What do thoroughbreds eat

These rations may differ in quantity, and somewhat in substance. However, there are only a limited number of feed items that go into a ration. Racehorses usually consume two types of feed: roughage hay and carbohydrates grain. Roughage is digested by microorganisms in the large intestine and is broken down into various nutrients energy, protein building blocks, fatty acids, etc.

Grains are the most important source of carbohydrates in the diet and therefore the major energy source.

They are digested in the small intestine and yield sugars that produce energy. Feeding vegetable oils is becoming more popular, as these oils are a great source of calories and may benefit performance.

Their typical diet consists of two to three meals a day of grains. The traditional grain for horses is oats. Racehorses consume recleaned oats from our northern climates and Canada. Other grains can be added to the diet such as corn or barley.

You may need to experiment with the diet to get the right balance but there will be solutions to help your horse look the picture of health. The thoroughbred has as much capacity to gain weight and carry condition as any other horse so if you consider your horse is a little leaner than you would like, then a simple adjustment to his diet is all that is required unless there is an underlying clinical issue, a worm burden or an issue with dentition.

Search Search. Home Stable Management Feeding. Care and Training Feeding. Changing the Diet Regardless of the change to his lifestyle the now former racehorse still requires a diet that contains the right balance of nutrients not only to keep him healthy but to enable him to build new muscle for being a riding horse and possibly a competition horse.

Good Feeding Guide Feed good quality forage, ad lib if possible to promote weight gain, gut health and general well-being; trickle feeding mimics what nature intended so helps to keep your horse happy and healthy.

Split concentrate feeds into 2 but ideally 3 feeds per day. Make all changes to the diet gradually, ideally over a period of at least a week. This will reduce the risk of digestive upset. Many thoroughbreds will look very thin when they are actually in good body condition, while they lack topline and general muscle.

So be sure to read our post on Body Condition Scoring to help you determine if your horse needs more condition or needs to build muscle. The former can be done with feed alone. The latter needs a combination of high quality feed and the right work as well as a horse that is fully sound with no back or other pain that will stop it from using its muscles correctly.

The more time you allow an off-the-track thoroughbred to readjust to a forage based diet the better the results you will get. Ultimately you want your off-the-track thoroughbred to have a gut well adapted to doing well on a high forage diet. It takes time for the gut to readapt itself, build the right populations of bacteria and to heal problems like ulcers. But it is time well worth spending unless you want to continue spending a fortune on grain based feeds and still having a horse that is really difficult to put weight on.

Taking it slowly in the first few months will mean you are going to get your horse where you want it to be sooner in the end. You will hopefully also be treated to a horse that is more relaxed and trainable than it otherwise would be if you try to put weight on too quickly using high energy feeds too early. With a degree in Rural Science, a doctorate degree in equine nutrition and nearly 20 years of full time, on the ground experience in feeding all types of horses Nerida is able to help FeedXL members solve any problem they may come up against with feeding their horses.

Ask questions and have them answered by PhD and Masters qualified equine nutritionists and spend time with like-minded horse owners. This however would be the opposite in a recently raced thoroughbred. They might be eating a lot of fibre but will be able to digest very little of it. Gastric Ulcers.

Gastric ulcers cause many problems but perhaps the two most relevant in the situation of feeding an off-the-track thoroughbred are the loss of appetite and weight loss. Hoof problems — Shelly, weak hooves that grow slowly are common issues seen in off-the-track thoroughbreds. Horses rely on biotin produced in the hindgut as well as dietary biotin to grow strong, healthy hooves.

I believe, that largely due to the imbalance of bacteria in the hindgut, racing horses become biotin deficient and this is why we see so many with horrible hooves. Poor appetites — It is quite common for ex-racehorses to have poor appetites. In many cases this is probably due to gastric ulcers but it may also be due to a vitamin B1 deficiency.

As for biotin, horses rely on vitamin B1 being produced by the fibre fermenting bacteria in the hindgut to meet their requirements. When horses have a large amount of starch being fermented in their hindgut very little vitamin B1 is produced. Both factors combine to create a vitamin B1 deficiency that is well known to cause a loss of appetite. APPETITE Again getting the hindgut rebalanced will go a long way to improving the appetite of off-the-track thoroughbreds as they will be able to correct any vitamin B1 deficiency that may have been present.

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