4,777 answers about horses & farm animals
Horses and farm animals run on routine — feeding schedules, hoof and health care, safe fencing and calm handling, in all weather. This page gathers the horse and farm animal library of KinsLe Answers in one place, organized by topic from daily care to travel and senior animals. Every answer is original, written by KinsLe, and tied to a real KinsLe feature.
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409 answers in Feeding & Nutrition — page 11 of 18
A healthy diet for a Tennessee Walking Horse is built on forage first: good grass hay or carefully managed pasture supplying roughly one and a half to two percent of his body weight each day. Walking Horses are famously easy keepers, so most thrive on a vitamin-and-mineral ration balancer rather than calorie-dense…
A healthy Shetland diet is an exercise in loving restriction: grass hay weighed out in modest amounts, pasture doled out in small, controlled doses, and a vitamin-and-mineral balancer standing in for the feed scoop. Shetlands evolved on sparse island grazing and are champion easy keepers — obesity and laminitis, not…
A healthy Quarter Horse diet is forage-based and workload-matched: hay or pasture does most of the feeding, a ration balancer covers vitamins, minerals, and protein quality, and concentrates are added only to the level the horse's work actually demands. The breed spans idle trail partners who need nothing from a bag…
A healthy Percheron diet is forage in draft quantities: hay or pasture scaled to a very large frame forms nearly the whole ration, with a balancer covering minerals. Percherons are efficient for their size and gain quietly, so concentrates are reserved for real draft work and split into smaller meals when they are…
A healthy Paint Horse diet is built the stock-horse way but judged horse by horse: forage as the foundation, a ration balancer for the many Paints who keep easily, and concentrates matched to genuine work for the rest. Paints vary more than their shared coloring suggests — a halter-bred Paint, a ranch gelding, and a…
A healthy Mustang diet copies the restraint of the range in domestic form: plain grass hay as the staple, minerals covered by a ration balancer or loose supplement, and lush pasture and grain treated as the hazards they are for this horse. Mustangs were shaped by sparse, coarse forage eaten almost constantly while…
A healthy Morgan diet is forage first, with sugar and starch deliberately kept low: good grass hay or managed pasture as the base, a ration balancer for vitamins and minerals, and concentrates only in proportion to real work. Morgans are famously thrifty — the breed's versatility was built on doing more with less —…
A healthy Haflinger diet is deliberately plain: grass hay as the staple, pasture treated as a rich food to be rationed, and a vitamin-and-mineral balancer in place of grain. Haflingers were bred on sparse mountain grazing and are among the easiest keepers of any breed — the central feeding task is not getting enough…
A healthy Friesian diet is built for an easy keeper: hay and carefully managed grazing as the base, sugar and starch kept low, and a ration balancer supplying vitamins and minerals in place of a grain bucket. Friesians gain weight readily and hold it, so rich pasture is portioned — limited turnout hours or a grazing…
A healthy Clydesdale diet is forage first and forage in quantity: hay or pasture makes up the great bulk of the ration, scaled to a very large horse. What surprises many owners is how modest the rest can be — despite their size, Clydesdales are often efficient doers who gain easily, so concentrates are added by…
Beyond pasture, both sheep and alpacas live mainly on hay — grass hay carried through winter, drought, and any season when grazing runs thin. The sharpest difference between them sits in the mineral feeder: sheep must have minerals blended for sheep, with no added copper, because copper that other livestock need can…
A balanced backyard pig diet starts with a feed formulated for pigs, matched to the kind of pig you keep — a pot-bellied pig and a growing farm pig have very different needs — measured out rather than poured freely. Around that base, leafy greens and vegetables add fiber, variety, and foraging interest, while sugary…
Both — and the browse matters more than most new goat keepers expect, because goats are browsers by nature: given the choice, they pick leaves, brush, weeds, and bark over grass, eating up off the ground rather than grazing it close. Good hay, ideally a grass and legume mix fed in a rack, covers what browse cannot,…
The missing piece is niacin, a B vitamin ducks need in noticeably larger amounts than chickens: chicken feed is blended to a chicken's requirement, so ducks — ducklings above all — can run short, and the shortage shows in weak, bowed, wobbly legs in growing birds. A waterfowl ration is the simplest fix; on chicken…
Keep treats and scraps to a small garnish on the diet — no more than a tablespoon or two of extras per hen per day — with the layer feed doing the real work. Layer feed is mixed to a specification: its protein and calcium build eggs and shells, and every beakful of bread, pasta or scratch grains a hen fills up on is a…
Think of a treat allowance as a small handful across the whole day, not a handful at every visit: a few baby carrots, two or three small apple pieces, or a couple of bought treats is plenty for an average horse alongside its forage diet. Cut carrots and apples into small pieces, not big chunks, and feed treats from a…
Write the instructions animal by animal, in the order the chores should happen, using measures the sitter can actually copy: scoops and flakes they can see in the feed room, not weights they have no scale for. For each animal, note what it gets, how much, where it is fed, and anything it must never be given, plus the…
Judge hay with your senses, inside the bale rather than on its face: good hay is greenish, leafy with fine, soft stems, and smells sweet and fresh, and a handful should be mostly leaf, not sticks. Poor hay announces itself through a musty or mouldy smell, dust puffing out when you shake it, white or dark mould…
Outdoor round bales survive winter well if water is kept moving away from them and off their tops: set them on a raised, well-drained pad of gravel or on pallets not straight onto soil, butt the flat ends tightly together in rows so only the curved sides face the weather, and leave space between rows for air to move.…
Treats and scraps make pigs fat because they arrive outside the measured ration: an unweighed bucket of kitchen extras can quietly equal a second meal. The rule that works is that everything edible goes through the ration — swap rich scraps such as bread, pastry and cooked leftovers for bulky, low-energy extras like…
Rotation works when animals graze a paddock down partway, then leave before the grass is scalped: move stock when the sward is eaten to about half its starting height, and do not let them graze pasture below a few inches, because grass regrows from reserves in its base and grazing into that base weakens it for the…
The fix is measured meals instead of an open trough: two weighed feeds a day of an age-suited ration, with the amount set by the pig's condition rather than its appetite, because a healthy pig is always hungry. Aim to feel the ribs under a firm rub without seeing them, and adjust the daily amount in small steps when…
Urinary stones in bucks and wethers are a feeding problem: they form most readily when the diet is heavy in grain and phosphorus-rich feeds while calcium runs low. Keep the ration forage-based with an overall calcium-to-phosphorus balance of roughly two to one, and go easy on grain for wethers, whose narrower urinary…
Plan winter feeding species by species around three pressures: cold raises energy needs, forage quality usually falls, and water is as much work as feed. Horses, cattle, sheep and goats burn extra calories digesting fibre, so good forage in front of them around the clock is the foundation; pigs and poultry cannot…
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