What better than treats made with love for our loves.
Sorry, it will be long... ^^"
It's my first time to cook horse treats, I searched a lot of informations on internet for cook the best treats for Swann and the much healthy for her.
It's important for me to explain my choice before to tell you my easy recipes.
Let's start it!
First the ingredients:
The flour:
Never use wheat flour, wheat is absolutely not good for horses health this can cause some problems because the horses is not made to digest this food, and the gluten who are in this flour is bad too, you need to use flour without gluten or less than possible.
You can use this flours:
- Buckwheat flour (0% Gluten)
- Chestnut flour (0% Gluten)
- Little spelled flour (Less Gluten)
- Flaxseed flour (0% Gluten)
Sugar or Honey:
I don't use sugar, I prefer to use honey, is sweet and better for the health with many benefits (vitamines, soothing, relieving, invigorating, stimulating, healing ...) it depend of the honey you choose and the quality.
- Acacia honey: calming, restoring, intestinal regulator
- Buckthoot honey: improves transit, relieve gastritis.
- Chestnut honey: improves blood circulation.
- Eucalyptus honey: good for respiratory tract.
- Scrubland honey: tonic and invigorating.
- Thyme honey: general antiseptic, stimulates the digestive functions, toning, facilitates physical recovery + the best healing!
- Linden honey: promotes sleep, calms headaches and various pains.
Cereals or Seeds:
Recently I have been trying to reduce the amount of cereals in Swann's food, because I read an interesting document about the effect of the cereals on the horse organisme and it's not always good for their health, it's another subject of post.
You can use this seeds:
- Flaxseeds.
- Sunflowers seeds (shelled).
Fruits, Vegetable & Co:
You can use all the fruits and vegetables you can, like: apple, banana, carrots, pear, celery, beet, chestnut, hazelnut, eglantine (rosehip), barm, eucalyptus, thyme, fennel ...
Oils:
If I need to had a oil on my recipe I will choose special horses oil, becacuse it special for them and I will be sure it's good for the health.
- Flawseed oil: good for all.
- Black cumin oil: good for the respiratory tract.
- Evening primrose oil: good for the skin problem (irritation, inflammation ...)
- Milk Thistle oil: acts positively on the liver.
- ...
Others ingredients:
- For the Apples recipe you can replace the water with apple juice, take attention of the quality of the apple juice to not be too sweet and healthy ingredients.
- You can add the food complement of your horse on the recipe but take attention of the quantity, it will be necessary to make a calculation by portion and dose of complement.
Now the recipe:
Fruits/Vegetables recipe:
- 2 Apples or 2 Banana or 2-4 fruit/vegetable of your choice.
- 1 little spoon of honey.
- 230g/8.11oz approx. of flour.
- 50ml to 100ml of water.
- 50g/1.76oz seeds of your choice.
Honey recipe:
- 2-4 big spoon of honey.
- 230g/8.11oz approx. of flour.
- 50ml to 100ml of water.
- 50g/1.76oz seeds of your choice.
For my treats batch I used:
1st batch: 2 apples / buckthoot honey / buckweath flour / flaxseed / water.
2nd batch: 2 bananas / buckthoot honey / buckweath flour / flaxseed / water.
3rd batch: 3 big spoon / buckthoot honey / buckweath flour / flaxseed / water.
During the preparation of the ingredients turn the oven at 180 ° C (356°F?) approx.
Cut the fruits/vegetables, be care to not cut your fingers! And for fruits like banana do a "porridge" and for the others fruits/vegetable try to do the smallest pieces possible, I used an electric chopper for the apples.
Mix all the ingredients until you have a nice paste, if it is too sticky or liquid add flour as you go // For the water add to the dough as you go.
After you need to do smalls balls and flatten them it will cook faster.
Cook approx. 40-50 minutes.
It's done!
They need to be hard, it's better for the horses teeth and health.
If the middle of the treats are not perfectly cooked, just let stay 1 day in a dry piece.
It's normal if you don't sent the fruits sent because of the flour and because it's without aroma & additive.
Be careful they don't keep as much as industrial treats.
It was my firts time to cook and it was funny, Swann liked my first batch of Honey treats, tomorrow it will be the test of the Bananas and Apples treats.