Horse Health and Nutrition For Dummies

Audrey Pavia, Kate Gentry-Running

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780470239520
• eBook ISBN: 9781118052327
• Edition: 1

Want to know the best ways to care for your horse? Horse Health and Nutrition For Dummies gives you up-to-the-minute guidance on keeping horses healthy at all stages of life. It provides the latest information on equine nutrition and healthcare, explaining how your horse's body functions and how to keep it in good working order.

Packed with practical advice on equine first aid and alternative therapies, this completely practical, plain-English guide explains exactly what to feed your four-legged "hayburner" and how much. You'll find out what kind of preventive care is vital to keeping your horse in good physical shape and how to recognize signs of illness when things go wrong. You'll get the low-down on the diseases and conditions most likely to plague the domestic horse and find help in deciding whether to treat problems yourself or call the vet. Discover how to:

• Manage your horse's diet
• House your horse safely and comfortably
• Tend to the daily details of horse care
• Examine coat, eyes, hooves and manure
• Identify, control, and prevent equine diseases
• Understand links between horse behavior and health
• Practice good horse nutrition
• Grow your own horse food
• Cover horse-health-care costs
• Breed your horse
• Care for pregnant mares and newborns

A healthy horse is a happy horse. Keep your horse fit with a little help from Horse Health and Nutrition For Dummies, and you'll be happy too!

Part I

Honing Basic Horse Care Skills

In this part . . .

In the chapters of Part I, you find fundamental information on equine healthcare. We show you how to tell whether a horse is healthy and explain the connection between behavior and health. We also give you the lowdown on routine horse care and detail the importance of exercise for health.

Chapter 1

Taking on Your Horse’s Health

In This Chapter

Recognizing a healthy horse

Knowing the horse’s mind and its connection to health

Doing horse care and exercising every day

Exploring equine nutrition and disease

Taking care of your horse through all stages of life

If you’re a horse owner, or a horse caretaker, you want your equine companion to be healthy. Nothing is sadder than seeing a magnificent creature like a horse feeling sick and uncomfortable. (If you’ve ever had a sick horse on your hands, you know what we mean.) In order to keep your horse healthy — both mentally and physically — you need to understand what makes him tick.

Horses need good preventative care and good nutrition. These two aspects of horse husbandry are more important than any other. If you can get these two right, chances are you won’t have to deal with too many problems. Should illness strike, however, recognizing the signs of a problem early on can make all the difference.

In this chapter, we introduce you to the basics of horse health and nutrition. We show you the signs of health to look for in your horse, explain how to feed your horse and take care of him when he’s sick, and walk you through all the stages of equine life.

Knowing the Traits of a Healthy Horse

You want your horse to be healthy. But knowing exactly what that means is important. Healthy horses have the following characteristics:

Normal temperature. It should range from 99.5 to 101.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

Pink gums. Look to see that your horse has moist, pink gums — not white, bluish, or dark red.

Gut sounds. Your horse should have gurgling sounds coming from his rear abdominal area when you listen with a stethoscope or with your ear close to him.

Healthy manure. Your horse’s manure should be round and firm, not loose and runny, or dry.

Good appetite. Your horse should be an enthusiastic eater.

Normal pulse. When at rest, your horse’s pulse rate should be 26 to 44 beats per minute. You can feel his pulse by placing your fingertips under his jaw.

Normal respiration. When you count your horse’s breaths, you should see 8 to 16 in one minute.

Relaxed attitude. Under normal circumstances, your horse should be calm and relaxed, and not worried or agitated.

Bright eyes. Your horse’s eyes should be clear, bright, and open, without redness, swelling, or excessive tearing.

Shiny coat. In the spring and summer months, your horse’s coat should be glossy.

Right weight. Your horse shouldn’t be too thin or too fat.

You can find more details on how to determine your horse’s health in Chapter 2.

Understanding the Equine Mind’s Link to Health

In order for your horse to be truly healthy, she needs to be happy too. Science has discovered that the human mind is closely tied to the health of the body, and this appears to be true of horses as well.

How do you know whether your horse is happy? If you know equine body language, you don’t need to have a conversation with your horse to get a sense of her frame of mind. In Chapter 3, we give you a description of equine facial expressions to help you determine your horse’s attitude with a single glance. You also discover the special language of the horse and how to translate it.

The way horses see the world is an important key to providing them with an environment that will make them happy. As social creatures who become stressed and lonely when kept on their own, horses thrive on companionship. They also frighten easily because of their long evolution as prey animals.

Grazing is an intrinsic part of the equine repertoire and is another aspect of their intrinsic design. Nature intended horses to eat for nearly 18 hours a day to allow them to take in enough nutrients to survive. Their digestive tracts need almost constant work to stay healthy. Providing horses with plenty of forage, served to them at least three times a day, is so important for this reason.

Movement is another requirement of the horse, and is also left over from the days when all horses were wild. Horses fending for themselves on the open range travel for many miles a day looking for food. As a result, the equine body developed to need plenty of exercise.

Thwart some of these natural urges in the horse and you can end up with behavioral problems in the form of stall vices. Cribbing, weaving, and pacing are just some of the few neurotic behaviors common in horses who can’t handle not having what nature intended them in the way of diet, movement, and stimulation. (See Chapter 3 for a detailed description of these behaviors.)

Other less neurotic but no less troublesome behaviors can also result when horses aren’t happy. Bucking, rearing, and excessive spooking are just a few. Finding out what’s plaguing your horse and causing her misbehavior is key to solving the problem.

The Details of Routine Horse Care

Probably the most important component of horse health is routine care. Without the right ca...

Table of contents

• Title
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I : Honing Basic Horse Care Skills
• Part II : Good Eats: Nutrition and Feeding
• Part III : Recognizing and Treating Illnesses
• Part IV : Horse Care for All Stages of Life
• Part V : The Part of Tens
• : Further Reading