Can Horses Eat Sweet Potato?

Can horses eat sweet potatoes? This is a question that you may be asking yourself. The answer is yes, you can feed sweet potatoes to your horses. Trying something else for your horse will be a great idea. It will definitely break the monotony and introduce something different to the diet of your horses. Having never fed sweet potatoes to horses before, you might be a little bit skeptical of how to go about it. You don’t have to worry because in this article, you’ll get some valuable information about sweet potatoes.

How healthy are sweet potatoes?

Now that you know that horses can eat sweet potatoes, it’s good to understand how healthy they are. Nowadays, not every food you feed your horse contains the essential nutrients for its healthy development. The good news is that sweet potatoes contain the nutrients required to help your horse grow healthy. They contain sugar, proteins, fiber, and vitamins necessary for healthy development. You would like your horses to live a longer, healthy life, right? You can achieve that by feeding them with sweet potatoes.

Here are some of the vitamins that horses get from consuming sweet potatoes:

  • Vitamin E: If you’ll like your horses to develop the ability to prevent infections, this is the nutrient you need and sweet potatoes have it in rich supply. This nutrient is also good for the development of healthy skin for your horse.
  • Vitamin C: If you understand the importance of a strong immune system, then you know why your horse needs one. Sweet potatoes have the capacity to provide you with the vitamin responsible for boosting your immune system as well as helping with the faster healing of wounds.
  • Potassium: This is among the most important nutrients that your horses need for their bodies. As you feed your horses with sweet potatoes, you’ll be giving their bodies the ability to strengthen their muscles. As you probably know, horses need strong muscles because of their athletic nature. After a lot of exercises, horses need to restore the strength of their muscles and this can be made possible by feeding them with sweet potatoes.
  • Vitamin B5: This is yet another nutrient that you can extract from sweet potatoes for your horse. Digestion is a process that carries a great deal of significance for the healthy development of your horses. Just because it is an essential process doesn’t mean that it happens automatically. You need to feed them with foods that aid in the process, and sweet potatoes happen to be one of them.

How should you prepare the food?

This is an important question. Now that you know that horses can eat sweet potatoes and the nutrients you expect to get from them, you also need to know how you can feed them with this rich food. Should you cook them or give them raw? The answer to this question is that you can opt for either option as you start to experiment with the diet. In fact, both options are okay. What you need to do is to observe your horses carefully and see what they prefer. If it is cooked sweet potatoes, then stick with that. If it’s raw ones, stick with that as well. They may also respond well for both options. The bottom-line is that both cooked and raw sweet potatoes are good for horses.

It’s valuable to take note of the following facts about cooked vs raw sweet potatoes. If the teeth of your horse are soft or you notice any dental problems, the best option is the cooked one. This will take care of any chewing problems that may arise. Again, if you would like your horses to enjoy the benefit of consuming a large amount of nutrients, the best option is giving them raw sweet potatoes. When you cook the sweet potatoes, there are nutrients that get lost because of exposure to heat.

Now back to the question-can horses eat sweet potato? It’s clear that it’s possible for horses to eat sweet potato. They are a valuable addition to the list of foods you can prepare for them. The amount of nutrients contained in this food is enough for you to consider it for your beloved friends.