Nutrition and Environmental Interactions on Horses
Horses are frequently housed in facilities that are often designed more for the comfort of the horse owner than for the horse. Horse housing is notoriously poorly ventilated to the point of being air-tight in some cases, and the horses are subjected to breathing poor-quality air. Hence, emphases should be placed on high-quality, dust-free, mold-free hay or cubed or pelleted forage or forage/grain combinations. Fear of fecal contamination of hay and/or grain with the causative organism for equine protozoal myelitis has prompted some horse farm managers to feed all forages and concentrates entirely as bagged cubes, pellets or texturized feeds. The fear of feeding hay and grains from bulk storage may decrease as an effective vaccine is developed for this disease.
Tags: Horse, nutrient requirements