What you need to know about the feeding of sport horses
The feeding of sport horses is the first criterion for performance. This is followed by physical and mental preparation. These factors are crucial to the existence of horse racing. If you want your horse to be fast, strong and enduring, then it needs a healthy, balanced diet followed by successful physical and mental preparation.
Feeding : the key to success
The diet of championship horses depends on many factors. But the least we can say is that nowadays there are scientific elements to determine the physical aptitude of a horse in relation to its diet. These include: heart rate during exercise, blood content, lactate levels, which are more relevant to the recovery and well-being of a racehorse.
In any case, it is important to remember that racehorses need a diet adapted to their particular needs. Endurance races, full races, gallops, flat races and steeplechases are disciplines that require intense extra effort. This is not the case with obstacle events. And as we have already mentioned, feed is the fuel for racehorses. The more physical effort they make, the more they need to be fed to compensate for their energy expenditure.
Nutritional requirements of racehorses in details
It is easy to see that racehorses used to be fed mainly with raw materials such as hay, oats and barley, which are quite high in protein. But during this time, the performance of these animals in terms of speed remained practically static. Curiously, it was during this same period that human performance made a major advance. And it has been identified that this is due to training, diet and medicine. It was deduced that the weak link in the performance of horses was the diet, which was previously limited to sheep and barley. However, physical effort events require a diet rich in fatty foods.
It should be noted that this fat intake is slightly lower than the fat requirement for endurance, which should be 6-7%/kg of gross feed. Nevertheless, the need for minerals such as sodium chloride, magnesium and calcium is increased for the nutrition of “athlete” horses, resulting in greater resistance, less pain and less fragility of muscles and tendons. Remember also that phytotherapy is useful, but beware of plants that contain doping substances.
