This text revised some papers in literature about characteristics and use of conserved forages for horse feeding, considering animal behavior and outstanding the need of programs that could integrate the current knowledge of use, physiology, management and animal nutrition. A basic and critical nutritional condition for equine management is the availability of high quality forage for use as pasture or conserved as hay or silage. Most professional horse production systems adopt hay for animal feeding and this is why most […]

The equine is a non herbivore ruminant that is able to fully provide its nutritional need by the grass intake. Equines show the cecum and colon region plenty developed as their principal fermentation site. Such process either happens in the non glandular stomach region, but the volatile fatty acids production is inferior then the production in the – hindgut. To meet the optimum use of the mix of ingredients, and to avoid excess there are harmful to the equine metabolism, […]

Horses evolved consuming primarily fermentable forage carbohydrates, but forage diets have been traditionally supplemented with grain meals rich in starch and sugar in order to provide additional calories, protein and micronutrients. Starch and sugar are important for performance horses, but the consumption starch-rich meals may cause equine digestive and metabolic disorders. The critical capacity for preileal starch digestibility appears to be 0.35 to 0.4% but may be as little, depending on the source of starch. Small intestinal absorption of simple […]