Sharing your life with a horse can be a rewarding experience, but it comes with the responsibility of caring for your equine companion for life.
Your horse depends on your love, care and commitment, which you can show through grooming, petting, riding and the occasional treat. With good care, your horse can live 35 years or more. Keep these general horse care considerations in mind:
Routine horse care is a significant and ongoing expense.
The purchase price of a horse is often much less than the cost of caring for it for a year. Make sure you are realistic about your ability to afford quality care before purchasing an equine companion.
Horses require a regular supply of food and water.
In most cases, they need hay or pasture throughout the day, with additional grain feed twice a day. An average-sized horse will eat about 20 pounds of food per day and drink at least eight gallons of water. Because their stomachs are relatively small and their digestive systems surprisingly sensitive, horses need to nibble or graze throughout the day rather than eating one or two meals a day.
Provide plenty of roughage
Many pleasure and trail horses don't need grain: good quality hay or pasture will do. If hay isn't enough, grain can be added, but the majority of a horse's calories should always come from roughage.
Horses are designed to eat roughage, and their digestive systems are designed to utilize the nutrients in grass stalks. A horse should consume one to two percent of its body weight in roughage each day.
Horses that spend a lot of time in stalls don't graze much, but their natural eating patterns can be replicated by keeping hay in front of them for most of the day. They can nibble on it for a while, take a break and snooze for a while, and then come back to it, keeping some roughage constantly moving through their systems.
Feed grain in small amounts and frequently.
If you feed your horse grain, give it in several smaller meals rather than one large meal. Most horses are fed grain twice a day for the convenience of their human caretakers. If for some reason you must feed your horse a large amount of grain, consider adding a midday feeding. Small, frequent meals are not only more natural for the horse, but they also allow the horse to digest and utilize its food better. If a horse is fed too much at once, it won't digest the food as effectively.
Each horse has different needs. Consider both their size and the amount of work they do when deciding how much they need to eat.
Consider the amount of hay or pasture your horse gets: Horses that graze on good pasture most of the day don't need much or any hay. Horses that don't get much exercise or aren't on good pasture will need more hay, whether they are indoors or outdoors.
During winter or drought, supplement pasture grazing with hay. When grass is thick and lush, you can reduce or eliminate hay rations, depending on pasture availability.
With grain, less is always more, so start with a minimal amount and adjust as needed. You'll find the right balance of pasture, hay and grain for your horse's needs.
If your horse's workload changes, be sure to adjust his ration.
Make gradual changes to feed and feeding schedules
If you change your horse's feed type or ration size, make the change gradually. Sudden changes in amount or type of feed can cause colic or founder.
If you're changing the amount of feed, increase or decrease each meal a little at a time, over several weeks if possible. One method of changing the type of feed is to replace 25% of the current feed with the new feed every two days, so that in six days the horse is eating l00% of the new feed.
Accurately Measure and Feed Consistently.
Start by measuring your horse's feed by weight using a kitchen scale, post office scale, or the scale at your local feed store. Once you know how much your horse's typical ration weighs, measure that portion at feeding time using a scoop, coffee can, or whatever works for you.
The average thousand-pound horse that relies on hay for its entire diet will typically eat fifteen to twenty pounds of hay per day. Most hay comes in flakes, but the amount of hay in a flake can vary greatly depending on the size of the flake and the type of hay. If you don't know how much the hay bales you are feeding weigh, you can use a bathroom scale to check and then feed the portion of a bale that your horse needs.
Don't feed immediately before or after exercise
Ideally, you should wait an hour or so after your horse has finished a meal before riding. If you're doing something really strenuous, it should be closer to three hours. A full digestive system gives the horse's lungs less room to work and makes exercise much harder on them. In addition, blood flow is diverted away from the digestive organs during periods of exertion, so intestinal movement slows and colic can be a real danger. When feeding a horse after work, let him cool down completely - his breathing rate should be back to normal and his skin should not feel hot or sweaty.
Stick to a routine
Horses thrive on routine, and their amazingly accurate internal clocks make them much better timekeepers than their human caretakers. Horses should be kept on a consistent feeding schedule, with meals arriving at the same time each day. Most horses aren't harmed by an abrupt change in schedule, but for horses prone to colic, a sudden change in routine can be more than an annoyance and may be enough to trigger a colic episode.
Horses need hoof care and veterinary attention
Schedule a farrier (blacksmith) every six to eight weeks for routine hoof trimming or shoeing.
At least once a year, your horse will need to be vaccinated against tetanus and other diseases. The veterinarian will also provide routine dental care. Keep in mind that medical emergencies, which are always an unfortunate possibility, can cost several thousand dollars to treat.
Be aware of parasites
Because horses are constantly exposed to intestinal worms from the soil they graze on, they need to be on an anti-parasite regimen as prescribed by your veterinarian. A heavy worm burden can cause serious illness or death in horses, so regular and timely treatment is critical to your horse's health.
Don't forget shelter
Horses need constant access to a dry, safe and comfortable shelter to protect them from rain, wind and snow. In warm and sunny weather, the shelter you provide will give your companion much-needed shade and relief from biting insects. At a minimum, you should have a well-constructed, three-sided barn where your horse can retreat at any time. You will need to remove manure from the stall or shelter daily.
Horses need exercise
To supplement the exercise your horse gets when you ride him, he should have a paddock or pasture where he can relax and roam. No horse should be confined to a stall all day unless your veterinarian recommends it. The pasture should be enclosed by secure, sturdy fencing that keeps the horse safe and secure. Barbed wire is not an acceptable fencing material - it has been the cause of many serious injuries.
