February 19, 2024

Don’t Underestimate The Value of Preparation

Good planning and preparation are essential for success in any sport, perhaps even more so when heavily reliant upon half a tonne of horse! Pre-season checks of vital signs and reflection on the previous season should help form a plan of action so that your performance horse is fully prepared and, most importantly, in optimal health for the competition ahead!

Plan A

Assess your horse’s current diet and management for training - does it need adapting for competition, travelling, and staying at competitions? If the answer is yes, plan to introduce these changes before the competition.

Horse’s guts typically struggle with rapid change, so if you intend to feed horse haylage when travelling (for example), and it is not currently in the diet, this needs to be introduced gradually.

As a rough guide, a change in concentrate feed should be made over 10-14 days and forage over 2-4 weeks. Both periods should be longer if your horse has a sensitive digestive system or if the change between the current and intended diet is significant.

Where possible, try to make only one change at a time. This allows you to easily attribute any specific changes in behaviour or signs of health to one particular change.

Plan B, C and D…

With nutrition, there are always various ways of providing a suitable diet that meets your horse’s health needs. With this in mind, finding the perfect fit and routine can take some trial and error, but putting your competition management and feeding into practice during training (where possible) can help to highlight any potential issues further down the line. This will provide an excellent opportunity to see what suits your horse’s dietary requirements. The earlier you start this process, the more likely you are to settle on a perfect plan when it matters the most.

If you can come up with a strategy to defend against any common issues, such as reduced water or fibre intake when travelling or competing, you will be able to efficiently solve these issues if they arise. Useful feeds to incorporate into the diet ahead of time, for this reason, include bucket feeds like Speedi-Beet, Fibre-Beet, and Alfabeet, as well as succulents and either dampened/soaked hay or haylage, the latter being most palatable while also providing extra moisture.

For more information on how to prepare your horse for upcoming competitions, get in touch with M&T, expert haylage suppliers, today.