As the leaves begin to fall, we know winter is just around the corner. With colder temperatures, wetter conditions, and shorter days, we must ensure that our horses remain comfortable throughout the winter months. Horses vary greatly in their individual needs; however, all horses require shelter, access to a clean water source, forage that meets their nutritional needs, and a vitamin-mineral supplement to fill any gaps in their diet.
Hard Keepers
For horses that struggle to maintain weight during winter, it’s essential to provide extra calories to help them reach and maintain a healthy body condition. These “hard keepers” require different management than the average horse. Without special care, they can become even more challenging to keep at a healthy weight during the coldest months.
The first step is to evaluate caloric intake. Horses, like humans, lose weight when they burn more calories than they consume. A horse that maintains good body condition in mild weather will need additional calories as temperatures drop since they expend more energy staying warm.
You can increase caloric intake in several ways:
- Increase hay consumption: Offer free-choice hay to allow your horse to eat gradually throughout the day. This not only helps meet energy needs but also reduces stress.
- Provide calorie-dense hay: Horses should ideally consume about 2% of their body weight in forage daily. For a 1,100-pound horse, that’s approximately 22 pounds of hay. If your horse already has access to free-choice grass hay, consider adding calorie-dense options, such as alfalfa, to boost energy intake.
- Add concentrates when necessary: If forage alone isn’t sufficient, consider adding grain or high-fat, low-carbohydrate concentrates. Fat provides 2.25 times the energy of carbohydrates and can safely make up to 15% of a horse’s diet without causing palatability or digestive issues. Feeds rich in fat, like extruded soybeans, offer a safe way to increase energy density while reducing the total amount of feed required.
Easy Keeperss
With reduced exercise during winter, “easy keepers” often gain unwanted weight. Because they naturally store more fat, they use fewer calories to stay warm, making weight gain more likely. For these horses, it’s usually best to provide only forage along with a vitamin-mineral supplement, avoiding high-calorie concentrates.
Vitamins & Minerals
Even when horses aren’t working as hard in winter, they still require essential vitamins and minerals. If supplementation stops during winter, deficiencies can persist well into spring and summer.
For example, horses fed only selenium-deficient hay for four months and then supplemented with 3 mg of selenium for another four months still didn’t reach adequate selenium levels. This means if supplementation stops from November to February and resumes in March, deficiencies could remain until June.
Hay storage also affects nutritional value:
- Protein and minerals remain relatively stable over time.
- Vitamins, however, degrade quickly.
- Vitamin C can lose up to 50% of its content within 24 hours of curing after cutting.
- Vitamin E levels drop steadily after baling, with research showing up to 80% loss after six months of storage.
These losses make year-round vitamin-mineral supplementation critical. For hard keepers, this is even more important because fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, and K) are stored in body fat. Horses with low body fat cannot store adequate amounts, leading to deficiencies that can impact the effectiveness of other nutrients. For instance, vitamin E works synergistically with selenium to support muscle function and immunity.
A comprehensive vitamin-mineral supplement, such as Horse Guard, ensures your horse’s micronutrient needs are met while allowing you to adjust calorie intake based on individual needs.
Prebiotics & Probiotics
A horse’s gut flora is highly sensitive—especially in hard keepers. Changes in feed, ambient temperature, or water temperature can disrupt the microbial population in the hindgut. These stresses can kill beneficial bacteria, release endotoxins, and allow harmful bacteria to thrive, leading to digestive issues.
Because hard keepers already struggle to maintain weight, disruptions to gut health make it even harder for them to extract nutrients from their feed.
- Probiotics introduce beneficial microbes into the hindgut.
- Prebiotics feed those beneficial microbes, helping them flourish.
Providing both prebiotics and probiotics is crucial to maximizing nutrient absorption and ensuring that hard keepers receive the full benefit of their feed.
Picking the Right Supplement
- For hard keepers: Super Weight Gain is an excellent option. It provides a vitamin-mineral supplement, probiotics and prebiotics, and a base of full-fat extruded soybeans for added calories.
- For easy keepers: Horse Guard delivers essential vitamins and minerals without unnecessary calories.
Putting It All Together
Ensuring your horse’s diet matches their caloric needs during winter is essential for maintaining a healthy body condition. A consistent vitamin-mineral supplement supports overall health and prevents deficiencies from carrying into spring. Finally, providing shelter and a dry, comfortable place to rest helps protect your horse from the elements, keeping them healthy and comfortable all winter long.
Vendor supplied blogs are meant to entertain and provide resources and do not necessarily reflect the values, knowledge, or advice of Wilco Coop and it's Farmer-Owners and employees. We do our best to verify facts in vendor-supplied blogs but are unable to provide sources that the writers used.
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