UK-based Animal Health Company has put together an info graphic showing how feed affects the health and well-being of the horse from the inside out.
From Animal Health Company:
The correct nutrition is vital to keep your horse fit, healthy and looking at their very best.
However, did you know that the correct nutrition can also help to keep some nasty diseases at bay?
As horses are a type of hindgut fermenter, this means that as they only have one stomach (unlike cows) and they prefer to eat small amounts of food throughout the day. Therefore the intervals at which you feed you horse are vital to their overall health and wellbeing.
Without the correct diet horses can become very ill, very quickly. The most significant disease, and the leading course of horse death, is Colic. This can however, be alleviated with careful management of diet and making sure that your horse is getting all the correct nutrients they need.
Making sure your horse has a balanced diet is also massively important. A varied diet will encourage different varieties of gut bacteria to replicate and this will aid digestion greatly. Horses require a mixture between roughage (grasses and legumes), as well as more concentrated nutrition in the form of pellets, corn and maize.
Courtesy Animal Health Company