In tune with your horse's nature...
Connollys RED MILLS horse feeds are made using only highly nutritious ingredients including cereals, super fibres and oils. We do not use lower grade ingredients or fillers. With RED MILLS products you can feed your horse in the most natural way, with small easy to digest meals making for a healthier horse and better performance.
Pure Nutrition – working hand in hand with nature
Little and Often
The horse is a herbivore that evolved to graze for around 18 hours every day, in order to cater for a very small stomach. When stabling a horse it is important to provide plenty of good forage to keep their stomach and digestive system health.
When feed concentrates such as cubes, mixes or straight cereals it is important to feed as many small meals a day as possible.
The Stomach
The stomach naturally secretes acids to begin the break down of the food into smaller particles. Grazing or eating forages stimulates production of saliva that helps buffer the stomach acid and keep the stomach healthy at an optimum pH.
Restriction of forage is one of the key factors in the development of gastric ulcers. A horse should eat a minimum of 1.5% of its bodyweight in forage (dry matter) each a day.
The Small Intestine
Cereals, cubes and mixes are digested in the small intestine and provide the horse with energy, proteins, oils, vitamins and minerals. The feed moves through the small intestine in a matter of hours, so it is important to feed a highly digestible feed to get the most nutrition for your horse.
All Connolly’s RED MILLS feeds are carefully cooked. We use steam flaking, extrusion and double pelleting to ensure we achieve maximum digestibility in all of our feeds. Our on site laboratory monitors the YSI – cook value. Our unique process directly benefits your horse through optimum digestion in the small intestine. If the food is not digested properly it flows through to the large intestine where it can cause problems such as laminitis, colics and ‘bad behaviour’, as undigested particles encourage the growth of bad bacteria and unbalances the digestive system.
The Large Intestine.
Forages and super fibres are digested in the large intestine by bacteria. Forage are not just for satisfying the horses appetite, but are a good source of energy and some vitamins. The best sources of fibre for your horse are grass, hay and haylage. In our feed we use Super Fibres that are fibre sources with a higher energy content, such as soya bean hulls and sugar beet pulp that offer an alternative source of energy to cereals. You should provide good grass, hay or haylage for your horse every day.
