FEED MATH…It’s really not that scary! 

FEED MATH…It’s really not that scary!  Were you tempted to skip this when you saw the word MATH? Please keep reading- it’s not that hard. We’ll talk about determining how much commercial feed your horse needs and management techniques to help you feed him the best that you can in the most cost-efficient manner. We’ll just stick to commercial feeds for this article and talk about hay another time. To make these determinations, first we need to gather some info. The next time you’re at the feed store, ask for a weight tape. You can usually get one for free. There are two kinds: the version that has been around forever with pound increments on it, and the one with inches. They look a lot like measuring tapes used in sewing and in fact you can use a seamstress tape. You’ll need to measure his heart girth and his body length in inches. Heart girth is basically over his withers and around his barrel where the girth would normally lie. The tape should be snug but not tight and your horse should be on a flat, level surface. Next, measure his body length from the point of his shoulder, on a straight line, to the point of his buttocks. The line will likely run uphill, and it may take two people to do this. This is NOT his blanket measurement! Take out your smart phone or a calculator and plug in the measurements as follows: heart girth X heart girth X body length. Yes, it’s a HUGE number. Now divide that by 300 for your horse’s weight. If you have done your measurements carefully, the result will be very close to his actual weight. (Divide by 301 for a yearling, 280 for a weanling, and 299 for a pony.) Next, it is important that you know how much you are feeding your horse…BY WEIGHT. This means by ounces or pounds, not “a handful” or “just a taste” or “two scoops” or “one coffee can.” Why? Because feed bags generally tell you how much to feed your horse by weight, not volume. And your handful may be larger or smaller than mine, winter gloves make a difference, and “just a taste” is no measurement at all. What are you using for a scoop? Is it a 3-quart scoop or a 5-quart? Is it open or enclosed, meaning that that it resembles a square milk carton? Are you leveling it off or heaping it as much as you can? And coffee cans…which one? Are you using the ones from the ‘70s that held 16 ounces of coffee or the later ones that hold only 12 ounces? Is it a metal can or one of those small (or really large) plastic ones? There are no standard-sized coffee cans. As you can see, there are many variations when we talk about how you measure your feed. So how can you know how much he is getting? Whatever container you are using, measure out one typical meal, place it in a plastic baggie, and take it to your local feed store. Ask them to put it on the scale and tell you what it weighs. Any feed store that sells bulk product must, by state regulations, have a licensed and accurate scale. Don’t use the hanging scale by the bulk bin; that won’t be as accurate. You can also take your sample to the post office and ask a clerk to weigh it, but you may get funny looks. Do you remember this riddle? Which weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead? Of course, the answer is that they weigh the same. A pound is a pound. Beware of applying this to VOLUME though because it doesn’t ring true. A “coffee can” of pellets doesn’t weigh the same as a can of textured or sweet feed- it’s heavier. And a “coffee can” of extruded feed is lighter than both. A can of extruded feed may look like the same amount as a can of pellets when you pour it in his bucket, but the weight is less. Pet peeve alert…a one-pound coffee can does indeed measure one pound…of COFFEE. It’s not meant to measure out a pound of horse feed. The photo with the jars that have been filled to the top illustrates this well. Each jar holds a quart, but the weights range from one pound of the extruded/fiber supplement (left) to one pound, 10 ounces of the alfalfa pellets (right.) The pelleted ration balancer is one and a half pounds, and the textured senior feed is one and a quarter pounds. Same volume, different weights. Now compare that photo to the one of the four jars that each hold one pound of feed. You can clearly see that the volumes are different although the weights are the same. You might think that all pelleted feeds or all textured feeds weigh the same per volume, but that is not the case either. Just for fun, I compared the measuring scoops provided by three different feed companies. They each had lines marked on the cup to tell you how many half-pounds or pounds of a particular feed that they could measure, and they were all different. If you are using Company A’s measuring scoop for a pound of senior feed, it won’t necessarily measure out a pound of Company B’s senior feed. You could be feeding more- or less- than you think. If you look at the photo of the two jars with two different ration balancers, you can see this. Each jar has one pound, but the volumes differ. You may be wondering; does it really matter? Do I have to weigh the feed for every meal? Not really, if you are consistent with the amount that you feed at every meal. The point is that you should know how much you are feeding by weight so that you can follow feeding directions on the bag and ensure that