Getting a Good Start – Feeding the Suckling Foal
by Karen E. Davison, Ph.D., Land O’Lakes Purina Feed Manager-Equine Tech. Services
From day one, foals are eating and growing machines. They will nurse 70 or more times a day and consume as much as 40 lbs of milk per day in the first months. They will also mimic their mothers and begin to nibble dry feed and pasture or hay within a few days after birth. Newborn foals come into this world weighing approximately 10% of their mature weight and standing at roughly 60% of their mature height. By the time they are six months of age, on average, they will reach 50% of their mature weight and 80% of their mature height. Foals grow faster in this first six months than any other time. This critical growth phase requires proper nutrition and feeding management to give the young horse a great start toward becoming a sound, healthy adult.
Early in life, nothing beats mother’s milk for nutritional support. However, mares’ milk production and nutritional content peaks within 2 weeks of foaling and then slowly declines from there. By the second month of lactation, mare’s milk has declined in nutrient content and quantity produced such that mare’s milk alone will not provide adequate nutrition for optimum foal growth. From this time forward, a foal receiving only mare’s milk will grow at a reduced rate Additional nutritional supplementation is necessary for foals to achieve optimum growth and development.
Proper nutritional supplementation for suckling foals should take into account the relatively small capacity of the foal’s digestive system. A foal feed should provide high quality, very digestible nutritional support in a concentrated form, such that large intakes are not necessary to meet nutrient requirements. When feeding a properly balanced foal feed, the recommendation is for the suckling foal to eat one pound per month of age per day while still nursing. This means that a 2 month old foal would eat 2 lbs per day; a 3 month old foal would eat 3 lbs, etc. The goal is to simply make up the difference between what mare’s milk provides and what the foal’s nutritional requirements are without providing excesses. Foals allowed free-choice creep feed may over-eat and gain too much weight which is unhealthy for bone development. The nutrients of greatest concern for suckling foals are calories or energy, amino acids from quality protein sources, calcium, phosphorus, copper and zinc. Providing these nutrients in the proper ratios and from high quality ingredients will support consistent and optimum growth rates. Shortages or imbalances in any of these nutrients can result in impaired growth and increase the risk of developmental bone disorders that can lead to unsoundness later in life.
Developmental bone disorders, often termed developmental orthopedic diseases (DOD’s) include angular limb deformities, physitis, osteochondrosis (OCD) and contracted tendons. These are all very different disorders, but are all related to problems in bone maturation. Because both genetics and environmental factors do play a role in the incidence of DOD’s in young, growing horses, nutrition alone can’t always prevent one of these problems from showing up. However, it is well documented that poor nutrition certainly increases the risk and the severity of DOD’s and proper nutrition can reduce the incidence. So, it is very important to feed a good foal feed to suckling foals, but to also pay attention to how it is fed.
One common problem in feeding suckling foals is to rely totally on mare’s milk and pasture or to feed the mare a ration not balanced for growing foals and allowing the foal to eat along with the mare. Then, after weaning, provide large quantities of a good foal feed, or even free-choice foal feed, to grow the foal on out. In these cases, foals will have been growing slower than optimum while still on the mare. When a better plane of nutrition is provided, the body will try to catch up to where it would have been if optimum nutrition had been available all along. This compensatory growth, where a foal grows extremely fast, often leads to the foal developing contracted tendons. It is much better to provide a well balanced foal feed in prescribed amounts to support optimum growth from the beginning. This supports a steady rate of growth and will give the suckling foal the best start possible.
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