Feeding Horses Isn't as Complicated as People Make It
Walk into a feed store and you'll find an overwhelming wall of bags with labels promising everything from shiny coats to explosive energy to joint support to calming effects. Social media is packed with influencers pushing the latest trendy feeds and owners debating endlessly about which brand is best. It's enough to make your head spin, especially if you're newer to horse ownership.
Here's the thing that gets lost in all that noise: the foundation of every good horse feeding program is simple. Horses are herbivores designed to eat fibrous plants for most of the day. Forage - hay and pasture - should make up the vast majority of every horse's diet. Grain and concentrates are supplements to that foundation, not replacements for it. Once you understand that principle, everything else falls into place.
Hay: The Backbone of the Diet
For most domestic horses, hay is the primary forage source and the single most important component of the diet. Choosing the right hay and feeding it correctly has more impact on your horse's health than any grain, pellet, or fancy feed you'll ever buy.
Types of Hay
Grass Hay
Grass hay is the go-to for the majority of horses. It's moderate in calories and protein, high in fiber, and suitable for everything from easy keepers to hard-working athletes.
- Timothy - The classic. Widely available, consistent quality, and well-suited to most horses. Moderate calorie content. Horses generally love it.
- Orchardgrass - Slightly higher in calories and protein than timothy. Very palatable. Good for horses that need a bit more nutrition from their forage.
- Bermudagrass - Common in the South and Southwest. Nutritional value varies by cutting and maturity. Generally moderate in quality.
- Brome - Popular in the Midwest. Soft-stemmed and palatable with moderate nutritional content.
- Fescue - Widely available and durable. Important warning: endophyte-infected fescue is dangerous for pregnant mares and can cause reproductive complications. Test your fescue or switch pregnant mares to a different hay.
Legume Hay
Legume hays are higher in calories, protein, and calcium than grass hays. They're useful in specific situations but aren't appropriate for every horse.
- Alfalfa - The king of legume hays. Rich, high protein (15-22%), high calcium. Excellent for growing horses, broodmares, and hard-working athletes who need extra calories. Too rich for easy keepers, lightly worked horses, and horses prone to metabolic issues. Many owners use alfalfa as a small portion of the total hay ration rather than as the sole forage.
- Clover - Moderate protein, often mixed with grass hay. Can cause slobbers (excessive drooling) due to a fungus that grows on clover in humid conditions. Not dangerous, just messy.
Mixed Hay
Grass-alfalfa mixes are popular because they offer a middle ground - more nutrition than straight grass hay, less intensity than straight alfalfa. They're a good option for many horses.
How to Evaluate Hay Quality
Not all hay is created equal, even within the same type. Here's what to look for:
- Color - Should be green to light green. Brown or yellow hay has been rained on, sun-bleached, or was overly mature at cutting - all of which reduce nutritional value.
- Smell - Fresh, pleasant smell. Musty or sour smells indicate mold. Never feed moldy hay - it can cause respiratory problems and digestive upset.
- Texture - Leafy and pliable, not stemmy and coarse. Leaves hold most of the nutrition; stalks are mostly fiber.
- Dust - Minimal dust when you shake a flake. Excessive dust irritates the respiratory tract and may indicate mold spores.
- Weeds and debris - Check for blister beetles in alfalfa (these are toxic), foreign objects, and excessive weed content.
If you want to get serious about it, send a sample to a forage testing lab. A hay analysis costs $20 to $40 and tells you exactly what your hay provides in terms of calories, protein, minerals, and sugar content. This is especially valuable for horses with metabolic conditions where sugar and starch levels matter.
How Much Hay to Feed
The general rule is 1.5 to 2 percent of body weight in forage per day. For a 1,000-pound horse, that's 15 to 20 pounds of hay daily. This should be divided into multiple feedings or provided free-choice if weight management isn't a concern.
Horses should never go more than 4 to 6 hours without forage. Long fasting periods increase the risk of gastric ulcers and colic. If your horse is an easy keeper who gets fat on free-choice hay, use a slow-feed hay net to extend eating time without increasing the total amount.
Pasture: The Natural Forage
Grazing on pasture is the most natural way for horses to eat. It provides forage in small, continuous amounts exactly the way the equine digestive system was designed to work. But pasture comes with its own set of considerations.
Benefits
- Continuous grazing supports digestive health and reduces ulcer risk
- Movement while grazing promotes hoof health and circulation
- Fresh grass provides nutrients that dry hay can't fully replicate
- Mental stimulation and natural behavior satisfaction
Risks to Manage
- Lush spring pasture - The rapid growth of spring grass produces high sugar and fructan levels, which can trigger laminitis in susceptible horses. Limit access to lush pasture, especially in the spring and after rain events in the fall.
- Overgrazing - Small acreage with too many horses leads to pasture destruction. Rotational grazing helps, but most small properties need to supplement pasture with hay.
- Toxic plants - Know what's growing in your pasture. Red maple, yew, black walnut, oleander, and many other plants are toxic to horses. Walk your pastures regularly and remove dangerous species.
- Sand ingestion - Horses grazing on sandy soil ingest sand that accumulates in the gut and can cause sand colic.
When Pasture Isn't Enough
In most of the United States, pasture alone can't sustain a horse year-round. Winter kills the grass. Summer droughts slow growth. Overgrazing depletes it. Plan on supplementing with hay during any season when pasture is thin, dormant, or insufficient. Pretending there's enough grass when there isn't is how horses lose weight.
Grain and Concentrates: When and Why
Here's where the feed store overwhelm kicks in. Let's simplify it.
Does Your Horse Actually Need Grain?
Many horses don't. If your horse maintains good weight and condition on quality hay or pasture alone, adding grain is just adding unnecessary calories. The idea that every horse needs a scoop of something in a bucket is deeply ingrained in horse culture, but it's not based on nutritional reality for a large number of horses.
Horses that genuinely benefit from grain or concentrates include:
- Hard-working athletes (eventing, endurance, racing, intensive training)
- Growing youngsters that need extra calories and protein for development
- Broodmares in late pregnancy and early lactation
- Thin or hard-keeping horses that can't maintain weight on forage alone
- Senior horses with dental issues that can't process hay effectively
Types of Grain and Concentrates
- Whole oats - The safest straight grain for horses. Lower starch than corn, less likely to cause digestive upset. Many traditional horsemen feed oats as their sole concentrate.
- Commercial feeds (pellets and textured/sweet feeds) - Formulated to provide balanced nutrition including vitamins and minerals. Quality varies enormously by brand. Read the tag - some sweet feeds are mostly corn and molasses with minimal nutritional balance.
- Ration balancers - Low-calorie, nutrient-dense pellets designed to provide vitamins and minerals without significant calories. Perfect for easy keepers who don't need extra calories but do need nutritional balance that hay alone may not provide.
- Beet pulp - A high-fiber, moderate-calorie feed that's excellent for adding safe calories without starch. Must be soaked before feeding. Great for senior horses and hard keepers.
- Rice bran - High-fat, calorie-dense feed for adding weight. Must be stabilized (look for "stabilized rice bran" on the label) to prevent rancidity. Useful for hard-keeping performance horses.
How to Feed Grain Safely
- Small meals - Never feed more than 5 pounds of grain in a single meal. The horse's stomach is small relative to its body size, and large starch loads overwhelm the small intestine, causing fermentation in the hindgut that leads to acidosis, colic, and laminitis.
- Feed by weight, not volume - A coffee can of oats weighs very differently than a coffee can of pellets. Weigh your feed to know what you're actually providing.
- Change gradually - Any change in grain type, brand, or amount should happen over 7 to 14 days. The microbial population in the hindgut needs time to adjust.
- Hay before grain - Feed hay first, then grain. A stomach buffered with fiber handles concentrate meals better.
Water: The Forgotten Nutrient
It's easy to obsess over hay and grain and forget about the most critical nutrient of all. Horses need 5 to 10 gallons of clean water per day minimum, and significantly more in hot weather or during hard work. Dehydration is a direct contributor to impaction colic and overall poor health.
- Check water sources daily for cleanliness and adequate supply
- In winter, use heated buckets or tank heaters - water consumption drops when water is ice cold, and that's when impaction colic risk spikes
- Provide salt at all times (a plain white salt block or loose salt) to encourage drinking
- Clean troughs and buckets regularly - algae, debris, and dead insects make water unpalatable
Putting It All Together
Building a feeding program comes down to knowing your individual horse. Consider their body condition, workload, age, metabolic health, and what forage you have available. Start with quality hay as the base, add grain only if the forage doesn't meet caloric or nutritional needs, provide salt and clean water always, and adjust based on what the horse tells you through body condition and behavior. Good feeding is observation and adjustment, not following someone else's recipe.