Feeding Your Horse For Recovery

Feeding Your Horse For Recovery

Feeding your horse recovery is essential during training and when returning to work. With nutrition playing a vital role in your horse recovery and repair, are you feeding your horse for recovery?

The Role of Nutrition Within Recovery From Injury

When horses sustain an injury, their entire body adjusts to get them back on their feet as soon as possible. Therefore, the way horse’s utilise different energy stores changes in order to survive.

The normal, healthy horse will utilise approximately 90% of their energy from the fats produced during fibre fermentation (VFAs). Meanwhile, the injured horse will draw 50% of their daily energy from VFAs. The remainder of their energy being taken from stored carbohydrate (glycogen) and the breakdown of body tissue.

This shift in energy sources utilised in the injured horse, calls for diffferent requirements. Therefore, a recovering horse needs an increase in calorie and protein intake from what their intake during rest. With increased vitamin and minerals, this should help support healing rate and quality of injured tissue.

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Protein and energy requirements are recommended to be increased to the level at which you feed when your horse is in light work. Meanwhile, horses may also benefit from ensuring daily requirements are met of copper, zinc, selenium and omega-3 fatty acids.

Once the injury has healed, nutrition for ‘maintenance’ should be implemented.

The Role Of Nutrition To Support Return To Work

After a period off work, horse will suffer from reduced muscle mass and strength. Therefore, providing appropriate nutrition, in conjunction with rehabilitating exercises, is essential. Nutrition is vital to support muscle mass increase and the health of supporting structures.

When returning to work, it is expected that any injury will have almost healed. Exercise then acts to strengthen the damaged area and prevent the occurrence of futher damage. Therefore, on the return to work, horse owners should review energy and protein requirements for their horse.

Whether lungeing or working in hand, protein and energy may need to be increased depending on exertion levels. Exertion is individual to every horse and their situation. Whilst one horse may find an exercise relatively easy, another may struggle with the same exercise.

Keeping a diary of progresses recommended.  Recording of physical activity and of your horse’s behaviour when exercising should be documented. Activity in the field and stable should also be noted. This allows owners to review nutrition and make appropriate nutritional adjustments. If you are unsure, seek advice from your vet or nutritionist discussing key notes from your horse’s progression diary.

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