Digestive health is central to horse welfare, and feed management errors cause colic, laminitis, and other serious welfare emergencies that are largely preventable.
Feed management errors are among the most common causes of preventable welfare emergencies in horses. The equine digestive system is sensitive and specialised for continuous forage intake; management that diverges significantly from this pattern creates physiological vulnerability. Gastric ulcers are epidemic in performance horses precisely because management practices including restricted forage, prolonged stabling, and large concentrate meals deviate fundamentally from evolutionary feeding patterns. Understanding equine digestive physiology is the foundation of welfare-protective feeding management. Slow feeders, small frequent concentrate meals, and ad libitum forage access replicate natural intake patterns and dramatically reduce digestive welfare risk.