Keeping our horses hydrated
Ensuring optimal hydration after exercise and travel is key to support health, recovery, and future performance. However, we all know that horses often do not voluntarily drink enough water, particularly if the water is sourced away from home and tastes unfamiliar.
When horses become dehydrated, they can tire easily and experience early fatigue. Quite often, a lack of water intake is the cause of a lack of energy, rather than the intake or type of concentrate feed. In addition, dehydration can lead to further health issues, such as impaction colic or muscle issues.
For many, April is the start of Camp and the competition season, and you may have trips planned to events, clinics, competitions, or just riding away from home with friends. So, thinking about hydration in advance is a great way to prioritise your horse’s wellbeing.
One way to encourage your horse to drink is to offer a soaked, palatable mash such as the Saracen Re-Covery Mash®
What is the Saracen Recovery Mash®?
Here are some of the key features that make supporting your horse or pony an easy choice:
Based on a blend of Super Fibres: ’Super-Fibres’, including alfalfa pellets, sugar beet pulp, and soya hulls, are known for their superior digestibility. They also have an enhanced water holding capacity, helping to maintain a fluid reservoir in the hindgut that the horse can draw upon when exercising. This is ideal for hot days at camp or away from home, especially for those that don’t drink a lot.
Suitable for all horses and ponies: As Re-Covery Mash® is a fibre-based feed that is low in starch (10%) and sugar (6%), it is suitable for all types of horses and ponies regardless of what they are doing for the day. Just make sure you follow the recommended feeding guidelines.
Feed alongside any diet: Re-Covery Mash® is not fully fortified with vitamins and minerals, meaning it can be given alongside your existing ration, without oversupplying any micronutrients.
Feed daily or when needed: The Super Fibres in Re-Covery Mash® are common ingredients in horse feed, reducing the risk of digestive disturbance when the mash is given.
Salt inclusion: Re-Covery Mash® contains a small inclusion of salt, to replenish some of the electrolytes that may have been lost through sweating, as well as stimulate a normal thirst response. Re-Covery Mash® is not a full electrolyte replenisher, so additional table salt (30g) should still be added to the bucket feed daily to ensure the maintenance requirement for salt is met.
Digestive support: Live yeast is included at the recommend dose per kilo to support a healthy hindgut environment, by promoting the growth of healthy fibre digesting bacteria. This is vital as horses rely on energy production through the fermentation of fibre in the hindgut, to fuel the work they are doing.
Antioxidants: When horses work, the body produces free radicals which can cause damage to muscle cells, known as oxidative stress. Vitamin E, a key antioxidant, is included in Re-Covery Mash® to help ‘mop up’ the free radicals and support immune and muscle function. This is particularly important when horses are travelling to stay away competitions and camps, where their immune system may be challenged in a new environment.
Palatability: When horses are stressed, their palette can change and becoming more fussy is a common occurrence. Ensuring that Re-Covery Mash® was highly palatable even for horses in stressful environments was therefore of great importance. Through extensive research in the field, an encapsulated banana flavouring was found to be the most frequently chosen flavour by horses, and encapsulating the flavour ensures that the flavour is protected and released through the physical process of chewing. Encapsulation is more beneficial than essences and oils as they both tend loose taste and aroma very quickly.
Muscle glycogen replenishment: When horses work, they use stored energy in the muscles called glycogen, and these energy stores can become quickly depleted for horses that are regularly travelling and competing. It takes 72 hours for muscle glycogen stores to return to base level after being heavily depleted, but this is only if there is some starch in the diet, as this is a more readily available energy source. Re-Covery Mash has a small inclusion of micronized barley, to kick start the replenishment of muscle glycogen stores that may have been depleted during exercise. The last thing you want is to have your horse’s energy levels reduced while away having fun together!
Essential Amino Acids: Re-Covery Mash® contains quality protein sources which supply the essential amino acids – Lysine, Methionine and Threonine. 1-3 hours post exercise there is a greater anabolic window, where there is a greater uptake of nutrients required to support repair and recovery following exercise. Supplying these key amino acids post exercise is therefore beneficial in order for them to be absorbed and facilitated within the horse’s system.
Feeding Saracen Re-Covery Mash®
Now you know the benefits of using Re-Covery Mash® for your horse, the next question is how to feed it. Space in your car or box can be limited when travelling. Luckily, Re-Covery Mash® is sold in both 20kg bags and 1.5kg travel pouches, so all you need is your travel pouch, a bucket, and access to water.
Or you can do what some EquiTeam members do and weigh out individual meals into plastic bags before you go, so all you need to do is tip it into the bucket, add water and wait.
The feeding rate for Re-Covery Mash® is 100g per 100kg body weight per meal. For example, a 500kg horse should consume 500g Re-Covery Mash® per meal. We recommend soaking Re-Covery Mash® using 1 part feed to 2 parts water, i.e. add 1 litre of water to 500g of Re-Covery Mash®.
However, the more water you can add the better. Having a layer of water on top of the mash that the horse has to drink through first is ideal to increase water intake. Re-Covery Mash® will take 2-3 minutes to soak in warm water or 5 minutes in cold water and should be fed immediately after soaking.
When to feed Recovery Mash®
The idea behind Re-Covery Mash® is to encourage drinking to aid hydration, and hopefully this blog has shown why this is important. The mash can be used after a harder ride, competition, or travel, so it isn’t just for away days and can become part of your planning at home after a lesson or long ride. It can be fed as soon as your horse has adequately cooled down after work. Optimum feeding time is 1-3 hours after work, as uptake of nutrients is increased during this time. For horses that regularly don’t drink enough water, Re-Covery Mash® can also be used daily.
For questions about Re-Covery Mash® or to discuss your horse’s individual requirements, please contact the Saracen nutrition team on 01622 718487 or email nutrition@saracenhorsefeeds.co.uk.
We’d be delighted to chat with you and help in any way we can.
Try the travel sized Rec-Covery Mash® pouches here: https://bit.ly/re-covery-mash
