Frequently Asked Questions

Equi Feed is our feed value analysis, specially developed for horses. Equi Feed gives you accurate and valuable insight into the nutrient composition of your roughage to help you create a balanced diet for a healthy horse.

High quality forage fulfils most of your horse's basic needs. By analysing the forage, you can adjust and balance the horse’s diet based on the results of the analysis. You will have insight into the quality of the forage – and, if necessary, you can then supplement the feed with concentrate or supplements.

When would it be beneficial to analyse your forage? It is recommended to analyse your forage when you are in one of the following situations:

When a new batch of roughage arrives, either when purchased or after harvesting the hay from your own land.

• If you are a wholesaler or dealer selling roughage to horse owners.
• If you would like to feed a balanced and appropriate diet to your horse, keeping your horse healthy and fit.
• If you would like to take your training to the next level by better supporting your horse with quality forage.
• If you have a horse with health problems.
• If you are the owner of a horse with insulin resistance, prone to laminitis or suffering from another metabolic-related disease.
• If you have broodmares or growing horses that you would like to support.
• If you own a horse with high energy or digestible protein needs.
• If you have a boarding stable or equestrian centre with a wide range of different horses with different needs.

The horse’s health, from a nutritional point of view, is based on four aspects: the nutritional value, fibrous-, mineral- and trace element content of the forage. These four aspects are related to each other and should be balanced. Therefore, nutritional value, fibrous-, mineral- and trace element content of the forage can be seen as pieces of a puzzle. Each parameter analysed within Equi Feed will contribute to a piece of the puzzle. When missing one piece of the puzzle, you will miss out on an opportunity to balance your horse’s diet to maintain or even improve your horse’s health.

Equi Feed offers a Professional, Premium and Basis package to analyse your forage:

• Equi Feed Professional gives you a complete overview of the composition of your forage including the nutritional value, fibrous-, mineral- and trace element content of your forage. This package gives you all the tools to compose a complete and balanced diet for your horse. This package could be recommended for all horses but especially for horses with health issues, or horses with higher metabolic requirements such as sport horses, growing horses, mares in gestation and lactating mares.
• Equi Feed Premium gives you an overview of the nutritional value, fibrous- and mineral content of your forage. This package could be recommended if trace elements are not specifically necessary to know for the circumstances of your horse, but you would still like to have a solid foundation for composing your horse’s diet.
• Equi Feed Basis would give you a basis overview on the nutritional value and fibrous content of your forage. This package could be recommended if limited information on the forage content is enough. For example, when choosing between different batches when purchasing new forage.

Equi Feed offers a Professional, Premium and Basis package to analyse your fresh grass, hay or haylage. Choosing the right type of forage is very important since the database to analyse the results, the target values and therefore the results themselves are different for fresh grass, hay and haylage. Within haylage, the forage is sealed off from air and in combination with moist within the forage, bacteria have the opportunity to start processing the forage which we call fermentation. The bacteria will cause the formation of ammonia and acids from crude protein followed by a change in pH. After 4 to 6 weeks, the process of fermentation is finished and the bales will become stable. If the forage is not wrapped or if the forage is wrapped with >70% dry matter, the forage is called hay. Since this type of forage has a higher dry matter content compared to haylage, bacteria have no chance to process the forage and fermentation will not occur. Therefore, hay will be stable shortly after collecting the bales.

After receiving the results, a document explaining the meaning and the functions of all parameters on the report will be available for you.

Within 10 working days after Eurofins has received the sample, you will receive a clear analysis report via email, detailing the composition of the roughage.

The target values for the Equi Feed results are based on the Nutrient Requirements of Horses (NRC 2007), the CVB feed evaluation system (CVB 2016, CVB 2023) and the average analysis results analysed by Eurofins over the last five years.

Crude ash is the inorganic part of the organic matter of the forage. The crude ash fraction in forage contains the total value for minerals and contaminants such as soil or sand within the forage. When drying the forage sample at high temperature for analysis, the minerals that have not been fully absorbed in organic matter and the sand remain. By adding up the mineral content of the forage and extract this from the crude ash part of the forage, the sand within the forage remains. When the machines used for mowing and harvesting the grass are not adjusted correctly, this can affect a higher amount of soil or sand within the forage causing a higher crude ash within the forage. Also fertilizing the pasture just before mowing the grass can affect the crude ash part of the forage since the minerals in the fertilizer did not have the time to be absorbed in organic matter. 

Equi Feed is analysed using the NIRS method. Near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) for solid materials was developed in the 1960s. Eurofins started with the NIRS system for forage in 1986. NIRS allows for fast, quantitative, non-destructive, and cost-effective estimation of multiple physical, biological and chemical forage characteristics from the same spectral data once sufficient large data databases have been established. This method is based on official wet chemistry methods providing constant validation for the NIRS method.

On the first page of the report, you will find a general advice if the forage will be a good fit for your horse. These are guidelines for a 600 kg horse based on different metabolic needs in different circumstances according to the NRC (2007) and CVB (2016). Please be aware that you need to contact your veterinarian if your horse is showing signs of disease. We recommend using a calculation program or contact a feed adviser to make a feed plan for your horse covering all the needs it has for the level of use.

You can take a representable sample by following checklist below:

Fill in the order form with the correct email address, personal details and information about the sample to analyse.
Gather the completed order form, a bucket, a plastic bag and a cardboard box.
When sampling wrapped bales of forage, make an opening inside the plastic so that a forage sample can be taken. When making a hole inside the plastic, take into account that you have to re-seal the plastic after taking the sample to maintain the quality of the forage.
Pull tufts of hay from the batch of hay or haylage and put it in the bucket. Make sure you get the whole strain of forage without selecting to include all material in the sample (leaf and stem of the plant) to get a representative sample. It is important to pull tufts on different randomly chosen places and various depths from several bales of the batch meaning not to take tufts only from the surface.
Take the plastic bag.
Fill the plastic bag with 250 grams of forage. In case of haylage with a very low DM, fill the bag with more forage (maximum 400 grams).
Put some pressure on the plastic bag to release as much air as possible from the bag and tie the plastic bag shut.
After taking a wrapped forage sample, it is important to re-seal the bales immediately with tape after taking the sample to maintain the quality of the forage.
Put the bag with the order form in the cardboard box.
Write the address on top of the box.
Bring your package to a package delivery service as soon as possible.
Your package will be brought to our laboratory, within 10 working days after receiving your sample at our laboratory you will receive the results of the analysis on your email.

To get the most accurate analysis results for haylage bales, the forage sample should be taken 4 to 6 weeks after haylage is harvested. Hay samples can be taken shortly after collecting the hay bales. Do not harvest and/or sample forage within 6 weeks after fertilizing the field. After taking the sample, it is important to send the sample as soon as possible to guarantee a qualitative result. Nevertheless, it is best to send the sample in the beginning of the week.