This article explores the when, why, and how of feeding an equine ration balancer. It will also hopefully dispel some common myths and provide some tips to help you decide which balancer might be most suitable for your horse.

Good equine nutrition is all about balance. While many horses don’t need the calories provided by complementary feed (mixes and cubes), they do require essential nutrients. This is where a balancer comes into the diet.

What Is a Balancer?

Balancers are nutrient dense feeds (usually pellets) designed to provide a concentrated supply of vitamins, minerals, and amino acids. Therefore, they are fed in small meals. Due to the low feeding rate, they typically contribute minimal calories, starch, and sugar to the diet, making them ideal for good doers/ easy keepers. This includes those equids prone to excitability and laminitis.

Some balancers include added functional ingredients such as pro- and pre-biotics for digestive support or glucosamine and MSM to help support joint health.

Keep in mind that the recommended amount of the typical balancer is approximately 4-6 times lower in energy (calories) than the recommended amount of a low-calorie mix or cube.

Feeding Rate

Most pelleted balancers are designed to be fed at rate of around 500g per day for a 500kg horse in the UK (1-1.5 pounds per day for a 1,100-pound horse in the US) when fed alongside a forage-only diet.

The feeding rate for breeding stock is normally higher (whether using a breeding-specific product or a ‘regular’ balancer). This is due to the high level of protein and amino acids required for fetal development, lactation, and growth. Balancers still contribute significantly less calories to the diet than traditional ‘stud’ or breeding feeds.

If you are feeding a balancer alongside another feed containing vitamins and minerals, you should reduce the amount accordingly. For example, feeding half the recommended amount of balancer alongside half the recommended amount of compound feed generally works well. Owners should make sure that the additional calories provided by the complimentary feed are needed! If concerned, check with your nutrition adviser.

When Should a Balancer Be Fed?

Balancers are ideal for horses and ponies that maintain weight easily (or too easily!) on forage alone. They also are a great way of topping up vitamin and mineral intake in those animals that maintain weight easily on less than the recommended amount of complementary feed (or other feeds containing added vitamins and minerals).

They are also a useful option if you prefer to use feeds without added vitamins and minerals as the main ‘bucket feed.’ Those feeds might be alfalfa or grass products (chopped or pelleted), soaked sugar beet pulp, or chopped hay.

Why Are Balancers Necessary?

Forage-only diets can easily meet or exceed energy (calorie) requirements for good doers. However, they might fall short of providing key nutrients such as copper, zinc, selenium, vitamin E, and lysine. For example:

  • Vitamin E is a powerful antioxidant, essential for supporting muscle and immune health. Free access to green pasture might provide sufficient (although not necessarily optimum) amounts of vitamin E to meet maintenance or work requirements. However, levels in hay and haylage might be negligible.
  • Beta-carotene (which gives carrots their orange colour) in forage is predominantly converted to vitamin A in the small intestine. It also can be converted to some extent in other tissues such as the liver. Horses with access to grazing are unlikely to be deficient in vitamin A. Hay and haylage cannot  be relied upon to meet requirements. It’s been reported that approximately 80% of the beta-carotene in hay is lost during harvest, with levels continuing to decline by around 6-7% per month of storage.
  • Even free access to average grazing might fall short of providing adequate copper, zinc, and selenium to meet requirements. The selenium content of forages might be high in some parts of the world. Contact a nutrition advisor before feeding a selenium-providing balancer if you have any concerns.
  • The quality of protein in UK hay/ haylage—and in particularly the level of lysine—might be low, even if the crude protein or ‘total protein content’ is not.

While forage-only diets are unlikely to provide a balanced diet for any horse, nutrient intake might be particularly compromised in overweight horses and good doers. This is because cutting back on calories might involve one or more of the following (all of which can result in a lower intake of key nutrients):

  • Restricting or removing grazing
  • Feeding lower nutritional value forage
  • Feeding soaked hay—soaking results in some loss of vitamins, minerals, and soluble protein
  • Feeding straw as a partial replacement for hay/ haylage.

Protein and Amino Acids

The quality of protein in the diet is as important as the amount. Proteins are made up building blocks called amino acids. Protein quality is determined by the profile of amino acids.

There are 21 total amino acids, 9 of which are called ‘essential’ because they can’t be produced by the body and must be provided in the diet.

Dietary protein is broken down into amino acids then rebuilt (protein synthesis) to form proteins that are needed by the body. For protein synthesis to occur, amino acids need to be present at a specific ratio. If a certain key amino acid is deficient, protein synthesis is limited, even if all other amino acids are over-supplied.

Think of it a little like the English language. Thousands of different words are formed from an alphabet of only 26 letters. But, in a game of Scrabble, you can’t make the word ‘horse’ if you haven’t got the letter ‘e’ available, regardless of how many other letters you have.

Of all the essential amino acids, lysine is considered most important and the one most likely to be deficient in the equine diet. Lysine plays many essential roles, including supporting muscle building, maintenance, and repair.

The Truth About ‘Lite’ Balancers

You could be forgiven for thinking that ‘lite’ means lower in calories. However, ‘lite balancers’ are not significantly lower in calories than any other balancer when fed at the recommended amount (UK stud balancers are an exception to this rule). However, some ‘lite balancers’ might have additional benefits to offer.

If your horse is overweight, look for products specifically formulated to balance a calorie restricted-diet. That might include diets based on restricted forage, soaked hay, or where straw is used as a partial forage replacer.

On the other hand, you should consider balancers without probiotic live yeast for overweight horses. Live yeast might help to improve fibre digestion in the hindgut. While this might sound like a good thing, improving digestive efficiency yields more calories!

In fact, recent research found that in weight loss-resistant ponies, microflora involved in fibre digestion might adapt to become more prevalent/more efficient!

Balancers Are Not Conditioning!

The term ‘condition’ can mean different things to different people. To some, ‘condition’ might encompass topline as well as skin, coat, and hoof health. But, when it comes to diet, ‘condition’ means fat coverage and ‘conditioning’ feeds are designed to promote weight gain or maintenance in those with high energy (calorie) requirements.

While some balancers might contain the same level of calories as a conditioning feed on a weight-for-weight basis, they still contribute minimal calories to the diet when fed at the recommended amount.

Balancers vs Vitamin and Mineral Supplements

If you’ve ever found yourself questioning the difference between a balancer and a vitamin and mineral supplement, you’re not alone. It’s a common point of confusion.

  • Format: Balancers normally come in pellet form while vitamin and mineral supplements are often a powder. This means balancers can be fed on their own (although they are often fed alongside a chaff (short chopped fibre). On the other hand, vitamin and mineral supplements need to be mixed into a small amount of feed.
  • Nutrient supply: Balancers provide amino acids such as lysine, while vitamin and mineral supplements contain very few (if any) amino acids.
  • Feeding rate: In the UK, most pelleted balancers are designed to be fed at about 500g per day for a 500kg horse vs approximately 40-150g for a powdered vitamin and mineral supplement. That difference sometimes leaves owners concerned about feeding unnecessary calories. Although pelleted balancers do provide more calories, the difference this makes to the overall diet is negligible in most cases, especially for those with access to grazing.

Balancers for Laminitics

The combined starch and sugar content in a balancer might seem high when compared to other feeds designed for laminitis. That sometimes leaves owners questioning the balancer’s safety.

The high protein content might cause concern to owners of laminitic horses. However, several scientific studies (listed below) have shown that non-structural carbohydrate (NSC)—or ‘starch and sugar’—is the main driver for an increased insulin response to feed, not protein.

When it comes to starch and sugar, it’s important to consider the feeding rate and not just the amount per kilo or percentages. Because of the low feeding rate of a balancer, the amount of starch and sugar consumed from a balancer is very low. For example:

  • A balancer with a combined starch and sugar content of 15% provides 75g of starch and sugar when fed at about 500g per day;
  • A feed with a combined starch and sugar content of 5% provides 150g of starch and sugar when fed at 3kg per day.

However, balancers (and any other ‘bucket feed’) for severely insulin dysregulated horses and ponies should be divided into multiple small meals. Since every horse/pony is an individual, it might be beneficial to test an individual’s insulin response to their own feed and forage. Speak to your vet for more advice.

Scientific Studies

Further Reading

  • Sarah Nelson
    As Product Manager for SPILLERS, Sarah Nelson is responsible for the technical management of all SPILLERS products, including recipe formulation.
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