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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.
“Horse owners should know a lot more about what is actually in the horse feeds.”
- Martha Voss
If you take a further look at your horse's feeding regime, you might be surprised by how much the mental and physical condition is affected by the feed you provide your horse. Mental health is very connected to the horse's physical health if feeding wrongly.
A huge part of the daily horse feed should be roughage. Your horse always needs to have roughage and to keep the horse happy and healthy, it should eat 1,5-2% of their body weight in roughage every day. As roughage is the main part of the daily feeding of your horse, you need to know what the roughage contains. And there is only one way to figure this out.
“Horse owners must always get an analysis on the roughage – and they need to know how to understand the analysis. If you understand this, it is a lot easier to adjust the hard feed for your horse,” Martha Voss explains.
You can get a professional to help analyze and understand the roughage. As a matter of fact, most horses do not need a lot extra besides good roughage, fibers, fat, minerals, and vitamins to keep them healthy and happy – mentally and physically.
“Have an analysis of your roughage – and learn to understand how it works. There is a measurement uncertainty, so if the analysis says 9% sugar you need to understand that it could also be 11% sugar. Despite of the measurement uncertainty it still gives you an indication of the sugar level, and that gives you the opportunity to adjust the hard feed,” Martha Voss explains.
“Are you feeding your horse candy or dry sticks with no energy? You simply must know this. When you know the amount of sugar, starch, protein and so on it is possible to make the right diet for your horse.”
So, it seems easy. But still, many of us are struggling with feeding our horses, and many of us may not be aware of how our horses' mental and physical health are immensely connected. That is why we need to know what we are feeding our hoses and which effects it has on them.
Obviously, do not feed your horse with more food than it needs. But with this point, it means that there is no doubt that most horse owners like to take care of and feed their horses. Feeding is a huge part of management, but in our eagerness to take good care of our horses, we often end up almost doing too much.
"We like to give our horses treats and supplements. But we need to think about if the horses actually need it. When I go through the feed room with horse owners it is often possible for me to take out a whole closet with feed supplements that the horse actually does not need,” Martha Voss explains.
It is both costly and time-consuming to feed our horse all the different supplements – especially if the horse does not need all of them. So how do we figure out what to feed and not feed each individual horse? Firstly, we need to understand their digestive system.
We must realize that the digestion system of the hose has not changed a lot since horses first developed. Yet, we are still trying to get the horse to adapt to our system and way of living instead of the other way around.
The stomach of the horse consists of two parts, but it is only the lower part that is protected from the stomach acid. The stomach is constantly producing the acid to for instance digest the food. Actually, the horse’s stomach is quite small, and it constitutes only 10% of the collected digestive system – a good thing in nature where the horse always needs to be ready to run without too much food in the stomach. This also means that the food disappears quite quickly from the stomach.
The horse's cecum and large intestine are arranged so that it can utilize the coarse steppe grasses. They form large fermentation chambers, where microorganisms ferment the fibers and convert them into fatty acids, vitamins, and so on, which the horse can use in its energy metabolism.
The calm horse has a well-functioning large intestine as well.
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.
Now that we understand how the digestive system of the horse works, we know that one of the most effective things we can do is to make sure our horses' digestive system is as close to its natural as possible. And we do that by providing enough high-quality roughage. But what happens if the horse does not get enough roughage throughout the day?
Horses produce stomach acid 24 hours a day. This gives an almost constant flow of salvia, which contains the important enzymes and degrades the carbonates in its food. If the horse has no roughage, the stomach will be empty and it would be possible for the gastric acid to splash into the upper part of the stomach which for instance creates stomach ulcers. This condition is very painful for the horse, especially when it is being ridden and changing in paces. This underlines the importance of why we need to look at the way we feed our horses when we experience difficulties in riding.
Contrarily, if your horse always has access to roughage, it will keep the stomach full and make sure that the stomach acid has something to digest, instead of attacking the stomach lining.
Providing roughage has another benefit and that is increased chewing time. Martha Voss explains:
“Time to chew will give you a horse that is much more calm, curious, and easy to work with, so you really need to react if something is changing in the behavior of your horse.”
And here the feeding is a really good place to start – especially with the roughage.
“A horse needs to chew as this is still in their nature. They are used to moving and browsing a lot to find different kinds of food during the day. They need at least eight hours to chew,” Martha Voss explains.
Lastly providing more roughage may decrease the amount of sugar and starch your horse receives. Both sugar and starch have an acidifying effect on the stomach acid and should, therefore, be kept to a minimum. That is why energy should rather come from the fibers in the roughage.
One of the things we often forget to look at when we feed our horses is the workload. How much exercise is your horse actually getting – and is it necessary with all the different kinds of supplements, for instance? All horses have a similar digestive system, but they can still have different needs depending on size, weight, breed, gender, season, and workload.
“Of course, a mare with a foal needs a lot more energy than the horse that is just standing in the field, but most horses do not really need that much extra,” Martha Voss explains.
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.
“If your horse starts to get aggressive you need to react and might as well have a further look at the feeding. We must understand that we cannot just not treat symptoms. And we must figure of what causes the symptoms.”
Martha Voss explains.
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.
