allowed to graze a pasture adlib.
