Understand the numbers in your roughage analysis

Understand your roughage analysis – easy and concrete

Many people start by looking at sugar – and that makes sense.
But if you want to feed accurately, it is also important to understand dry matter and crude protein .
Here you get a quick overview – calculated per 1 kg of wrap or hay .

What is dry matter?
Dry matter is what is in the feed that is not water – that is, the nutrients that the horse uses.

Example with 70% dry matter:
1 kg wrap =
• 700 g dry matter
• 300g water

All numbers in the analysis – e.g. sugar and protein – are stated per 1 kg of dry matter , not per 1 kg of wrap.
Therefore, you need to calculate them to know what your horse is actually getting .

Example: 1 kg wrap with 70% dry matter, 8% crude protein and 9% sugar

This is what it looks like:

This means that: 1 kg of this wrap gives your horse 56 g of protein and 63 g of sugar.


How much wrap should the horse have?

Horses in maintenance usually need:

1.5 kg dry matter per 100 kg body weight per day

Example:
A 400 kg horse should have:
4 x 1.5 kg = 6 kg of dry matter daily

If the wrap contains 70% dry matter, this corresponds to:
6 kg ÷ 0.70 = approx. 8.6 kg wrap per day

If the horse is frugal, part of the dry matter requirement can be covered with straw.
This can be a good solution if the horse easily becomes overweight or needs a lower energy intake.

But straw contains very little protein, so the total protein intake will decrease.
Therefore, you should adjust with a protein-rich supplement such as soy meal or alfalfa.

How much protein does the horse need?

A horse needs approximately 1.5 g of crude protein per kg of body weight .

Example:
400 kg x 1.5 g = 600 g protein per day

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Does the horse get enough protein?

1 kg of the above wrap provides 56 g of protein →
8.6 kg wrap x 56 g = 481.6 g crude protein

But the horse needs 600 g →

This means that approximately 120 g of protein is missing , which must be covered, for example, by soy meal.

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How much sugar can a frugal horse have?

When feeding a frugal horse – for example, a pony, a frugal breed or a horse with EMS, PSSM or laminitis – it is extra important to keep sugar intake low.

• Sugar:
  Max. 1 g per kg body weight per day – and preferably down to 0.5 g

A 400 kg horse should therefore not get more than approximately 300–400 g of sugar daily – from everything it is fed, including what it gets in the manger.

How much sugar does the horse get from this wrap?
When the wrap contains 9% sugar in dry matter, and if the horse is fed 8.6 kg of wrap per day, the horse gets approximately 542 g of sugar daily .

⚠️ Important:

The wrap in the example exceeds the recommendation for a frugal horse, which is 300–400 g of sugar per day at 400 kg body weight.

➤ Therefore, in that case you should:

• Cut down on the amount of this wrap
• Substitute something with a lower sugar content , such as spring barley straw, which is a good supplement for frugal horses.
  It helps to lower energy intake – but since straw contains virtually no protein, it is important to supplement with, for example, soybean meal and/or alfalfa .
• Or find a wrap with a lower sugar percentage, e.g. 6%, it looks like this :
• A horse that is fed 8.6 kg of wrap with 6% sugar in dry matter and 70% dry matter will consume approximately 361 g of sugar per day. 

🔚 Conclusion

The most important thing is to aim for a low sugar content in the feed.
Because you can easily balance the feeding with straw and a protein-rich supplement such as soy meal and/or alfalfa, so the horse stays slim - and still gets what it needs.