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Your guide to feeding horses
If you’ve not owned a horse before, or been responsible for feeding one, you’re no doubt wondering – what do horses eat? If so, you’ve come to the right place to find out! Knowing what horses eat, and the basics of feeding horses correctly, are very important aspects of owning a horse.
Just like us, your horse is only as healthy as what it eats… A good horse diet consists of high-quality, nutritionally balanced horse feed, fed in the right quantities to meet its specific nutritional needs.
What Does A Horse Eat?
Horses are grazing animals, meaning their digestive systems have adapted to consume grass and other forages.
Definitions Of Important Horse Food Terms
- ‘Forage’ refers to bulk roughage from sources like grass, hay, chaff etc.
- ‘Graze’ in the context of livestock like horses means ‘eating grass and similar plants’. It’s also used to describe the habit of ‘continuous eating’ i.e. someone who constantly eats may be told they’re ‘grazing’.
These definitions are crucial as they provide the foundation for understanding what and how horses eat. Horses are designed to:
- Eat grass type forages i.e. bulk roughage like quality grass and horse hay, and
- Eat continuously
Some Facts About Horses And Horse Feed
A horse’s teeth and jaw are specially designed to grind up the tough fibres found in forages. Likewise, their digestive system quite effectively metabolises this horse feed to extract the nutrients they need. For this reason, the number 1 thing to know about feeding horses is that the bulk of their diet should be long-stemmed roughages.
Horses have small stomachs relative to their size. They are designed to spend around 18 – 20 hours a day ‘trickle’ feeding i.e. grazing. As most domestic horses today are kept in small paddocks or yards, this often isn’t possible. If this is the case with your horse, you’ll need to provide an alternative to ‘grazing’. The easiest way to do this is by providing horse feed, such as hay either in a hay net, or a roll.
How Much Does A Horse Eat?
What a horse feeds on each day depends on factors like its:
- Weight
- Body condition
- Work load
- Individual metabolism – horses can be either good or bad doers
- Breed – some breeds need less food per kilo of bodyweight than other breeds
How Much Horse Feed such as Hay And Forage Should A Horse Eat?
As a rough guide – horses should consume around 1 to 2% of their body weight in forage each day. That means a 500kg horse requires 5 – 10 kilos of forage a day, or AT LEAST 1 kilo for every 100 kilos of bodyweight.
As mentioned – if your horse doesn’t have access to enough grazing, you’ll have to feed good quality horse hay as well
How Much Horse Feed Does A Horse Need?
In addition to making sure they get enough forage, horses also need to eat a certain amount of food in total each day JUST FOR MAINTENANCE. Again, as a general guide – a 500kg horse should be eating 10 – 12 kilos of food (dry weight) a day. That’s around 2 kilos for every 100 kilos of bodyweight.
Some horses (good do’ers) will get fat on this amount of food so you need to reduce how much you feed them. Other horses (poor do’ers) need more than the recommended weight for their size so you feed them more.
What Do Horses Eat To Gain Weight?
If your horse isn’t getting enough hay or forage, or is struggling to maintain body condition, you either feed more hay, or make up the shortfall with something else. This is where what we call a ‘hard feed’ comes in.
Hard feeds are a way to make up the balance of a horse’s daily food requirements AND a good way to feed minerals and some vitamins that may be lacking in forages. Because… although horses can survive very well on a diet of good quality horse hay if they’re not doing much work, many hays and forages are not as nutritionally balanced as they should be.
It’s also important to increase how much you feed your horse if you are riding it a lot. Pregnant and lactating mares also need more food, as do young and growing horses.
What Can a Horse Feed on Besides Hay And Grass?
Horses can eat other feeds besides hay and grass but they should always be fed in conjunction with forages. Never instead of…
They can for example eat small quantities of grains like oats, barley, and corn. They can also eat lupins, and products like sugar beet pulp, soy hulls/meal, sunflower seeds, bran and pollard (by-products of flour production), as well as some fruits and vegetables (apples and carrots are 2 particular favourites that horses like to eat.)
Important: if you do feed barley and lupins, they need to be processed (cracked, steam flaked, or soaked) before your horse can eat them.
What Do Horses Like To Eat – Pellets And Processed Horse Feed
Many horse owners like to feed either pelleted or pre-mixed horse feeds. They’re convenient and provide those missing vitamins and minerals we mentioned earlier. These products include ingredients like the ones mentioned – ground-up cereal hays, oats, barley, corn, bran, pollard… often with a vitamin and mineral supplement added.
Important: horse nutritionists recommend not feeding more than 2 kilos of hard feed in a single feed. If you do need to feed more than that, split it into multiple feeds and space them out over the day i.e. into a morning and evening feed.
Finally, make sure your horse always has access to clean water. Nutritionists recommend providing free access to salt as well.
What Do Horses Eat: A Recap
What do horses eat in brief:
- Grass and/or other forages like quality horse hay and chaff – must make up between 50% and 100% of their daily food intake.
- If forages make up less than 100% of their required daily intake, you must make up the balance with a hard feed. Use a quality nutritionally balanced pellet (i.e. balancer pellets or similar), a pre-mix concentrate feed, or grains.
- You will probably find you’ll also need to provide a small hard feed or loose mineral lick to balance their mineral intake.
- Make sure there is always plenty of clean water available.
We hope this has given you a good idea of how much horse feed your horse needs. Horses require significant amounts of dietary fibre so it stays fit and healthy.
