Horse Feed Management Advanced Welfare

Nutritional management is foundational to equine welfare — inappropriate feeding causes metabolic disease, digestive disorders, and behavioural problems.

Key Facts

Horses are evolved to trickle-feed forage for 16+ hours per day — restriction to 2-3 meals causes gastric ulcers
Equine gastric ulcer syndrome (EGUS) affects up to 90% of racehorses and 60% of sport horses
Laminitis — a painful and potentially disabling hoof condition — is strongly linked to high sugar and starch diets
Obesity in horses and ponies, now very common in Western countries, causes inflammatory and endocrine diseases
Slow feeders and hay nets reduce the rate of forage consumption, better mimicking natural grazing behaviour
Water quality and availability is critical — horses require 20-55 litres daily and show reduced intake from stale water

Welfare Considerations

Equine feeding management represents one of the most significant and modifiable welfare factors under owner control. The fundamental mismatch between natural equine feeding behaviour (continuous low-intake trickle grazing) and conventional management (restricted meal feeding with long empty-stomach periods) drives high rates of gastric ulcer disease. Horses evolved a continuous-secretion stomach acid system calibrated for near-continuous food passage — removing food access for hours creates acidic damage. Forage should form the basis of all equine diets, provided ad libitum or in slow-feeder systems. Concentrate feeds should be carefully matched to workload, and the dramatic rise in equine obesity in developed countries reflects overfeeding rich grass and hay to horses with low workloads.

What You Can Do

Ensure horses have access to forage throughout the day, using slow feeders to extend consumption time
Have annual body condition scoring by a trained professional to assess weight management needs
Test forage for nutritional content to avoid inadvertently providing high-sugar hay to laminitis-prone horses
Reduce reliance on concentrate feeds unless workload genuinely warrants them — most leisure horses need only forage
Consult an equine nutritionist for horses with metabolic conditions such as Equine Metabolic Syndrome or PPID