The care and feeding provided during the first two years of a future horse athlete’s life will greatly influence its ultimate success. Today’s potential performance horses are being asked at earlier and earlier ages to enter training. They need to have the physical strength and development to handle the stress of this early training.

One way to guard against nutritional conformational problems is to be sure that foals have proper nutrition from the very beginning. This means that there may be situations where creep feeding is the best solution to providing quality nutritional support.

It doesn’t matter whether you have 1 foal or 10. Creep feeding can be the answer to a wealth of problems centering on how to provide the foal with an extra nutritional source other than mare’s milk.

Suckling foals need a creep ration composed of approximately 18% quality protein. Commercial foal feeds analyze around 16 % protein. One solution is to supplement a commercial foal feed with a quality protein source.

There are two easy supplement choices: a milk replacer such as Calf Manna or soybean oil meal.

Milk Replacers are 22% protein. To increase the protein to 18%, add 4 pounds of milk replacer for every 10 lbs of 16% commercial foal feed.

A less expensive but equally good supplement soybean oil meal is usually 44% protein. Adding 3/4 of a pound of soybean oil meal to 10 lbs of a commercial foal grain mixture will also provide an 18% grain ration.

In addition, both soybean oil meal and commercial milk replacer supplements have other important ingredients necessary for the young horse’s growth and development, the critical amino acid lysine and the minerals calcium and phosphorus.

Another option is to have a mill prepare a custom suckling grain ration built to your specifications. In many cases, this option may be less expensive than purchasing a foal mix and adding milk replace or soybean oil meal to it.

More importantly, you will know exactly what you are feeding. Dr. Milton Bradly, a leading horse nutritionist at the University of Missouri, designed the following sucking grain ration.

Oats, crimped or crushed 44%
Corn, coarsely cracked 22%
Soybean oil meal 24%
Molasses, liquid 5%
Dicalcium phosphate 1.5%
Limestone 1%
Trace mineral salt 0.5%

This ration provides to the suckling 18.6% protein, 0.88 percent calcium and 0.59 percent phosphorus. Make a note, however, that this ration should only be used as a creep ration and should not be fed older than 6 months. And to properly balance the calcium and phosphorus, this ration should be complemented with access to legume hays such as alfalfa, lespedeza, or clover.

Creep feed should be presented to foals between 2 and 4 weeks of age. The logistics of actually how this is done depends upon your management situation and the number of foals under your care.

If mares come up into the barn every night to eat separately, small foal feeders can be an effective solution. It won’t take curious foals long to find the feed and begin to investigate the contents.

An added advantage of this system is that the feed will spoil more slowly than grain in an outside creep feeder. But, never fear, it will spoil!! Be sure to check the free choice foal ration daily and remove any spoiled ration. Spoiled grain can cause colic.

For foals raised in a full time pasture situation, a creep feeder can be constructed which allows foals to enter and eat. The advantage of this situation is that foals seem to like to eat together. Milling around in the foal feeder with other foals tends to make foals eat more.

Placing the creep feeder close to where the mares are fed will also increase foal feed consumption. The foals will play around in the feeder while their dams are eating therefore spending more time with access to feed.

Each foal should eat between 1-2 pounds a day up to about 2 – 3 months of age. Their consumption should then increase to 4-5 pounds a day building to 6-8 lbs a day by 6 months of age.

Daily checking of the creep ration will provide the means to determine how much to feed. In the beginning keep a clean, fresh 2 pounds of grain per colt in the feeder. When the foals consistently start cleaning it up all the grain before you return the next day, increase the ration to 3 pounds a day per foal. Use this schedule to increase consumption up to the desired management level.

Be careful not to let selective portions of the ration remain when adding new feed. If your foals tend to eat only the oats and leave the corn and/or soybean meal, don’t add fresh grain to the leftovers. This will mess up the balance of the feed.

In the beginning, throw the leftovers away or feed them to other livestock. Give the foals a new batch each day.

Once you have the foals eating well and they are anxiously awaiting your return, it is time to train them to eat what’s good for them. As mentioned above, sometimes foals choose to leave specific foodstuffs. For the foals to consume a balanced ration, they need to eat all of the ingredients.

To convince them to eat all of their ration, begin by feeding ½ of the normal ration. Check the next day to see if it is gone or spoiled. If all the feed is consumed, incrase the ration to ¾ of the normal amount.

On the other hand, if there are leftovers leave them as long as they are not spoiled until the foals clean them up. Start again by placing ½ of the normal ration in the feeder.
As soon as they clean up ½, increase the ration to ¾ and continue to build consumption of the entire ration till it reaches its original level.

The only thing that must be present for this to work is that the foals must have a strong habit of eating in the creep feeder. Then, even if the remaining entrée isn’t entirely to their liking, they will nibble and play with it until they acquire a taste for it.

Now you know how to start your foals on the nutritional road to performance.

• Begin creep feeding between 2 and 4 weeks of age
• Use an 18% percent grain as a creep feed, high in calcium and phosphorus, either by using a custom mix or adding a supplement like milk replacer or soybean oil meal.
• Check feed daily for signs of spoilage
• Begin by feeding 2 lbs of feed per day per foal and build to 10 lbs per day by 6 months of age.

To this add:

• Fresh water at all times
• A worming program starting at 2 months of age and continuing every 6-8 weeks without fail.
• A large pasture where foals can run and play
• A good milking mother who is also being fed properly for maximum milk production.

And by the age of 6 months, your big, strong and healthy foals should be well on their way to becoming the best athletes they can be.