A Teleseminar Worth YOUR time

Get some Facts regarding the IRS and Equestrian Activities

Richard B Dicks
CPA and Horse Business person

This call was LIVE on Wednesday, July 9 It's now in replay. Sign Up Below to listen to the replay!

My favorite topic is Small business and the optimization of Net Income. Many horse owners have erroneous ideas and have listened to Hear-say regarding the Income Tax consequences and advantages offered to the equestrian business person.

Richard B. Dicks, our "CPA Guy" is back, and he's answering your equine business questions:

• "How can I form the business plan that will most help me to make money with horses?"

• "What about legal liability for trail rides, or just having horses as a disabled woman?"

• "What are some pros and cons of forming an LLC?"

• "What are the top three mistakes horse businesses make with their bookkeeping that most affect their profits?"

• "What are the top three mistakes you see horse businesses making - and how can they be prevented?"

• "What are the top three issues you see affecting the equine industry?"

If you run any kind of horse business, or plan on it, you need to be on this call! Ask your question in the "My Burning Questions" area here, and we'll get to them in order.

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Worth every minute of
Your Time
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Some More on Horse Nutrition, the Fall is approaching

Another well presented article about Horse Nutrition and with the cost of feed today, we all want to know we are getting the Best value for our money. Also it is important to consider How You Feed Your Horse.

Take a moment an watch the video below about a product I found at the western States Horse Expo, June 2008. Stable Grazer offer a proper regimen of feed dispersal and SAVES on wasted feed product

Due to the number of questions and concerns I field from horse owners unable to maintain weight on the horses I've written the following to explain feeding guidelines found on feed bags. Also, how to determine what amount your particular horse needs.

Typical Guidelines call for:

Recommended feeding amount is ½ to 1 pound of feed per 100 pound bodyweight.

Feeding amounts may be adjusted slightly to meet the needs of the horse.

Feeding amounts should be split into 2 or more feedings per day.

I.e. a 900 pound horse would need to be fed 4 ½ to 9 pounds per day.

Now comes the tricky part

I know you've all probably heard the terms "easy keeper" and "hard keeper". What that boils down to is the metabolism and energy level of that particular horse. You also have to factor in the size of your horse. A taller horse will weigh more than a shorter or smaller horse. If you have a low energy low metabolism horse you'd go toward the low end. If you have high energy high metabolism horse you'd go toward the high end. The average person is not good at guessing the weight of their horse nor the proper weight their horse should be.

The best judge of your horse is you. If your horse is getting to heavy or losing weight look at the nutritional needs of your horse and see if they are within the guidelines. Use a body scoring chart to see if your horse is within optimum weight range.

I've had people with a small, average and large horse ask me why one is doing well, one is doing okay and one is losing weight. When I ask what they are feeding they answer "one scoop". Here lies the problem.

Different feed weighs different amounts. Also, some people fill the scoop to different levels. You should scoop out your feed and weigh it. Find out exactly what you have been feeding. Then compare that to the guidelines.

In the example above an 800 pound horse, a 1000 pound horse and a 1200 pound horse were being fed 6 pounds of feed daily. It was the appropriate amount for the smaller horse but way to low for the others. The 1200 pound horse guidelines call for 6 to 12 pounds per day. I recommend splitting the difference and seeing how the horse does then increase or decrease according to body condition. If your horse is underweight go to the high end. Just remember, do it gradually and increase their feed no more than 1 pound per meal.

Quick Reference Table Chart

Horses weight _____________Feed bag rec________________Amount to feed horse

800................................................ 4-8 pounds daily ..........................................6 pounds per day

1000............................................ 5-10 pounds daily.......................................7-8 pounds per day

1200.............................................6-12 pounds daily......................................... 9 pounds per day

This is based on an average horse. If your horse is high energy you go to the high side, low energy to the low side average you fall in the middle. Start out with the mid range and adjust accordingly.

Feeding Need To Knows

* An average horse can not utilize more than 5 pounds of feed at one meal. Anything more they are basically just pooping out without being able to utilize the nutrients. This is why feeding horses must be broken down into 2 or more feedings per day.
* In order to achieve the nutrient value on a bag of feed the horse has to consume the pounds required for their size and metabolism or their nutrients are falling short.
* Do not increase a horses feed ration more than 1 pound per meal over a course of a week..
* Do not change a horses feed without mixing it with the new feed for at least 7 to 10 days. Feed changes must be made gradually.
* Do not feed less hay than feed. If a horse is getting 6 pounds of feed they need a minimum of 6 pounds of hay.
* Typically, the average horse should consume 1 bag of feed and 2 bales of hay a week.

Conclusion

The best judge of your horse is you. Feed your horse according to their needs. Stop being of the "scoop" mind and get "pound" wise. Listen to your horse, they can tell you a lot. Don't be afraid to ask questions from someone. If your horse doesn't appear to be doing well to you they probably are not. Get in the habit of observing horses body condition. Rate horses based on a body condition scoring guide. Rate your horse and other horses. Get to know your horse and your horses individual needs.

Horses do not fit into a nice tidy package. They are as different as us in their nutritional needs. Obviously a 5 foot tall person is not going to have to eat as much as a 6 foot tall person to maintain their optimum weight. So goes it with horses. Also, we've all met that person with the high metabolism that seems to be able to eat anything they want and they stay skinny or the person that watches everything they eat and still gains weight. Again, so goes it with horses.

Melody Baum

Peace At Last Farm & Feed

Website http://peaceatlastfarmandfeed.bravehost.com

Myspace http://www.myspace.com/peaceatlastfarmandfeed

My animals health are important to me. That is why I strive to have the highest quality feeds and supplements available for them and my customers. As an extension of that quality service and dependability are of utmost importance to me.

For more information, fun facts, forums, videos and more visit the above websites.

Copyright © Melody Baum, All Rights Reserved

We thank Melody for her fantastic report.
Please visit her site




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Horse Nutrition, some interesting thoughts and Ideas

The Following is a great article regarding Horse Nutrition

Indications are conclusive that nutrition and behavior are closely tied.
May seen obvious but many ignore the circumstances.


At Australian Natural Health and Healing, we believe in natural feeding. This means that if possible, provide your horse with feed as natural as they can be, that is less processed and as close as possible to what a horse would eat naturally.

Of course grass is the most natural feed available. However, our lands are not as prosperous as they used to be and the variety of grass on a small acreage property would be limited. The soil is also likely to be poor in nutrients, meaning that the grass will not be very nutritious, hence the need to provide extra feed.

The closest feed to grass is hay and chaff. It is important to provide plenty of those. There are different types of hay like lucerne, barley, grassy etc.

The important thing here is that you must provide a balanced diet between roughage (hay, chaff, pasture, bran) and concentrate (grains, meals, fats etc). Although chaff is chopped hay, hay as such is a primary ingredient of the diet because it provides longer stems which help in the horse's digestion. When horses do not have access to valuable pasture, or are fed grains, they should be provided with hay or chaff with a minimum of 1% of their body weight to enable efficient digestion (Dr John Kohnke).

Feed should be weighted and not measured in volume because it is the only way you will be able to calculate your horse's intake. If you are using a 2 litre ice-cream container to measure your feed, take 1 measure of each feed, weigh it and record it. On average, a 2 litre container will be about 300g of lucerne chaff, 250g of white chaff etc.

Feed must be free of mould and "unwanted visitors" alive or dead! So it is important to store your feed correctly to avoid any spoilage and contamination. Mould and horses do not agree!!

Whatever ration you establish, you must monitor its effects on your horse and adjust accordingly. For example, if your horse seems to actively seek food after he has been fed, this means he is still hungry and you might need to increase the quantity. If, on the other hand, he has leftovers, then you will need to reduce the quantity. It takes around 3 weeks to see the effect of a particular feed, so if your horse is loosing weight without any apparent reason (you know he is not sick or worm infested), then you will need to re-assess his ration. The same applies if your horse starts behaving strangely.



So lets see how food can affect a horse's behaviour.

A natural diet for a wild horse contains large amount of cellulose fibre from plants that are digested in the large intestine. This natural diet contains very little amount of starch and sugars found in grains and protein in legume plants like lucerne. Starch, sugars and protein overload in the small intestine are a cause of digestive upsets and will "heat up" a horse or cause colics as the feed ferments in this region.

Some horses are so intolerant to starch they cannot eat oaten chaff (yes, there is a little bit of oats in quality oaten chaff). A common feed stuff that is very high in starch is wheat bran with between 30 to 50% starch. If you must feed grains, it is important that you provide plenty of roughage to help with digestion and the amount of grains be minimal.

Synthetic or poor quality vitamins and minerals may also create some unusual reactions, depending how sensitive your horse is. Horses are like people, some react to red cordial, others to lactose, some to red meat etc. Unfortunately there is no black and white answer. It is a matter of trialling something and observe how your pony reacts.

The good news is that once the culprit ingredient is identified and removed from the diet, your horse should return to its normal-self within days.

A good idea is to introduce new feed one by one (if possible) and see how it goes after few days.


Of course there are other factors that might affect your horse's behaviour and they should be eliminated from the equation before blaming its feed. Horses by nature are not mean animals. They do have a hierarchy in their herd and there is always few fights among them. The alpha horse will ensure to maintain its status and will "boss" other around if needs be. This is normal. There are few books written on the subject that might help understand their behaviour within a herd.

An aggressive horse, on the other hand, is not normal. We should ask ourselves questions such as:

* When does this behaviour happen? (feed time? During riding? Etc)
* Has he always been aggressive?
* If he became aggressive suddenly, what happened? We might need to investigate a little
* Was he abused, starved or neglected in the past? Horses have a phenomenal memory and it might take a lot of re-education to change behaviour caused by bad memories!
* Is he in any sort of pain? Like us, some horses are more sensitive to pain than others so a little thing might seem the end of the world for the sensitive ones! This is where we (or a vet) need to check his feet, back, neck, muscular tightness etc. If a horse is unbalanced, even slightly, it may cause some pain in his body and could be the cause for misbehaving. it is true that some horses will endure horrible pain without blinking an eye until they simply fall apart (or down)! This is then a shock to the owner who did not know their horse was hurting. One should take the time to really know their horse and be attuned to them to depict any abnormality. It takes time and patience.
* Does his tack fit properly? Wrong saddles can cause some musculoskeletal issues and make our pony very unhappy!
* If it's a mare, is she in season? Some mares can get extreme during these times!
* Is he badly educated? Have we got a spoiled brat?
* Does he have an ulcer? This is difficult to determine and you will need your vet to run some check-ups. According to scientists, it is very common in horses, especially those who raced or competed as they get highly stressed and their diets might not be the best in terms of digestion. Some symptoms might be sensitivity to some feed stuff, especially starch and proteins, behavioural issues and weight loss. These symptoms alone are not sufficient to provide an accurate diagnostic, so if you suspect your horse has an ulcer, contact your veterinarian who will be able to confirm it and prescribe medication.

* Now, a very simple question which gets overlooked quite often: does he get too much food for his activity level? Food is energy, so if our horse does not use his energy in his activity, he will have some left to spare!!
* Does the horse buck when ridden (regularly)? Bucking takes a lot of effort for horses so there has to be a good reason. Assuming that it is not a horse in breaking, causes for bucking may be a painful saddle, sore back/body/feet, bad memories as explained above, too playful (too much food)?

I guess the first thing to eliminate is any physical health issues whether they are illnesses or injuries. Your veterinarian is the person to contact first and they will be able to refer you to other professionals if needs be, like farriers, chiropractors etc.

Elimination of any ill-fitted tack is the second one. If there is an issue with the saddle then you might need to get a saddle fitter in. It is not expensive and is worth the spending. Better have a good saddle than having a horse that bucks, is sore, unhappy and dangerous.

Any mental issues due to the horse's past are better dealt with the help of professional trainers. Same applies to a badly educated horse. These professionals can help us in re-educating our horse and teach us what to do or not do.

If your horse gets supplements like minerals and vitamins, do a bit of research to see how other horses react to what you are giving yours. It is not uncommon to see a change in behaviour according to supplements given to a horse. Sometimes, it is wise to stop all supplements to see if the horse goes back to a gentler state. It is possible that these supplements might be too concentrate, or of an average quality, or that the horse has some allergic reaction to them, especially if they are synthetic. And sometimes, it might be necessary to only give natural supplements like herbs, dolomite etc.

Minerals and vitamins (supplements) should be given based on what the horse's nutrients requirements. A good start if to check the NRC web site and John Kohnke's book "Feeding Horses in Australia" to understand nutrients and calculate what your horse needs.

For more information on caring for your horse the natural way, visit our web site Australian Natural Health and Healing at http://www.australiannaturalhealing.com

Cass holds a certificate in Aromatherapy and one in Aromatherapy for pets. She is currently studying Flower Essences and Homeopathy for animals.

Cass has also certification in Reiki (level 2), Angel Intuitive, Remedial Techniques, and Higher-self communication.

In a more mundane life, she holds a degree in Information Technology and various other certifications in this field.

Cass came in contact with horses at the age of 6 and was able to acquire her first pony at 12. Since then, a passion was formed and an uncanny bond with horses.

Natural remedies have always been part of her life and she has applied them to her family, pets and friends.

To find more information on natural remedies, therapies, products and care for horses and dogs, visit her web site http://www.australiannaturalhealing.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Cass_Martinez


Martinez, Cass "Horse Feed and Horse Behaviour." Horse Feed and Horse Behaviour. 17 Aug. 2008. EzineArticles.com. 22 Aug 2008 .

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Sweets make young horses harder to train in Montana State study

BOZEMAN, Mont. -- Young horses may be easier to train if they temporarily lay off the sweets, says a Montana State University study where two-year-olds wore pedometers, wrist watches and Ace bandages.

A commercial mixture of corn, oats, barley and molasses -- sometimes called "sweet grain" or "sweet feed" -- gives horses the glossy coat and lively spirit that makes them attractive to prospective buyers, said Jan Bowman, an animal nutritionist at MSU.

But the extra energy provided by sweet grain during the early stages of training made the horses in MSU's study more disobedient and fearful than horses that only ate hay, Bowman said. The grain-eaters spent more time resisting the saddle. They startled easier. They bucked and ran more during training.

Early training, which usually lasts about 30 days, gives young horses the foundation they need for more advanced training, Bowman said. They learn to move sideways on command, for example. They learn how to move their front or hind feet in any direction.

"Results suggest that trainers under time constraints could increase their training effectiveness during the early stages of training by not feeding excess dietary energy," Wade Black wrote in a paper that will be submitted later this year to the "Journal of Animal Science."

Black -- a horse trainer, instructor for the MSU Colt Starting class and one of Bowman's graduate students -- came up with the idea for the study when he was an undergraduate in her equine nutrition class, Bowman said. She and Black then conducted experiments during the summer of 2007. Black presented their findings to the American Society of Animal Science in June this year. He is still analyzing some of the data to see how the grain affected the horses' adrenaline during training.

The study involved 12 closely-related quarter horses that came from one Idaho ranch, Bowman said. Black trained the horses for three weeks, five days a week at MSU's Miller Livestock Pavilion. Half the horses ate only hay. The hay was a mixture of grass and alfalfa. The other horses ate five pounds of sweet grain a day in addition to the hay. Both groups ate as much hay and drank as much water as they wanted.

Each horse wore a pedometer adjusted to its stride and attached with an Ace bandage to its left front leg above the knee, Bowman said. Each horse also had a combination wristwatch-heart monitor hanging from its saddle. The watch displayed minimum, maximum and mean heart rates detected by an electrode belt.

Black trained the animals for 30 or 40 minutes a day without knowing which animal had eaten grain and which one hadn't, Bowman said. She and Black then recorded heart rates and the number of steps the horses took during training. They scored behaviors like obedience, get-up-and-go and separation anxiety.

Horses that ate both grain and hay became more upset when they were separated from the herd, Bowman said. They whinnied more and were livelier and less submissive than the horses that ate only hay.

The study doesn't mean that trainers should keep grain away from horses forever, Bowman said. They might consider withholding it just during the early weeks of training.

"We don't want to give the impression that you should starve them in order to enhance their good behavior," Bowman said. "That's not the point of it."

Wade wrote in his paper that, "Horses, being ridden by less experienced riders, need to be calm and easy to handle, characteristics that may be enhanced by more effective early training."

Bowman noted that all of the horses in MSU's study gained weight during the study. It didn't matter if they ate hay alone or hay with grain.

Contact: Evelyn Boswell
evelynb@montana.edu
406-994-5135
Montana State University