One of the most popular questions that I am asked as a nutritionist is:

"How can I give my horse more oomph?"

The first thing to realise is that feeding cannot change a horse's personality.

Horses, like humans, have their own personality and no amount of extra feed will induce them into more action. In fact, if not careful, we can make matters worse.

There are things that can be done to help, but an energy conserving personality will always be that.

More oomph

This is a common request for cob types and other laid back characters. The biggest problem is that they are also, generally speaking, good doers.

Packing more of the same feed in to them will only make them fatter and even more lethargic!

The best thing to do is to get them fitter than they need to be for the work that you are doing. In the short term, this will be hard work for you and him but well worth it in the long term.

You should have had your good doer coming out of winter having lost a bit of weight. This means you only have to try to maintain this physique through the summer rather than battling the bulge.

Trace elements

The biggest problem that most good doers have is that, due to their propensity to run to fat, they are fed less than the recommended daily amount of the feed they receive.

This means they are generally not receiving adequate levels of vitamins, minerals and trace elements. This can make a horse lethargic and less inclined to bursts of energy.

All animals require minimum levels of vitamins and minerals (macro and trace) for their body to function correctly and low levels of even just a few can impact on performance.

This case is also true for those in convalescence.

Electrolytes

Whilst you are trying to get your horse fit there will probably be a lot of sweating. Make sure it has free access to salt and on days when he has sweated a lot use a good electrolyte in his feed. Loss of electrolytes can also cause lethargy.

Energy sources

The best way to feed these characters is to select a low calorie chaff of some description and to this add a good quality powdered general purpose mineral or a balancer pellet and use this as your base all year round. A good quality paddock/stable lick will also do the trick (Harbro Country Horse and Pony Lick).

This will probably help as they are now receiving their requirements for vitamins and minerals. If more oomph is required, then the following usually makes the difference required. Give your horse a handful of oats or a competition mix (high cereal content) in his feed.

This will give him enough fast response energy to hopefully make a difference, without piling on the calories.

For most horses that handful or two creates that bit of extra oomph they require. Do not give them scoop-fulls of the stuff.

Convalescents

Horses recovering from a virus can be dull and lethargic, and tend to have increased requirement for certain trace elements (anti-oxidants such as selenium, Vitamin E, B vitamins and iron, in particular). You may not even have noticed your horse being particularly ill, just a bit off colour.

This is a different scenario from the above and you may need to enlist the vet. Blood tests on horses fighting infections or post-infection will not only show elevated white cell counts but often show them to be anaemic.

The vet will often inject B-vitamins in this instance to aid recovery and an iron/B-vit supplement (such as Red Cell etc) will be required.

Always ask the vet to run blood tests if you suspect that your horse may be anaemic before adding this, that and the other in to its diet. More is not necessarily better when it comes to supplementation.

Remember to treat each horse as an individual and, if in doubt, use the many feed lines available to help you to decide the best way forward.