Nutrition Preparation for the Competition Season

The time has come to brave the mud, rain and cold and bring your horse back into work prior to the upcoming competition season.  Whether your horse has done well or wintered poorly can make all the difference to what you may need to feed over the season.  The challenges of competing regularly also poses its own problems that may require tweaks to the diet specific to energy, metabolism and behaviour later down the track.

Those first weeks legging a horse back up may mean that you don’t need to feed to much more than what you had them on during the winter period and keeping plenty of fibre in various forms up to them.  Specifically, we may not want them on high energy feeds in a period when they are adjusting to coming back to work and we want to have them a little on the quieter side as they are getting fit for purpose, so they don’t injure themselves by running around too much in the paddock or acting out under saddle.  If they haven’t wintered as well as you might have liked there might also be a need for additional cool calories at a higher feeding rate.

Zero®, Ice® or Balanced® will provide a good base diet (dependent on condition) – high fibre, low starch but enough energy to deal with the demands that are required by more exercise. An oil can be added at this point.  Hygain's Performa 3® is a source of cool calories and a high Omega 3 anti-inflammatory content to help with bodily stress from returning to work.  

As the exercise programme steps up into structured schooling and jumping, more fitness has been obtained and outings are being programmed. Balanced might be replaced by Showtorque® and Tru Gain® to maintain top line and weight. It is not unusual to have horses that are digging deep for Horse of the Year jumping titles to be on a high performance feed such as Release® or Tracktorque® or a muesli like Honey B® for the pickier eater - whatever the requirement, Hygain® has you covered. 

At Hygain® we like to tailor the diet to your horse or pony’s individual requirements and work with each rider on a nutritional solution plan that is going to work for the season’s goals and unique circumstances.  We welcome enquiries to your local Hygain Representatives.

Natalie Tanner - Upper North Island ntanner@hygain.com.au or 0275 206 863

Kat Van Tuyl - Lower North Island kvantuyl@hygain.com.au or 0273 030 348

Robyn Mauger - South Island rmauger@hygain.com.au or 0276 464 118

For additional support, follow the link https://nutrikey.com.au/ for personalised equine nutrition advice.