Nutrition can be a complicated subject of amounts, percentages, ratios, guesses and unknowns. However, the results of good nutrition are easily seen: a healthy, energetic, animal with a glossy coat. As the article on Feeding the Adult Horse explains that the horse owner is able to achieve this result by understanding a few basic principles, not by memorizing long nutrition tables. However some folks need to balance diets for special circumstances and for them this table has the digestible energy, crude protein, fiber, calcium, and phosphorus content of the most important nutrients.

The nutrient content of cereal grains and meals varies little. However, forages will vary widely. Thus, those values are approximations. Values are for good quality foodstuffs. Poor quality may lower energy and protein by 50%.