What is the healthiest food for horses?

Answer 1

the best thing for them is hay or grass, although giving them more grain may help, too much grain can cause colic. so its just safer to give them hay& let them graze on some good (not freshly mowed or chemically treated) grass.

Answer 2

I know that this may sound weird but the best thing is Senior Feed. Whenever I get a new yearling, I feed him senior feed. Senior feed has the nutrients that an underweight horse or a young horse needs to gain weight and become health once again. If your current feed is different, you will need to very slowly mix in the senior feed. Increasing it say every other week. Hope this helped!

Answer 3

The healthiest food for horses is a good quality grass hay such as Timothy.
The healthiest food for horses is the food they have evolved to eat: grass. However, you must make sure that the grass is not too rich. Hay is also a good thing to feed horses, as long as it is not too rich, like alfalfa.

Also, some horses have issues or needs that grass cannot fill. For these, you should get feed designed for horses like yours, and the best thing to do would be to get a profesional to examine your horse and his diet and see what he needs, and they can make diet designed specifically for your horse.

Answer 4

You should consult with your veterinarian about a good diet to feed a malnourished or thin horse - horses are particularly susceptible to dying from 're-feeding syndrome', where a sudden increase in the quality and/or quantity of their diet kills them.

In general, however, you should NOT feed grain until the horse is starting to put muscle and bone back on. You should start with a reasonable quality grass hay if the malnourishment is not severe - and slowly increase the amount over a few weeks. For horses who are severely malnourished, you should start with alfalfa as the horse's body has altered to protein metabolism to maintain life and it is in feeding lower protein, higher carb feeds (such as grass hays and grains) that you are more likely to trigger re-feeding syndrome.

You can find more on refeeding malnourished horses in the article "Nutrition for Rehabilitating the Starved Horse" on the UCDavis website.

Depending on how malnourished the horse is, it could take a year or more to get him back to proper condition.