Understanding equine gastric ulcer syndrome (EGUS) — affecting up to 90% of performance horses — its causes, welfare implications, and evidence-based management approaches.
Equine gastric ulcer syndrome represents a massive, largely preventable welfare burden affecting the majority of performance horses. The conditions that cause ulcers — intermittent feeding, grain-based diets, high-intensity work, and social stress — are so common in modern horse management that ulcers have become an expected rather than exceptional finding. The welfare imperative is to normalize genuinely preventive management — continuous hay access, reduced grain, adequate turnout — rather than treating ulcers pharmacologically while maintaining the management conditions that cause them. Horses managed according to their physiological needs for continuous forage trickle feeding have dramatically lower ulcer rates and better overall gastric welfare than horses maintained on conventional performance horse management routines.