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Have you ever considered how much feeding affects your horse's mental health and well-being? The short answer is a lot!
Simple as that if you ask horse agronomist Martha Voss. As horse owners, we simply must know what we actually are feeding our horses – and we need to know how the behavior of our horses is connected to the feeding. We have talked to feed expert Martha Voss about all the do’s and don’ts when it comes to feeding for optimal mental health in horses.
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Martha Voss is a horse agronomist and runs the independent consulting and course business, NENUC, with courses, consulting visits, and the development of learning games for horse owners. Martha has more than 30 years of experience with teaching and research in the field of horse management and correct nutrition.
It has been proved that the gastrointestinal tract serves as a direct communication channel to the central nervous system. Referred to as the gut-brain axis, it is a two-way communication system between the gut and the brain.
It has been suggested that up to 9 out of 10 communication signals run from the gut to the brain, just one from the brain to the gut. This underlines the importance of a healthy gut, to have a reasonable horse.
According to Martha Voss, you can sum it up to these three guidelines: Enough chewing time, an analysis of the roughage, and a diet that is adapted to the workload for the horse and the horse's needs.
Today, we keep our horses in the stable for a lot of hours and often without enough roughage – or roughage in a quality that is not suitable for horses. When we see problems – mental or physical – in our horses we often end up buying a lot of different subsidies instead of looking deeper into the environment we are offering our horses. An environment, that is very far away from the horse's natural environment. In nature, the horse would spend around 17 hours browsing, walking, and searching for food. It would eat small rations with a lot of fiber throughout the day – but that is far from how most horses are kept today.
When something is wrong within the stomach, it will often cause, what we perceive as, unwanted behavior and a lot of diseases. Of course, feeding is not always the reason, but looking at the feeding can be a good place to start. We need to know, how well the horses’ gut and brain are connected.
Since we keep our horses quite differently from the natural horse, it can be challenging to feed natural, but with some slight adjustments, we might get a little bit closer.
Even though we have a huge responsibility as horse owners, there is also a responsibility from the feeding industry. They are responsible for providing clear ingredient labels and transparency. When reading on the back of the feedbag, you might be confused by the many different things in the feed – and how do you figure out what is essential for your horse and what is not?
“It is first of all our responsibility as horse owners to make sure that we feed our horses in the right way. We need to learn how to understand the information on the feedbag,” Martha Voss explains. But no matter how hard we try to feed our horses the right way, we may still need some help from the feed industry.
“The feed industry has a moral responsibility to tell horse owners what is in their feed – and this goes for both hard feed and roughage. But it is a bit more difficult with the roughage than with the hard feed. In the hard feed, there is a law about feed materials and what they contain – but since roughage is a raw material it gets a bit more tricky, and there is no law to declare what the feeding actually contains. So, that is why we need to demand the analysis of the roughage a lot more,” Martha Voss explains.
Feeding is an individual case, and hardly any owner feeds the same. However, it shows that trends tend to spread throughout the communities and are ever-changing. We are constantly figuring out new ways to feed our horses.
“I sense that ‘low on sugar and starch’ became a plus word in a lot of feeding. But actually, it does not make that big a difference if the hard feed might be low on sugar and starch if the roughage is filled with it instead.”
How do you feed your horse? Do you know what your feed bags contain? Do not hesitate to contact an educated and experienced feed consultant. Many places offer a free consultation. Remember that you are responsible for your horse's physical and mental well-being.
Sources:
Professor Jo-Anne Murray, May 2020: The gut-brain connection in horses. Premier Performance
Succeed Veterinary Center, May 2023: The Relationship Between Bacterial Environment in the Gut and the Brain in Horses.
