Disciplines of equestrian sports can greatly vary in terms of energy consumption, taking into account the features of the flow of metabolic processes during work of different load types and levels. The purpose of the study is to evaluate and compare energy needs of horses, involved in various classical disciplines of equestrian sports in the field. The research material are diets and assessment results of horses’ fatness and workloads (n = 51) undergoing training and performing in show-jumping, dressage and triathlon. The energy and dry matter content in the diet was determined taking into account the total feed amount, consumed by each horse. We calculate the workload level by the average value of the cardiac beat. To assess the horse’s condition as an indicator determining the balance between energy consumption and expenditure, we have used Dr. Henneke’s methodology. We assess the reliability using the Student’s t-test. The result was considered reliable at p < 0.05. The horses’ fatness from the dressage group was on average slightly higher than of representatives of other disciplines, but when statistically processing the results, the differences turned out to be unreliable (p > 0.05). The diet volume, determined by the consumption of dry matter, did not significantly differ in horses used in different disciplines of classical equestrian sports. The energy consumption with the diet at the same load level in dressage and triathlon horses was approximately at the same level – on average 23.5 megajoule per 100 kg of body weight, and in show-jumper horses it turned out to be significantly lower (by 9–12%). At the same time, the average fatness of show-jumper horses did not differ significantly from the level of dressage and triathlon horses and corresponded to the average value of the norm (5 points)
Keywords
diet, Feeding horses, exchange energy, condition, workload, dressage, show-jumping, triathlon