Time to Change Traditional Ways of Feeding Your Horse

There are a lot of choices when feeding horses. Chances are that if 100 horse feeders were lined up, there would also be 100 different ways to feed horses. But the best way to fuel a horse may also be the most simple. This is certainly the case for the easy-keeping retirement horse maintained on pasture, but research supports that this also holds true for high performance athletes across the spectrum of the equine industry.

Tradition dictates that the modern domesticated horse needs some longstem fiber source, such as hay for bulk, but that the majority of the “real nutrition” must come from grains, fortified concentrates or complete feeds. However, we now know that the real question is what, if anything, the forage is lacking that needs to be balanced for optimal wellness. Forage as the foundation, or entirety, of the diet is the healthiest feeding choice for horses.

Implementing a Forage-Based Diet 1 Exhaust your forage first — pasture & quality grass hay

2 Use higher-energy forages, such as alfalfa or haylage

3 Balance with a vitamin and mineral supplement

Back to Basics

Change is hard. To feel confident enough to break away from traditional feeding practices, it is necessary to understand how the digestive tract of the horse is specifically designed to operate on a forage-only diet. The horse has evolved as a grazing animal with a specialized gastrointestinal tract that thrives on a diet containing high levels of plant fiber available 24 hours a day. The general digestive tract is analogous to other mammals. The foregut (mouth, esophagus, stomach and small intestine) is responsible for enzymatic digestion. Most sugar, starch, protein and fat digestion, as well as fat-soluble vitamins (A,D, E and K), calcium and phosphorus absorption, takes place in the foregut, primarily in the small intestine. But there is a significant portion of the equine digestive tract that makes it uniquely able to thrive on a continuous highfiber diet: the hindgut.

The hindgut consists of the cecum, large colon and small colon and makes up over 60% of the total digestive tract, with a capability of holding over 120 quarts of digestive materials. Horses are categorized as hindgut fermenters, meaning that microbial action within the hindgut breaks down the fibers of plant material to be used by the horse for energy and to extract micronutrients or create others, such as the B-vitamins and vitamin K. The hindgut, specifically the cecum and large colon, relies on a beneficial microbial population to ferment and break down high-fiber feed substrates for metabolism. Whereas passage of digesta through the small intestine takes about 60-90 minutes, microbial fermentation is a much slower process. The large size and structure of the cecum and large colon is designed for slow passage of digesta to allow time for the microbes to break down fibrous plant material. Food may take from 36 to 72 hours to pass through the hindgut. Interestingly, the entrance and exit of the cecum are both located at the top of the organ. There must remain enough fibrous fill in the cecum to push digesta out into the large colon for the next stage of digestion. Deprived of the bulk from continuous forage, the many loops of the intestines are more likely to twist or impact. Horses need to be digesting fibrous feeds continually for hindgut health. Since all-day pasture grazing is not always an option, taking steps to allow constant access to forage while penned or stalled can be incredibly beneficial to the horse’s overall health and, in particular, the health of the digestive tract.