SEASONAL FEEDING....
Here’s how to roll with Mother Nature through the seasons, nutritionally speaking.

by Karen Briggs,
Green Grass Syndicated Features

            Sometimes it feels as if humans have divorced themselves from the rhythms of nature. Perhaps that’s part of the appeal of horses. They seem so much more attuned to the natural world than we are. And when we spend time in their company, we’re brought back into an environment where we become conscious of the orbit of the Earth and the ebb and flow of the seasons again. Although horses are creatures of habit, they do respond to the changes in the seasons, and one of the most obvious ways in which they do so is in their feeding patterns. In the wild, horses thrive on green pastures through the summer months, while in winter they subsist on whatever sparse, dry forage they manage to find under the snow. We can certainly minimize this feast-or-famine lifestyle with our domestic beasties, but we still have to adjust equine feeding patterns to work with the seasons.

JUNE
It’s haying season, one of the most pivotal times of year for your horse’s dietary program. The hay you harvest or purchase now will affect his nutritional balance for the next year, so get informed and choose wisely.
Good-quality hay isn’t about being first or second cut, or legume versus grass. Whatever the varieties of plants contained in the hay, it should be green and fragrant, not moldy or dusty, and a bunch squeezed in your hand should be soft, not prickly. (Tough, stemmy hay is not only more difficult for horses to chew and digest, it’s also lower in nutrients because it has been cut when the grasses were overmature and gone to seed.)
The ideal strategy is to get all of your hay from a single source so you know the nutrition it delivers is likely to be consistent from bale to bale throughout the winter. Your local feed store or agricultural extension agent can help you get a nutritional analysis of your hay done, usually for $50 or less. This information can be invaluable when it comes to correctly balancing your horse’s diet over the next year.
June Job One is to make arrangements for your winter hay supply. Job Two is to clean out the hay shed so it will be ready to store your next crop.