Grazing (v3)

Is your horse on pasture?

PC-Horse allows you to select a grazing mode for your horse. In order to calculate grass intake and formulate a ration, information about the quality and abundance of the grass, and how long the horse is on grass every day must be provided. The program contains three pre-defined qualities of pasture grass. You must have one (and only one) pasture grass in the horse's feed list in order to activate the pasture function. In addition, you can select any number of other feeds.

Double-click on one of the pastures. A new window will appear at the top of the screen, where you can specify how many hours the horse is doing per day and how much grazing grass is (grass amount in the bait).

"Plentiful" means that there is a lot of high quality grass in the pasture.

"Average" means that the pasture is partly grazed, or with limited growth due to moderate fertilization, i.e. mountain or natural pasture.
"Little" means that the pasture is heavily grazed, and the grass is short.

The results of your selections are displayed. You can not change the amount of grazing grass that the program has suggested in this instance, but instead you may change the quality of the bait, abundance and daily grazing time.

Or you may go back and select another grazing grass. Go back to the "Choose Feed" page again with any of the buttons  

Add optional feeding by selecting feed as usual.

Calculation of feed intake on pasture always involves uncertainty. It is therefore strongly recommended that the body condition of grazing horses is watched carefully and that the feeding of concentrates is regulated to avoid the horse becoming too thin or too fat. Please observe that the quality of pastures change through the summer as the horses use them. It is necessary to adjust the selection of pasture grass and the amount of grass in the pasture as the seasons progress.

It is difficult to calculate intakes of vitamin A and vitamin D during the grazing season because of variation in the quality of the pasture grass. Since vitamin D is formed by the direct action of sunlight on the horses skin, vitamin supplies from the feed are probably not critical. When a horse is defined as grazing, PC-Horse will not show red lines for vitamin A or D, even if the calculated intakes fall outside the optimal area.

Correct the amount of feed added in the table. When you're satisfied - end with the OK button