So, what does the horse eat in the wild? The answer is obvious – grass and various vegetation. Wild horses have to be content with such food all year round. Only in the warm season their diet consists of fresh juicy grass, and in winter – from dry and frozen. As you can see, this is enough to allow free horses to exist.
The ration and feed of horses in different regions differs and depends on the terrain. In more unfavorable climatic conditions, wild horses can eat small twigs of shrubs and even gnaw bark of trees. But in the southern latitudes animals are adapted to softer juicy grass. In the steppe regions horses are eaten by tall grasses and plants with dense stems.
In the process of domestication and use of horses for work, a person had to properly and more carefully feed his animals. After all, they practically worked all day: they plowed, carried, fought, dragged cargo and so on. Now there was not enough grass and hay for the horse to function properly. The ration of horses began to include grain and various flour products to support the energy of animals. A little later, with the development of equestrian sports, even more concentrated, nutritious feeds were required, in the form of bran, mixed fodders and all sorts of vitamin premixes.
The diet of racehorses depends on many factors. Here zootechnicians take into account the sex of the animal, and the age, and the direction of work, the state of health, the time of the year, the constitution, the breed, and so on. In the period of training and testing, horse food can change every day. Therefore, there is no ideal diet. It is more correct to say that it is individual, but necessarily balanced.
