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 13 of 18
A lactating goat's water provision is the single biggest lever on her milk, because milk is mostly water and a milking doe will drink several times what a dry goat takes in. She needs clean, fresh water within easy reach at all times — topped up and scrubbed out daily, with extra buckets near the milking area so she…
Portion control keeps a pet pig slim because pigs are built to convert spare food into fat efficiently, and a pet pig's bowl is easy to fill past its needs with pellets, produce and treats. Base the day on a measured amount of pig pellets matched to the pig's size and condition, split into two meals and scattered or…
Late-season grazing helps ewes reach tupping in the right condition by lifting them onto a rising plane of nutrition in the weeks before the ram goes in — a pattern known as flushing that supports stronger cycling and more eggs shed. Clean, leafy regrowth grazed in the final weeks lets ewes gain steadily without the…
Body condition scoring is a hands-on system for judging a horse's fat cover on a scale running from very thin to very fat, assessed by looking and feeling over the neck, withers, shoulder, ribs, loin and tailhead. Weight tapes estimate weight, but only your fingers can tell whether what covers the ribs is fat or…
A grazing muzzle is a basket-like muzzle fitted over the horse's nose at turnout that slows grass intake through a small opening while still letting the horse graze, drink and move with the herd. Introduce it in short, supervised sessions — a few minutes at first with a treat pushed through the hole — and build up…
A balancer is a concentrated pellet fed in small daily amounts that supplies the protein, vitamins and minerals a forage-only diet tends to lack, without the calories of a full hard feed. Horses that usually benefit are good doers, native ponies and any horse thriving on hay and grass alone, where tipping in a full…
Goats are natural browsers, so hedgerow access gives them far more than extra calories: leaves, bark and stems from varied plants broaden their mineral intake, the chewing keeps their rumens and teeth working as designed, and foraging along a hedge keeps them occupied for hours. Browse should complement, never…
Expect drift, not drama: ribs and topline changing under your hands, a coat staying dull, hooves growing slowly or cracking, energy going flat or fizzy, and feed left, sorted or passed through undigested. Any one sign is a hint; several together mean the ration no longer fits the horse in front of you. Keeping monthly…
Wean gradually, ideally with fence-line contact so youngsters can still see and hear the herd, and never wean a cria alone. Build the diet on constant grass and good hay, with a modest amount of a feed made for camelids introduced before separation week, plus clean water and an alpaca-appropriate mineral. Check…
Most horses at rest drink roughly twenty-five to fifty litres a day, with the exact figure set by size, weather, work and diet: dry hay pushes it up, watery spring grass pulls it down, and heat, hard work or a suckling foal push it up sharply. Learn your own horse's normal by watching bucket levels for a week. Logging…
Plan by bodyweight: a horse's daily forage, hay, haylage and grazing together, generally comes to about one and a half to two and a half percent of his bodyweight in dry feed, with most horses near two percent. A five-hundred-kilo horse therefore needs roughly ten kilos a day, split across several nets including a…
Hang a cheap luggage or spring scale where you fill nets, weigh the empty net once, then weigh each filled net and subtract. Weigh a whole bale from every new batch and divide by its slices so you know what this delivery's slices actually weigh, and write the figure up in the feed room. Putting each horse's target net…
Judge by feel, not by eye: on a healthy horse the ribs are easy to feel under a smooth covering but not on show, the crest is supple rather than hard, and the topline is filled with muscle instead of peaked. Condition-score each area on one recognised scale, weigh-tape the same way each time, and repeat monthly so you…
Before feeding more, find out why the weight came off: have your vet check teeth, worming and general health, and make sure stronger field companions are not walking him away from the hay. Then build on near-constant good forage, add soaked fibre feeds in two or three small meals, rug against cold, and ease his…
Build the plan from the ground up: weigh-tape every horse and pony, total each one's daily forage ration into a herd figure, then multiply by the longest winter you might face and add a margin for spoiled bales. Store the stock dry, off the ground and rotated, and count it against the plan monthly so a shortfall shows…
Give the herd one more feeding station than there are horses, spread well apart in a line or arc, and feed in the same order at the same spots every day so each horse learns his place. Fill every station before the horses come in, give the shyest horse the most protected end position, and pen a bullied or bullying…
Treat spring grass as rich feed, not free grazing: turn out early in the day when sugar levels are lowest, shorten the hours on lush pasture, and make up the forage with weighed hay on a bare paddock or yard. A well-fitted grazing muzzle or daily strip grazing keeps intake down while he stays with the herd. Weigh-tape…
Fit a livestock-rated heated bucket or trough heater where you can, protect its cable from teeth, and site the trough out of the wind in whatever sun the day offers. Without a heater, break and remove the ice morning and evening, top up with warm water, and keep spare buckets somewhere frost-free for a quick swap.…
Move over at least seven to ten days rather than swapping bags overnight: start with about a quarter new feed mixed into three quarters of the old, step up to half and half, then three quarters new, keeping the hay exactly the same throughout. Hold at any stage for a few extra days if droppings loosen, and change…
Introduce new hay the way you'd change any horse feed: gradually, so the hindgut microbes that ferment forage can adjust to the new bales. Fill nets roughly three-quarters old hay to a quarter new for the first few days, then half and half, then three-quarters new, and only then feed the new batch straight — a week to…
An overweight horse loses weight the safe, slow way: forage stays central, but its sugar and quantity come under control — never starve him, because long gaps without forage upset gut and temperament. Soak his hay to leach out sugar, cut hard feed back to a balancer so he still gets his vitamins and minerals, and use…
When a hen lays less with age, her feed should shift with her: she no longer needs layer calcium at every bite, but she still needs enough protein to hold condition and regrow feathers. Move her onto a plainer maintenance ration and put oyster shell in a separate pot, so she takes calcium when she needs it and skips…
A weigh tape only steers feeding well if every reading is taken the same way. Stand him square and relaxed on level ground, pass the tape around the girth groove behind the elbow so it sits snugly over the barrel, and read it as he breathes out — three times, using the middle figure. Use the same tape, at the same…
Body-condition scoring is one of the most reliable monthly steers for a flock, because a sheep's fleece hides the weight changes your eyes would otherwise catch. Score each sheep by touch over the loin, feeling for the bones of the spine and the short ribs beneath the wool, and grade her on the one-to-five scale from…
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