May 2012 - Body condition: an important factor in horse nutrition

When planning your horse's ration it's important to work with accurate information about the horse. Some information is easy to obtain, such as breed, age, sex and the stage of pregnancy or lactation. Correct estimates of body weight and the amount of exercise are usually harder to get, but still necessary in order to calculate requirements.

Somewhat surprisingly, body condition itself is not included in the calculation of nutrient needs, since body condition is necessarily an effect of feeding that has been given in the past. Therefore, you have to adjust the ration according to your best assessment of current body condition, and use it as “historical” information about the adequacy of the energy supply. It is therefore important to be able to assess body condition and its changes over time.

The horse's body condition (thin, moderate or fat) tells you a lot about how the amount of energy fed in recent weeks and months has met the horse's needs for energy. Remember, however, that body condition alone will not tell you how well the requirements for important nutrients such as protein, calcium and phosphorus have been met.

A horse's condition can be assessed in several ways. The most common way uses ratings from 1 to 9, with 1 being very thin, 9 extremely fat, and 4 to 6 moderate. The ratings reflect the amount of fat on certain body parts. On the Internet you can find many descriptions of how to assess body condition by searching for “body condition score, horse”.

Example of a 5-level body condition score:

Much of this material may at first glance seem complicated, but the most important judgment to make concerns the fat layer found between the skin and ribs in the area below the withers.  In addition, you should keep an eye on the horse's topline, i.e. the back and the rump.

Young growing horses should not be fat, but should still have sufficient body condition to appear well filled out with muscle and with rounded contours along the back. All too often we see particularly that yearlings can be thin and with an excessively bony topline. With horses that have thick fur, you will need to feel carefully with your hands in order to assess the fat content correctly.

For sports and competition horses the same rules apply: they should not be fat, but well-muscled. Broodmares require an even better body condition than that required by sports and competition horses. A little extra fat will give them energy reserves that are very important in later mating and pregnancy. Experiments have confirmed that broodmares in good body condition are more likely to become pregnant than thin mares.

Remember to ignore the weight of the growing fetus when calculating the broodmare's nutritional requirements, even late in the pregnancy. Thus, in PC-Horse, you should not incorporate the weight gain that comes with fetal growth, since all the program equations are based on non-pregnant body weight.

This article was originally written by Dr. Day Austbø.
Copyright: PC-Horse International - Norway 2012.
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