The hunting double

Article from 'Straight from the Horse's Mouth' - April 2008

With the evenings getting cooler and daylight savings ending, it's time to get ready for the hunting season. Correct preparation is crucial. A fit, wellconditioned horse has a lot less chance of injury and a much higher chance of still looking and feeling fantastic at the end of the season.

Hunters need to be incredibly fit before the hunting season so if you plan to hunt hard right from the beginning, getting some good distance/fi tness miles on the clock now is essential. If you do end up leaving your run a bit late, consider using your first few hunts as a fitness session and gently build up to a full hunt. If you are unsure, just listen to your horse - they will let you know how they are coping.

Having your hunter looking and feeling great is also assisted greatly by how you feed them. Hunters do a lot of work and are also having to deal with keeping warm in the winter weather. You need to make sure as your horse's workload increases so too does the amount of feed they are consuming.

A warm, waterproof winter rug will also help to minimise your winter feed bill as your horse won't have to utilise valuable calories to keep warm. Another factor that can make your hunter a lot more comfortable is being clipped. Clipped horses don't tend to sweat as much and are much easier to dry, resulting in less chance for chills. Remember, a fit, happy, healthy horse will make the hunting season a lot more enjoyable for you as well as your horse.

To help keep your horse in top performance through the hunting season, RD1 has two great feeds deemed 'The Hunting Double' - Molassed Sugar Beet and Extruded Barley from the Dunstan Horsefeeds range.

Molassed Sugar Beet

This is a natural feed, produced during the extraction of sugar from the root crop sugar beet. It provides a rich balance of energy sources for horses and ponies. Energy from sugar is rapidly digested and used efficiently for work and performance.

Molassed Sugar Beet feed is high in digestible fibre, which under bacterial digestion in the horse's hind gut slowly releases energy, providing a good energy source, whilst keeping the digestive tract in good condition. The combination of sugars and digestible fibre provides a slower release of energy than from cereal sources, ensuring a more constant energy supply to meet the horse's requirements without the 'heating' effect sometimes associated with grain feeding.

Molassed Sugar Beet feed is high in calcium, making it an ideal complement to oats and bran, helping to balance the diet. Being very palatable, its inherent high sugar content ensures that even shy feeders find this product irresistible.

It is also very easy to use - the only preparation required is the soaking of the pellets in 2-3 times its own weight of water. This makes a moist feed which is valuable for horses and ponies, particularly those with respiratory problems or dust allergies.

Extruded Barley

This is wholegrain barley, finely ground and then rapidly cooked using the dry extrusion process common to many Dunstan feeds. Raw starch from unprocessed barley is not readily utilised by horses, hence the practice of boiling barley to evoke a degree of cooking to aid digestion and starch availability.

Cooked or Extruded Barley is an ideal ingredient for putting condition on horses without the inherent problems associated with feeding high grain meals. By cooking the whole barley grain, the process produces a combination of cooked starch, fibre and natural oils in a palatable expanded pellet.

Dunstan Extruded Barley, when fed in conjunction with a balanced diet of protein, fibre, minerals and vitamins, provides a highly available energy source for both work output or where extra condition is required.

Dunstan Horsefeeds Molassed Sugar Beetand Extruded Barley are available from your local RD1 store. Come in today and see our great range of horse feed and other equine products available.

Some products may not be available in all stores but can be ordered on request. Disclaimer: Any views and comments expressed in this article are not necessarily the opinions of RD1 Limited nor associated agencies. This content is copyright of RD1 Limited.