University launches equine nutrition app

HorseRATION is the first app to be aimed specifically at equine nutrition and allows the user to accurately calculate the amount of feed their horse needs. Taking into account weight, workload, body condition score, behaviour and health status, the app is able to guide horse owners towards the most suitable diet for their horse or pony, which will avoid various nutritional-related health problems including obesity.

“HorseRATION is the result of an Apps Challenge held for staff and students last year to transform research based ideas into mobile app concepts.” Equine nutritionist Catherine Hale, who is in the final year of her PhD at Aberystwyth, is looking at novel ways to improve energy utilisation in horses and won the Apps Challenge with her idea for horseRATION.

She explains, “I see horses on a daily basis that are suffering from various nutrition-related problems and where the welfare of the horse could be easily improved by simply changing the diet. horseRATION ascertains all the information needed to calculate a diet. “We have included tips throughout the app that help users to answer all the questions needed to form the ration. The app will calculate weight and provide visual prompts to help horse owner decide on their horse’s body condition. And as it can all be done on your iPhone, it is really easy to do out on the yard.”

There are two versions of horseRATION available – a free version and a paid-for version. The free version will help owners calculate the amount of forage needed by the horse, whereas the full version includes hard (concentrate) feed calculations as well for the complete picture. Both versions offer tips on how to keep your horse well fed as well as health check information.  The paid-for version (£4.99) goes that extra step and allows the user to save information about several horses, save and recall the feed amount, export the information to an e-mail and set reminders in a person’s phone calendar.

More information can be found on the website: mobilefarmapps.com