Skip to content
Search Library
thumbnail

One hallmark of sound horse management is the uninterrupted provision of forage or feed for much of the day. Horses should not be left longer than four hours without something to eat, as this is a tenet of gastrointestinal health. This standard is, however, often overlooked for horses that are fed in the evening and stabled overnight. Because of the frequency of overnight stabling in modern horse management, German researchers* recently set out to better understand the welfare of these well-kept horses.

Horses included in this research study were offered an evening meal (between 2:30 and 6:00 p.m.) and a morning meal (between 5:45 and 7:15 a.m.).

“If horses were maintained on inedible bedding, the nocturnal feed intake interruption was approximately nine hours, much longer than the recommended four-hour interval. If kept on straw bedding, horses were considered to have continued access to roughage, as many horses would consume straw,” explained Catherine Whitehouse, M.S., a nutrition advisor for Kentucky Equine Research.

Horses usually stop eating not because they have full stomachs but because they’d rather engage in other activities, such as resting, social interaction, comfort behaviors, even stable vices.

According to the researchers, changes in feed intake due to restricted access to forage and feeding two or three times daily, often called “meal feeding,” can lead to health and behavior issues. For example, these horses may experience colic due to dysfermentation (altered fermentation in the hindgut) secondary to long pauses in feed intake; gastric ulcers; and behavioral changes, including stereotypies.

“This study also found differences in the time to finish the meal and the frequency and duration of feed intake pauses between horses kept on shavings compared to horses kept on straw,” shared Whitehouse.

The researchers concluded, “In addition to body condition score, the duration of feed intake interruption (usually in the night) is an important welfare indicator of horses that have limited access to roughage.”

To help avoid nocturnal fasting in horses, Whitehouse advises using slow feeders and haynets.

“These strategies will help slow the consumption of forage, allowing horses to eat over a longer period of time, thereby limiting periods of fasting. Further, horses maintained in such conditions should be offered a gastroprotectant to help minimize the development of gastric ulcers,” Whitehouse suggested.

Kentucky Equine Research offers a variety of digestive-support products to support both the foregut and hindgut of a horse.

*Baumgartner, M., T. Boisson, M.H. Erhard, et al. 2020. Common feeding practices pose a risk to the welfare of horses when kept on non-edible bedding. Animals (Basel) 10(3).

X

Subscribe to Equinews and get the latest equine nutrition and health news delivered to your inbox. Sign up for free now!