28/12/2023
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๐ง๐ผโโ๏ธ ๐๐ฎ๐น๐บ๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐ผ๐ฟ ๐๐ฎ๐ฟ๐บ๐ถ๐ป๐ด?
๐ด All too often do I read or receive questions asking about the best calming foods, supplements, or overall diets for horses. If I may be blunt and to the point for a second, there is no such thing as a single feed, supplement, or diet that will a) calm a horse and b) guarantee a balanced diet.
๐ฑ In my experience working in the field of equine nutrition and dietary balance, uncalm, hot, crazy, reactive, and dangerous horses are often a result of a poorly balanced and non-species-appropriate diet, and/or non-species-appropriate living conditions. Feeds that are titled with words that capture the consumer's attention such as "cool," "calm," and "complete" are doing what they are supposed to do, and that is giving us a false sense of security that what we are feeding our horses is calming and good for them.
โSo, what are the major dietary and management influencers of the un-cool, un-calm and un-collected behaviours we often wish our horses didn't exhibit?
โ An energy intake that exceeds the horse's energy output.
This point is what catches a lot of people out. Everything we feed our horses provides calories, so even if we are feeding a low/no sugar and starch feed like beet pulp or flaxseed oil, if we overfeed it then that excess energy needs somewhere to go, and it usually goes in the way of excitable behaviour when the horse is taken out of their paddock or in the way of weight gain and obesity.
"Lucerne makes my horse hot." - No, too much protein/calories/energy makes your horse hot.
โ Inadequate fibre intake.
I often talk about species-appropriate diets and I strongly believe that providing the horse with ample long-stemmed roughage and fibre sources is a key aspect in maintaining their psychological and physical health. Horses are physiologically designed to be ingesting and digesting food almost continuously, so restricting food for prolonged periods of time whether that be for travel, competition, or when stabling overnight, absolutely has the ability to promote anxious and uneasy behaviour. A grazing horse is a happy horse.
"My 500kg horse has 24/7 access to overgrazed pasture and gets a biscuit of hay AM and PM." - Your 500kg horse needs a minimum of 10kg of dry matter roughage per day. A single biscuit of grass hay may weigh 750g-1.5kg, so best case your horse is receiving 3kg of dry matter roughage per day from hay alone. Imagine how hard it would be for your horse to then source and consume an additional 7kg of dry matter (once the water content has been deducted) from overgrazed pasture.
โ Excessive non-structural carbohydrate intake.
Just because a feed is labelled as being cooling, calming, complete, balanced, low in sugar and starch, safe for ulcers, suitable for laminitic horses etc. does not mean that it actually is. So many (not all) of the feeds in today's market that are titled these enticing words are actually the opposite. If I had a penny for every time I read that a children's pony club mount was being fed "pony pellets," I think I'd be able to retire early. Horses and ponies, particularly the ones who are pony club mounts or aren't ridden consistently, are not physiologically designed to consume large quantities of sugar and starch which are mostly derived from cereal grains and grain by-products. If your horse isn't racing, training and competing endurance, showjumping or cross country-ing, or being ridden intensely 5-6 days per week, chances are they would do much better on a low/no grain diet.
โ Poorly balanced mineral intake and interactions.
This point is one of my favourite ones because unless you have studied equine nutrition and the intricate balance of mineral interaction, it can be difficult to understand just how much a horse's mineral intake can influence their behaviour and personality. It's not just as simple as meeting your horse's recommended daily intake for each individual nutrient; true dietary balance runs much deeper and involves aspects such as ratio balancing and increasing/decreasing particular minerals to prevent secondary dietary deficiencies.
"I feed my horse magnesium to calm him down." - Magnesium is not a calming supplement! If it works it's because your horse had an existing deficiency or imbalance, or it has aided in the metabolisation of sugar (often observed with spring pasture growth).
โ Not allowing horses to be horses.
Horses have evolved to be in a herd environment, covering kilometers of terrain, and consuming a variety of different food sources each and every day. If your horse is exhibiting symptoms such as anxiousness, reactiveness, or an inability to focus, ask yourself if you are fulfilling their need for the 3x F's - Friends, Forage, and Freedom. A horse who is paddocked alone, stabled for 12-24 hours a day, or is kept in a small area with limited feed variety is not as likely to be content regardless of how expensive their feeding regime is, how many body work sessions they get a month, or how good they look. Let them be horses.
๐พ Of course, there are exceptions to some of the statements I have made throughout this article (for example, there are some horses who are genuinely allergic/intolerant to lucerne), however they are not the rule. I am incredibly passionate about feeding and managing horses as what they are instead of humanising them and expecting them to fit the mould of what is convenient for us.
๐ Horses are incredibly good at internalising and masking stress. Something that has always stuck with me since I attended an equine health seminar and assisted with some gastroscopes (to diagnose stomach ulcers) is that "the most common symptom of ulcers in horses is no symptom at allโ and I think that can be carried through to how a horse behaves or performs outside of their comfort zone. They may look good and act โnormalโ at home, but are their outbursts under saddle or during groundwork an indication of something deeper?
โ๏ธ To schedule for an Equine Nutrition Consultation to address all things dietary balance and species-appropriateness, please check out my website here:
https://stableisedequine.com.au/products/external-equine-nutrition-consultation
