Animals

from Cooroy Rag 29 November 2022 edition

by Cooroy Rag

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animals Straight from the horse’s mouth

HAY there. Let’s talk about the gut and digestion.

A horse’s gut health begins with not only what they are fed but also how and when they are fed. As we are all aware, horses are designed to pretty much continuously eat roughage, and in the wild, this is mostly medium- to low-grade grasses and plants. It is rare that a pasture-kept horse has colic because his digestive system is being kept continuously working and moving.

Because the horse’s stomach is designed to continuously graze, it is also continuously producing digestive acids whether there is something to digest or not. The saliva the horse produces when it is eating roughage helps to buffer the stomach acids, and a horse produces nearly twice as much saliva eating hay or grass as they do when eating grain. So it makes sense to keep hay in front of horses 24/7. If your horse does not have access to a paddock of natural growing pasture, then a low-grade hay like Rhodes grass is a good way of giving them something to chew between the morning and afternoon feeds.

Since it is hard for most of us to have our horses out in large paddocks while we are training them or competing with them, it is important that we keep not only their fitness and exercise going but also their gut health in good working order.

Competitions, strenuous work, transport, illness, long days competing, extreme heat and humidity and/or extended times off feed, or other major changes to routine can compromise gut health.

To keep up with the extra energy and work that we are making our horses do while we are competing in the disciplines that we are expecting them to do, we feed them a lot more grains and mixed feeds to keep them in good condition. Sometimes this upsets the natural gut flora, causing ulcers and colic, and just like for us, antibiotics will upset the balance, causing weight loss or chronic diarrhoea.

This is where probiotics and prebiotics come into play. There is a wide range of gut health products on the market now, not only for horses but also for dogs and humans alike. These products all help with gut health, acid buffering, hindgut support and toxin defence.

Perhaps keep this in mind if you are finding your horse isn’t quite right.