Feeding Draft Horses

This is our current recipe for feeding our draft horses. 

This recipe is for one draft horse, and is fed once per day.

1 cup alfalfa cubes or pellets
1 cup whole oats
1 cup black oil sunflower seeds (with shells)
1 cup flax seeds
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 - 1/2 cup oil (preferably good coconut oil)

1. Combine the alfalfa cubes or pellets with an equal measure of water and leave to soak for a few hours to soften. Pellets are easier than cubes, but cubes have a longer stem and thus provide more bulk and fiber.

2. Crush the oats in a mill just enough to crack the hulls; combine with 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar and 1/4 cup water.  Mix and leave to soak for a few hours if time permits.  This allows the vinegar to work on neutralizing the phytic acid in the oats.  If we don't get around to this step for some reason, we just crush the oats and add the vinegar when we mix the whole recipe together.

3. At feeding time, grind the sunflower seeds in a blender.  Do the same with the flax, and mix everything together: the ground sunflower seeds, the ground flax seeds, the rehydrated alfalfa cubes (or pellets), and the crushed oats.  Mix this well, breaking up any lumps that remain if using alfalfa cubes.

4. Add oil, and any supplements, as desired.  We add, among other things, 1/2 cup of diatomaceous earth for each horse.

This makes a little over two quarts of finished feed for the horse, and is a nice bulky ration that our horses all like very well. 

Because we are feeding draft horses, we wanted a feed that is high in fat and low in carbohydrates, to minimize the chances of their encountering equine polysaccharide storage myopathy (EPSM), an affliction to which heavy breeds are apparently susceptible.  (For more information, see here:  http://ruralheritage.com/vet_clinic/epsm.htm)

We also wanted a feed that is made, as much as possible, from natural ingredients that are whole foods and that we could produce, theoretically at least, here on the farm if need be.  Except for any added oil, these ingredients pass that test: we could grow oats and flax and sunflower seeds, if we had to, and I guess we could break up some alfalfa hay to combine it with, in a pinch.

Flax has been a constant in our feeds over the last few years.  It puts a glorious shine on the horses, reduces skin sensitivities, and is also good for their hooves.