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Deworming: Plan, Purge, Protect

Wednesday, July 17th, 2024

Internal parasites are a common problem in horses, particularly those managed on pasture. In addition to being a nuisance, internal parasites can cause serious health problems such as weight loss, poor performance, colic, and intestinal obstruction. Establishing and maintaining a routine deworming schedule for your horses is an essential step to keep them healthy. However, a good deworming program should be tailored to the individual horse based on factors such as age, pasture type, climate, and management style. Strategic deworming not only takes these factors into account, but also helps prevent the development of resistance and strives to keep the deworming medications you use on your farm effective.

Strategic Deworming for Horses

In the past, deworming horses often meant giving a broad spectrum deworming medication to every horse in the barn a few times each year. Nowadays, it is recommended that horse owners use a strategic deworming program that addresses the needs of each individual horse. A strategic deworming protocol involves three steps:

Plan

Planning is perhaps the most important step in any strategic deworming program. To start, your veterinarian can help you monitor fecal egg count for the horses on your farm. This easy testing will identify high, moderate, and low egg shedders, and this information will be used to determine the frequency of deworming needed for each horse. In addition to fecal egg counting, you will also need to understand the types of parasites that are prevalent in your region and their infection cycles. This will help you make informed decisions regarding your horse’s management and the types of deworming medications available to target these species.

Purge

Purging involves the use of a broad spectrum deworming medication such as ivermectin to interrupt the infection cycle and kill the parasites that are currently established in your horse. Purge dewormers like Farnam IverCare (ivermectin) Paste 1.87% target a wide variety of parasites including small and large strongyles, pinworms, ascarids, and bots in a single dose. This medication is easy to administer using the adjustable dosing syringe. The frequency of purge deworming should be customized to fit the needs of the individual horse. High egg shedders may need more frequent purges, while low egg shedders may only need a purge dewormer twice per year. Monitoring fecal egg counts before and after the use of purge dewormers can also be useful to identify resistant parasites and ensure the deworming medication you have chosen is effective.

Protect

Daily deworming medications such as Farnam PyrantelCare Daily Dewormer 2.11% (pyrantel tartrate) provides continuous protection against more than 31 of the most common species and stages of equine parasites. This product utilizes pyrantel tartrate, a safe and effective anthelmintic that targets large and small strongyles, pinworms, and ascarids. The palatable medicated pellets are simply added to the horse’s normal feed daily. Once ingested, the medication works in the horse’s digestive tract to control parasites and help to prevent parasites from migrating through your horse’s digestive system, which can cause serious damage. While daily dewormers are a great tool for controlling new parasite infections, they do not treat all stages of parasites, so it is important to use these products in conjunction with a routine purge deworming plan.

Summary

There are many different deworming products on the market today, and choosing the best options for your horse can seem daunting. While there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to equine deworming, a strategic deworming program is easy to implement and provides your horse with protection to meet their unique needs. With the right products and a customized approach, you can have peace of mind knowing that you are doing what you can to help your horse remain healthy and protected from parasites.

At J&N Feed and Seed, we can help you implement your own deworming program today. Visit our store for all your horse needs!

Original article from Farnam

Elizabeth Racine

Posted in articles, Horse, News & Updates | Comments Off on Deworming: Plan, Purge, Protect

Purina EquiTub Supplement with ClariFly

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2021

Calling all horse owners, we’ve brought in the Purina EquiTub supplement with ClariFly! Say goodbye to flies, and hello to gastric health + optimal body condition.

Equitub is a premium self-fed supplement that provides gastric support, fly control, and consistent nutrition in an easy-to-feed and convenient form. Purina’s innovative horse tub combines these 3 supplements into a single product:

ClariFly^® larvicide is expelled in manure, where it helps control house and stable fly populations by interrupting their life cycle.
Outlast^® gastric support supplement promotes gastric health and proper pH.
Amplify^® high-fat nugget to support endurance and bloom.

Find out more about this product here Purina EquiTub Supplement with ClariFly.

Shop local, shop J&N Feed and Seed for Purina Horse Feed & Supplements and all your horse supplies.

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Purina Carb Conscious Horse Treats & Outlast Horse Treats

Wednesday, February 5th, 2020

Purina Carb Conscious Horse Treats and Outlast Horse Treats at J&N Feed in Graham, Texas. Show your horses some love with NEW Purina Carb Conscious and Outlast Horse Treats, now in-stock at J&N Feed and Seed.

Purina Carb Conscious Horse Treats

Your horse will love this great tasting treat, and you will feel great knowing that it is low in both starch and sugar. Carb Conscious Treats were researched at the Purina Animal Nutrition Center and are a perfect nutritional complement to any horse feed, even for horses with metabolic concerns. You can feel good rewarding (or just spoiling) all of your horses!

Purina Outlast Horse Treats

Show your horses (and their bellies!) some love with Purina® Outlast® Horse Treats. These treats contain the Outlast® Gastric Support Supplement that helps support optimal gastric pH. Convenient at home or on the road. Outlast Supplement contains a unique blend of ingredients to support proper pH, giving you and your horse the confidence to perform. Feed as a reward or treat. Do not feed free-choice. Feeding 5-6 treats will help support optimal gastric pH. Feeding 10-12 treats will provide a full serving of Outlast® Gastric Support Supplement for a 1,000 lb horse. *Purina® Outlast® Gastric Support Supplement has been researched at the Purina Animal Nutrition Center and is a perfect complement to any horse’s diet.

Stop into J & N Feed and Seed, located in Graham, Texas, for any and all of your equine feed and supplies including Carb Conscious and Outlast Horse Treats. Have questions? Please contact us and a helpful member of our staff will reach out to you.

Find more information on Purina’s line of horse treats here.

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Seasonal Diet Changes for Horses

Saturday, September 28th, 2019

Changing seasons can bring about potential problems for horses and horse owners.

Pasture quality fluctuates with every season, but the shift in quality from summer to fall is significant. During the fall, there are often warm, sunny days and cool nights. Pasture plants manufacture sugars in the presence of water, carbon dioxide and sunshine, and then use those sugars to fuel growth during the night. However, when nighttime temperatures drop in the autumn, it becomes too chilly for plants to grow and the sugars are stored for later use. This leads to a concentration of stored sugars in the plants, which may increase the risk of digestive upset or laminitis in some horses. Horses at most risk are those that are significantly overweight or those that have trouble managing normal blood sugar levels and are sensitive to sugar content in the diet.

Changing seasons also mean drastic swings in weather conditions and temperatures. This, combined with a major diet adjustment of moving from pasture to hay, can increase the chance of digestive disturbances. While not scientifically proven, many horse owners and veterinarians have experienced what appears to be an association between changes in barometric pressure and incidence of colic episodes in horses. A dramatic drop in temperature often causes horses to drink less water, and at the same time, horse owners will often increase the amount of hay fed to help horses stay warm. More hay and less water consumption together may lead to impaction colic.

As we move into fall and winter, hay becomes the major forage source for many horses. Switching from pasture to hay or getting a new supply of hay represent as big a change to the horse as a change in grain. These significant dietary adjustments should ideally be made gradually to decrease the risk of digestive upset. Horses should be fed good-quality hay to maximize nutrition and minimize potential digestive problems. Good-quality hay, of any variety, will be clean and have a high leaf-to-stem ratio, small-diameter stems, few seed heads or blooms, a fresh smell and appearance, and a bright color (faded, yellow or brown color may indicate aged hay or poor storage conditions). The maturity of the plant at harvest determines the hay quality more than any other factor. Young, leafy, immature plants contain more protein, energy and minerals than older plants with thicker stems. Also, as a plant matures, it contains more indigestible fiber (lignin), which reduces nutrient availability. Lower-quality hay must be supplemented with higher-quality feed to maintain horses’ good condition and health.

Fall is a season of transition and an important time to evaluate the quality of forage available for your horse and whether the grain ration is appropriate and adequate to meet your horse’s nutrient requirements. When winter arrives, horses must be in good condition to be able to withstand colder temperatures. Adjusting grain rations in the early fall will prevent weight loss due to lower-quality forage and, if horses need to gain weight, there is still time for a thinner horse to gain some before the cold weather really sets in.

Article Attributed to Purina and Dr. Karen E. Davidson

Karen E. Davison

Ph.D. – Director, Nutritionist, Equine Technical Solutions

Posted in Horse, News & Updates | Comments Off on Seasonal Diet Changes for Horses

It’s Spring – Ready Set Ride – Preparing your Horse for Spring

Tuesday, March 26th, 2019

Now that the weather is warming up, horse owners are starting to spend more time with their horses, and are looking forward to even more enjoyable riding weather.

There are some nutritional concerns, however, during spring and some management issues we should address to ensure the health and performance of our horses.

First, as we start working our horses more, we must increase the plane of nutrition to ensure that the horse’s increased requirements are met. Energy is possibly the most important nutrient to consider in a working horse. As a horse works harder, its energy (calorie) requirement increases, and we must supply those additional calories in a form that will not compromise the horse’s digestive health. We can add more calories by increasing the amount of feed offered daily to the horse. However, in general, horses should not be fed meals larger than 0.5 pounds per 100 pounds of body weight, especially when feeding oats or a feed with high grain content. Grains such as oats and corn are high in starch and sugars, and when fed in larger meals may increase the risk of digestive disturbances such as colic and/or laminitis. Alternate energy sources include fat and fermentable fibers. Feeds such as Purina’s Ultium^® Competition, Strategy^® Professional Formula GX, Strategy^® Healthy Edge^® and Omolene #500^® horse feeds are higher in fat and fermentable fibers, and lower in starch/sugars than traditional grain mixes and sweet feeds, therefore are excellent feeds to increase the calories in a working horse’s diet. Omolene #200^® horse feed is also an option for these situations, with the calories supplied by a combination of fat and soluble carbohydrates. These performance feeds also contain all the essential amino acids, vitamins and minerals to support the increased demands of the performance horse. Keep in mind that all feeding changes must be made gradually, so it is important to slowly increase the amount of feed as the horse’s workload increases.

If you are only planning to work your horse lightly or your horse is naturally an easy keeper, a concentrated feed such as Purina^®Enrich Plus^® Ration Balancing Feed may be the best way to meet the horse’s nutritional needs without adding many calories. If your horse stays in good body condition (not too fat or too thin) on hay or pasture alone and doesn’t need additional feed for more calories, feeding one to two pounds of Enrich Plus^® per day will provide the protein, vitamins, and minerals that the horse needs to meet essential nutrient requirements.Next, we need to keep in mind that the forage portion of the horse’s diet may be changing, and we must be aware that these changes may be problematic for some horses. For many horses, the advent of spring means that the source of forage changes from hay to fresh grass. Most horse owners are well aware that an abrupt change in feed puts a horse at risk for laminitis. However, they don’t always realize that a change from eating dry hay to grazing lush pasture is a very big change in the diet for the horse’s digestive system. This change from hay to pasture should be made gradually to minimize the risk of laminitis as horses are exposed to fresh pastures.

Why can fresh grass cause laminitis in horses? First, there is a big difference in the quality of fresh forage horses will graze in a green pasture compared with any forage harvested for hay. Simply changing the diet abruptly can create problems for the horse’s digestive system. In addition, the green grass horses graze is often higher in sugars than the hay. During the process of photosynthesis, plants manufacture sugars which the plant used to fuel the growth of the plant or store as starch or fructans. The storage form of the sugars depends on the plant species (cool season grasses tend to store sugars as fructans, while warm-season grasses tend to store sugars as starch). These sugars can accumulate in the spring when there are sunny days and chilly nights because the plant produces the sugar during the sunny days but doesn’t grow in the colder temperatures at night. So, the sugars don’t get burned to fuel growth, they just begin to accumulate. This can cause problems for horses, especially when the sugars are stored as fructans because fructans are mostly digested in the hindgut through microbial fermentation. Excessive fermentation of fructans in a horse’s hindgut may be a possible trigger for colic and/or laminitis, similar to a grain overload reaching the hindgut. The fermentation of fiber carbohydrates in the hindgut is normal and does not increase the risk of digestive disorders in the horse. Other environmental conditions such as drought, stress, duration and intensity of sunlight, salinity (salt content) of soil, and overall health of the plant can contribute to excess storage of sugars and/or fructans.

How then do we manage pasture turnout and grazing to minimize the risk of laminitis? Horses that are kept on pasture year-round usually adjust to the new grass as it grows. Nature does a fairly good job of making the pasture changes gradually. Problems are most likely to occur when horses have been confined and fed a hay and grain diet during the winter, and are then abruptly turned out on the lush green pasture in the spring. Further, horses that have been kept up through the winter may overeat when turned out because of the high palatability of lush green foliage. This sudden change in the diet, especially when it includes a rapid influx of unfamiliar fructans into the hindgut, may trigger digestive upset.

There are several ways to prevent or minimize problems when introducing horses to spring pastures. Feeding hay immediately before turn-out may help keep horses from overeating since they are less likely to overeat on an already full stomach. Restricting grazing time will also help minimize risks, and turning out in the early morning may help minimize the number of sugars in the pasture at that time. A suggested schedule is thirty minutes of grazing once or twice a day on the first day of grazing; then increase grazing time by 5-10 minutes per day until the horses are grazing 4-6 hours per day total. At this point, they have adapted to the green grass.
One final consideration when getting back into the saddle is the condition of the horse. On that first warm sunny day, it is very tempting to head out to the barn for a nice, long trail ride to enjoy the great weather. However, if you have not been riding your horse regularly through the winter, your horse is not conditioned for that type of physical activity (and possibly neither are you!). To prevent muscle soreness, and possibly “tying-up”, horses should be gradually reintroduced to work. Start with slow, easy work and short workouts, and gradually increase the intensity and duration of the workouts until your horse is adequately conditioned. This will help decrease the risk of problems and injuries in your horse. It may take up to 90 days to get a horse properly conditioned for strenuous physical workouts. Once your horse’s nutritional and management considerations are addressed, and your horse is adequately conditioned for the desired workload, you are ready to head out and enjoy the warmer weather and sunshine.

Article Attributed to Purina and Dr. Katie Young

Ph.D. – Senior Nutritionist & Product Manager, Equine Technical Solutions

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Six Ways to Feed Performance Horses for Greater Achievement

Thursday, August 16th, 2018

Much like human athletes, performance horses have special nutritional needs.

And with all athletes, it’s important for diets to match activity and athletic level to reach the highest level of achievement.

These six tips may help you to supply your horse with adequate energy to support optimal performance.

1. Know if it’s anaerobic or aerobic exercise
Physical activity is broken into general categories, aerobic and anaerobic, and it can be helpful to understand the science.

Anaerobic exercise, characterized by short bursts of maximum effort, is primarily fueled by glycogen, a polysaccharide which is composed of sugars and stored in muscle fibers. Soluble carbohydrates from your horse’s diet provide the building blocks for glycogen.

Imagine a competitive cutting horse with its incredible agility, quick reactions and strength. A horse like this would be primarily engaged in anaerobic exercise while they’re working a cow. Race horses and even Thoroughbreds running a mile and a half are also highly anaerobic while they’re running the race. Such activity depends on a diet providing adequate soluble carbohydrates to store and replenish muscle glycogen needed to fuel these short, intense exercise bouts.

Aerobic exercise, characterized by low to moderate-intensity activity lasting from several minutes to several hours, is primarily fueled by fat. A slow burning fuel, fat can be perfect for keeping the horse going for the long haul.

Three-day eventing, polo, dressage, and endurance riding are all examples of activities that are primarily aerobic. Performance horses engaged in this type of exercise may benefit from high fat horse feeds.

Keep in mind, no performance activity is either all anaerobic or all aerobic; each athletic activity has components of both types of work, especially when you consider the warm-up period before an actual competition. However, fueling the horse with the dietary energy source from which they will draw the most fuel is a targeted way to optimize the horse’s ability to perform.

2. Don’t let forages fall flat
While horses in nature may live entirely on forage, equestrians typically demand more from their horses than would ever be required of them in nature. Therefore, supplemental nutrients and energy are needed to sustain top-level performance in working horses.

Forage can provide adequate fuel for maintenance or very low level activity, but does not supply enough sugar and starch to maintain the glycogen stores required for a hard-working performance horse to succeed. For horses working at a high level, a feed designed to support that workload will provide adequate soluble carbohydrates and fats to maintain the needed fuel storage for performance.

3. Electrolytes are essential
Horses generally need free choice salt, such as Purina^®Free Balance^® 12:12 Vitamin and Mineral Supplement, but performance horses have additional mineral requirements. Any time a horse is working and sweating, consider an electrolyte supplement and feed as directed.

Check the ingredients on electrolytes in your horse feed. They should include primarily sodium, potassium and chloride. Always ensure your performance horse has adequate access to fresh, clean water and is well hydrated. Do not give electrolyte supplementation to a dehydrated horse.

4. Time the feed
Horses should not be fed a large meal 3-4 hours before an extensive performance event. Feeding any closer to the exercise can have an adverse effect on the horse’s performance, as the blood used for digestion isn’t readily available to the muscle tissue.

If a horse usually has hay available, consider feeding small amounts of hay throughout the day. Feeding forages before an event may not pose the same challenges as a concentrated feed does. Generally speaking, feeding small meals more often is better for the performance horse than one or two large meals a day.

After the event, let the horse cool down before feeding and then consider feeding a small carbohydrate-rich meal, such as Purina^® Ultium^® Competition Horse Formula, 30-120 minutes after exercise to help replace the glycogen used during the event.

5. Focus on recovery
Recovery from exercise requires the replenishment of glycogen stores as well of the repair of muscle cells damaged during exercise. Research in humans and horses has shown that ingesting specific amino acids after exercise can decrease muscle recovery time. Horses performing intense, repetitive work have been shown to benefit from a very specific amino acid profile available in a dietary supplement, such as Purina^® SuperSport^™Amino Acid Supplement.

AdobeStock_Grey Chesnut Horses Running_66087689 6. Rethink top-dressing
Horse owners often try to provide additional fat to their performance horses. However, simply top-dressing with oil or an unfortified fat supplement increases the fat and calorie content of the ration, but it doesn’t provide protein, vitamins or minerals to maintain the nutritional balance of the total diet. The best option is to feed a nutritionally balanced feed with a high fat content as well as the proper amount of protein, amino acids, and other nutrients essential to support optimal performance. Consider feeding Purina^® Amplify^® High-Fat Supplement formulated for horses needing: extra calories from fat for weight gain, conditioning, competition, showing or sales preparation.

Paying attention to these six areas may help your working horse achieve its true performance potential.

Looking for a way to get that shiny show-stopping coat? Read feeding horses for a shiny coat.

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Tips to Help Your Horse Beat the Summer Heat

Friday, July 20th, 2018

Katie Young

Ph.D. – Senior Nutritionist & Product Manager, Equine Technical Solutions

The summer heat is here! Heat and humidity place an added burden on horses during training, showing and transporting.

Especially during the busy summer travel and show season, it’s important to make sure your horse is not becoming overheated, stays sufficiently hydrated and remains comfortable, even when temperatures soar.

In this video, Dr. Katie Young, equine nutritionist and manager of equine technical services at Purina Animal Nutrition shares tips for horse owners to help ensure a healthy summer season including heading off heat stress, staying hydrated, replenishing electrolytes and staying comfortable in hot weather.

Article Attributed to Purina and Dr. Katie Young

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Purina Strategy Horse Feeds Product Updates

Wednesday, May 16th, 2018

New Purina Strategy Horse Feeds Product Updates

Customers that use Purina Strategy Professional Formula GX and Purina Strategy Healthy Edge horse feeds will see a new look this June with the inclusion of Purina Outlast Gastric Support ingredients. Purina Outlast Gastric Support Supplement contains a unique blend of ingredients designed to support gastric health and proper gastric pH. Purina Outlast Gastric Support Supplement is the foundation of the Purina Equine Gastric Health Program. You can learn more about this program by visiting www.FeedOutlast.com. This program has overwhelmingly positive feedback from horse owners and seen favorable responses in a wide variety of horses. Since gastric discomfort affects so many horses it makes sense to update Purina Strategy horse feeds to include the Outlast Gastric Support ingredients.

With this update, Strategy horses will benefit from Outlast Gastric Support with every meal. To help showcase this exciting change Purina is updating the packaging with a fresh new look. Horses will benefit from the inclusion of Outlast Gastric Support Supplement. Horse owners will appreciate the convenience and value of effective gastric support included in the feed. These changes will be implemented in early June 2018 when all new Purina Strategy horse feeds will come in the new packaging and conveniently include Outlast Gastric Support.

You can access the Purina Strategy Professional Formula GX Information sheet here.

You can access the Purina Strategy Healthy Edge information sheet here.

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Impaction Colic and Hydration

Thursday, December 29th, 2016

feeding management guidelines-https://www.jandnfeedandseed.com With the recent cold snap, we’ve had several questions pertaining to impaction colic and hydration, due from lack of water consumption. Making sure your horse is properly hydrated is not just a summer issue. During the cold, winter months, water consumption is key to keeping your horse’s overall health.

When horses eat more hay, they should drink more water. Water consumption should be a minimum of 10 to 12 gallons per day for a 1000 lb. horse to support normal function of the digestive system and maintain adequate hydration. During weather changes and especially during extremely cold weather, horses often drink less water. When they eat more hay but drink less water they become at greater risk for impaction colic and reduced intake due to dehydration. To help encourage water intake, keep water sources clean, fresh and free from ice. A minimum water temperature of 45°F is a good goal for horses during harsh, cold weather.

Many owners have traditionally offered warm bran mashes to their horses during winter. Research would suggest that the benefit of these mashes is more related to increased water consumption and possibly a slight digestive upset from receiving a meal of bran that isn’t consistent with their normal daily diet. Another way to encourage water consumption is to add warm water to the horse’s normal feed ration along with a couple ounces of loose salt.

Source: Karen Davison, Purina Mills

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Getting the Best Horse Feed Nutrition & Value for Your Money

Monday, August 8th, 2016

It seems as though diesel, groceries, fertilizer, grain and hay are all on the price escalator going up, up, up. There are a number of reasons for this run in prices, including pressure on crops from ethanol production, poor climate conditions in some areas and the declining value of the dollar. Of course none of these reasons lessen the impact on our pocketbooks, and horse owners are feeling the financial strain. This has caused many horse owners to become more focused on getting the most value for their dollar when it comes to feeding their horses.

Horse feed value
Finding the best-value horse feed means looking past price per bag and calculating the actual cost per day to feed. Divide the price per bag by 50 lbs. to determine price per pound. Then, multiply the price per pound by the pounds fed per day. Horse owners are often surprised to find the feed that is cheaper by the bag may be more expensive per day, because it must be fed at a larger amount per day or requires added expensive supplements to meet nutrient requirements.

For example, compare oats that cost approximately $14 per bag to Purina® Strategy® Professional Formula GX horse feed that costs approximately $17 per bag.¹ If a horse eats 6 pounds of oats per day to maintain good condition, that same horse would only need 4.8 pounds of Strategy® horse feed to support the same body condition, because Strategy® Professional Formula GX horse feed contains 25 to 30 percent more calories per pound than oats. Oats priced at $14 per bag, $0.28/lb., fed at 6 pounds per day calculates to $1.68 per day to feed. Strategy® Professional Formula GX horse feed, priced at $17 per bag, $0.34/lb., fed at 4.8 pounds per day costs $1.63 per day to feed.¹

Not only does Strategy® Professional Formula GX horse feed cost less per day to feed, the horse feed nutrition also contains the proper balance of protein, vitamins and minerals the horse needs, whereas oats must be supplemented to provide all the nutritional needs of the horse. If you feed a daily protein, vitamin and mineral supplement, you want to figure the cost and add that to your grain cost. Basic supplements will usually add $0.50 to $1.00 per day more to the cost of feeding your horse.

Hay value
In many areas of the country, hay prices have gone up faster than grain prices. Forage quality and weight per bale both factor into finding the best value for hay. Quality is impacted by variety of forage, the maturity of the plant at time of harvest and the conditions at harvest. The assumption that alfalfa is better quality than grass and therefore justifies a higher price isn’t always the case. Moderate-quality alfalfa, 16 percent or less protein, actually may be a lower feed value than good-quality grass, 11 percent or more protein. The moderate-quality alfalfa is usually very mature and lower in digestibility, whereas the higher-quality grass hay is more digestible and palatable to the horse.

Most people are not very accurate when estimating amounts of hay and grain being fed. For example, a 3-pound coffee can holds 3 pounds of coffee, but it will hold 4 pounds of Purina® Strategy® Professional Formula GX horse feed. The weight of oats can vary quite a bit depending on the quality of the oats, ranging from 2.5 to 4.25 pounds per 3-pound coffee can. Hay weight can vary quite a bit as well so, when possible, hay should be purchased by the ton instead of by the bale. Hay that costs $10 per bale and weighs 65 pounds per bale is a better value than hay that costs $8 per bale but weighs only 45 pounds per bale.

If you are feeding 20 pounds of hay per day, the hay that costs $10 per bale calculates out to $3.08 per day, while 20 pounds from the $8 bale of hay ends up costing $3.54 per day. Also, two flakes from the heavier bale will often weigh more than two flakes from the lighter bale, so your actual feeding rates may vary as well. Weighing a few representative flakes from hay when you first buy it can help keep your feeding rates more consistent and your hay costs more under control.

The cost of owning horses has certainly gone up over the last few years, and there doesn’t appear to be a change in that trend in the forecast. However, using a scale and a calculator to do a little figuring can reveal possible ways to save money without compromising the health and well being of your horses.

Karen E. Davison, Ph.D. – Equine Nutritionist and Sales Support Manager, Purina

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