Spring Nutrition: Balancing Condition and Performance
Spring is often a welcome shift for horse owners. Longer days, lighter evenings and improved grazing allow for more consistent work and increased turnout. Supporting happy, healthy horses through this seasonal transition is essential nutritionally as it is one of the most complex times of year to manage, D&H share the importance of balancing condition and performance.
While grass may appear to provide a natural and beneficial feed source, the rapid changes in its composition can create significant challenges. For many horses, particularly those that maintain weight easily, spring feeding becomes a careful balancing act of supporting performance and topline without encouraging excess weight gain.
The challenge of spring
Spring grass is characterised by rapid growth and fluctuating nutritional content. In particular, levels of non-structural carbohydrates (NSCs), including sugars, can vary significantly not only across the season, but even within a 24-hour period.
This increase in readily available energy is one of the key nutritional challenges during spring. As grazing improves, many horses become more efficient at holding condition, and in some cases, may gain weight more quickly than expected.
Many riders often notice changes in behaviour, with horses becoming sharper, more reactive or more difficult to manage as grass quantity increases. This is frequently linked to increased energy intake from the diet, rather than simply a behavioural issue.
At the same time, as calorie intake from grass rises, many horse owners might reduce or completely remove hard feed in an attempt to manage their horse’s energy intake and/or weight gain. However, this strategy can introduce another challenge of creating an unbalanced diet where essential nutrients are no longer provided at adequate levels.
Why a balanced diet still matters
Forage should always form the foundation of the equine diet, providing essential fibre for digestive health and contributing significantly to daily energy intake. However, forage alone is rarely nutritionally complete.
Even high-quality grazing or conserved forage may be lacking in key micronutrients such as vitamins, trace minerals and essential amino acids. Seasonal variation further compounds this, meaning nutrient supply is not always consistent.
For horses in work, particularly those expected to develop and maintain topline, this becomes especially important. While energy requirements may be met through grass, the nutrients required to support muscle function, recovery and performance are often insufficient.
Protein quality is a key consideration. Whilst forage can contain adequate crude protein levels, it does not always provide sufficient quantities of essential amino acids such as lysine, methionine and threonine, which are key building blocks required for muscle maintenance and development. Lysine is often used as a marker of the quality of dietary protein for horses as it is the first limiting amino acid, meaning that a specific daily intake is required to enable muscle mass development.
Over time, both an insufficient protein intake and a lysine deficiency may present as a loss of topline, reduced muscle definition and decreased strength through the back and hindquarters all of which can directly impact your horse’s performance.
Digestive health must also be considered. Seasonal transitions, including changes in grazing availability, turnout routines and workload, can disrupt the hindgut microbiome. Maintaining a consistent and balanced diet plays an important role in supporting gut function and overall wellbeing during this period.
The role of a balancer
As spring grass increases and hard feed is reduced, maintaining a balanced nutrient intake becomes more challenging. This is where feed balancers play a key role.
A feed balancer is a concentrated source of essential nutrients, including vitamins, minerals and quality protein, designed to complement a high fibre diet without adding significant calories.
This makes balancers particularly useful during spring, when many horses are receiving more than enough energy from grazing but may still have nutritional gaps within their diet.
By providing key micronutrients and essential amino acids in a low intake format, a balancer supports overall health, muscle function and performance, without contributing to excess weight gain.
This approach is particularly beneficial for:
- Good doers
- Those on restricted grazing
- Horses requiring weight management alongside performance
For dressage horses, this balance is especially important. While they may not require large volumes of energy, they do require precise nutrition to support strength, suppleness and recovery.
Balancers such as D&H Ultimate Balancer are designed to deliver this targeted support, helping to maintain condition, topline and overall health while allowing calorie intake to be carefully controlled.
A practical feeding approach for spring
When managing spring nutrition, simplicity and consistency are key. A structured feeding approach can help maintain balance while adapting to changing conditions.
1. Prioritise fibre
A high fibre diet supports digestive health and provides a steady, controlled source of energy. Chopped fibre feeds can be used as part of the horses daily fibre requirement, this can be helpful as they extend eating time and support gut function, particularly when grazing is restricted.
2. Manage grazing carefully
As grass intake increases, monitoring access becomes important, particularly for horses that gain weight easily. Approaches such as restricted turnout, strip grazing or a track can help maintain controlled grass intake while still allowing access to pasture.
3. Adjust concentrate feed appropriately
As grass intake increases, it is often appropriate to reduce concentrate feed. However, this should be done gradually and with consideration for overall nutrient intake, to avoid creating deficiencies.
4. Introduce a balancer
Incorporating a balancer helps ensure that essential nutrients continue to be supplied, even when concentrate feeding is reduced. Feeding at the recommended rate provides consistency and confidence that the diet remains nutritionally complete.
5. Support weight management where needed
For horses requiring tighter control of calorie intake, high fibre, low sugar and starch feeds such as D&H Slim Down can be incorporated. These feeds support weight management while contributing to fibre intake and maintaining a balanced diet.
Above all, maintaining consistency is crucial. Sudden changes in diet can disrupt digestive health and impact behaviour, making a steady and considered approach essential during seasonal transitions. Aim to make any changes to diet or lifestyle over 7-10 days to allow horses to adjust appropriately.
LEARN MORE ABOUT D&H SLIM DOWN
A balanced approach to spring feeding
Spring grass will always introduce variability into the equine diet, but effective feeding is not simply about reducing calories, it is also about maintaining balance.
By combining careful grazing management with a consistent supply of essential nutrients, horse owners can support condition, performance and happy, healthy horses throughout the season.
D&H are committed to supporting horse owners with practical, evidence-based feeding advice, helping you make confident decisions whatever the season.
For more information on D&H Balancers and Feed or for feed advice, please call our Nutritional Helpline team on 01270 782223, email helplineenquiries@dodsonandhorrell.com or visit www.dodsonandhorrell.com