Feeding the young horse managed with moderate growth

Young horses devoted to leisure, as well as most of sport horses are not broken in until 42 months of age. Their growth rate can be temporary limited during winter periods in order to implement their capabilities of compensatory growth during the grazing periods, and hence to maximise the use of forage based diets. Nevertheless, such a discontinuous growth pattern can lead to the same body weight and size between 42 to 48 months of age even if growth is limited during all the subsequent winter periods. Forages fed during these periods, can be hay fed alone or associated with straw, or preserved forages such as: grass silage, wrapped silage or maize silage. Nutrients contents and ingestibility of such forages, as well as feed intake of young horses at 1, 2 and 3 years of age have been evaluated, as well as animal's performances (BW, Size) according to diet composition (ratio concentrate/forages) through experimental trials carried out by the French National studs and INRA research centre since 1970.