Silage Insights - Testimonials
Optimising Results in Arabian Performance Horses with Haylage

Background
Sarah spent her early career in horseracing, but moved into endurance racing twelve years ago.  Since then, she has since spent much time abroad training high-stamina Arabian horses in their native Middle East, particularly Dubai.  She has represented Great Britain for the last four seasons on the same horse, Ibn Aswana, competing in the World Equestrian Games in  Jerez, Spain.

Despite her passion for disciplines, horseracing and endurance racing, present different challenges, which require Sarah to be flexible in her approach to training.  As she explains: "A horse being prepared for an endurance race over 160km would be required to train for a gruelling 20km a day, with a training ride of 50km every fortnight.  Whilst endurance horses need to maintain a focused and consistent speed over long distances, racehorses, by comparison, are trained at higher speeds for shorter time periods."

Metabolic Stability
Although these two individual sports have contrasting exercise methods, Sarah has always believed that ensuring the metabolic stability of horses is the key to delivering fitness and success in both endurance and horseracing.  She stresses that feed needs to be used intelligently, in response to the horse's performance goals.  "I always use haylage as the staple feed for both my racehorses and endurance horses, primarily because it guarantees a consistently excellent nutritional value, quality and weight.  Haylage is great for a balanced diet as it is very high in protein, providing a streamlined, steady release of energy."

When her endurance horses are competing, Sarah also offers them hay additionally, to maximise their consumption: "On race days, they must arrive with a full tank of fuel. I give them haylage prior to performance in order to supply a stream of slow-release energy and then offer a supplement of long-stemmed hay nearer to the ride, to ensure they get a high level of fat to convert into energy during the race".

An aid to travel
For Sarah, haylage is particularly invaluable when her horses are travelling internationally, for instance when she is moving horses to Spain or Dubai for training purposes.  Not only does haylage limit the damaging effects of dust, it allows trainers to regulate the amount of forage that their horses consume. This nutritional stability is especially important in times of transit, which can be very destabilising for animals.  When Sarah's horses travel to Dubai, it can take up to a year for them to acclimatise which is manifested by a visible change to hoof and coat growth.  Haylage is also far preferable to the forage that is available in desert terrain. When horses are sent out to paddock in this type of habitat, many have to be routinely treated by vets, for ingesting large quantities of sand.

When asked her top tip for keeping horses fit and successful, Sarah's answer is simple: "It is important to remember to take out what you put in.  The more you feed a horse, the more you need to exercise them. Haylage is a better feed than hay in this respect; it has a higher and more consistent nutritional quality, which is concentrated over a smaller area, so trainers are able regulate and control a horse's consumption levels in a much more precise way."

Sarah's Career to Date
 Sarah was born with horseracing in her blood; her father won the prestigious Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1969 and her mother was a champion point-to-point jockey.  It was only natural that Sarah would follow in their footsteps - she rode her first winner at 16 and has since ridden over 500 winning horses in Europe. Sarah started training Arabians in 1986 with her first Arabian horse, Madrid, and went on to become a champion Arabian racehorse trainer and jockey ten times, breeding over twenty winners worldwide. In 1995, she turned her attention to endurance racing, travelling abroad to compete in many international competitions in the Middle East, Europe and South Africa.  Key successes to date have included her participation in the World Endurance Championships in Dubai and finishing 12th in the Qatar Marathon in 1996. Sarah has also had many good placings in the United Arab Emirates, including 7th in the Presidents Cup.  Sarah is currently training in Spain, preparing her horse, Takhar, for European Championship Endurance in September.

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