Feeding Your Horse in Drought Conditions
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Author: Dr Nerida McGilchrist | PhD Equine Nutritionist and Founder of My Happy Horse
Originally Published in Horse Deals, July 2025
Our southern states are in the grip of serious drought, and while drought is a common occurrence for us Aussies, it is always a significant challenge to feed horses during drought.
Unfortunately, there is nothing I can teach you that will make droughts ‘easy’, but, let me guide you on some of the most important things you should focus on when feeding your horses during drought.
Forage!
The biggest change to your horse’s diet as you head into drought will be changes in their forage quality and availability.
If your horse is normally grazing, your pasture will initially brown off and in severe or prolonged droughts, eventually disappear altogether.
If your horse is normally kept on hay, you may find that the availability of your usual hay becomes scarce and you will be forced to use a lower grade or a different type of hay.
So most of feeding in a drought comes down to managing your horse’s diet around the hay you are able to source.
And making sure you are balancing the diet and topping up any nutrient requirements not met by whatever hay your horse happens to be eating.
Sounds easy… but sometimes it’s not.
Good quality hay
Early in droughts you can usually still find good quality hay OR if you are well prepared and have the storage space, you hopefully have a reserve of good quality hay stashed away for all these non-rainy days!
So initially, as your pasture disappears, you will just need to substitute in hay to replace the pasture.
Low quality hay
In prolonged droughts however, there is often only low-quality hay available and beggars often can’t be choosers so sometimes you will just have to feed what you can get.
Low-quality hay will be lower in energy and protein than your pasture or any better quality hay you may have been feeding to this point.
So as you substitute in low-quality hay, your horse’s daily energy intake will drop… which means they may start to lose weight.
And this means you will need to balance the diet with other feed ingredients to prevent excessive weight loss.
Higher energy feeds that will help your horse hold weight include high quality complete feeds, high energy fibres like lupin hulls, sugarbeet pulp and copra meal and grains like oats, extruded barley and Australian ricebran as well as oils.
Hay budget!
Working out a hay budget is super useful during drought, so you know either how much hay you need to buy OR how much hay you can feed based on the hay you have available.
In an ideal situation, horses should receive between 2% and 3% of their bodyweight in hay per day, which for a 500 kg horse is between 10 and 15 kg of hay. This is a big one third to two thirds of a small ‘square’ bale of hay per day.
That amount, is 70 to 105 kg per week which in small bales (that usually weigh around 25 kg each) is around 3 to 4.5 bales per week.
Per month, its 300 to 450 kg which is 12 to 18 bales.
Which hays are safe?
If you can’t find your usual hays, there may be alternate hays you can access. Ones that are typically safe include:
Well cured grass or legume silage
Pea hay or straw
Wheat or barley straw
Canola hay
Sugarcane hay (avoid for Cushing’s horses or laminitic horses)
Vetch hay (don’t feed more than 0.5kg/100 kg bodyweight)
And some that should be avoided include:
Lupin hay (may cause lupinosis)
Sorghum/forage sorghum hay (may cause prussic acid or hydrocyanic acid poisoning)
Red clover and alsike clover hay/chaff (may cause liver damage and photosensitisation)
You MUST always feed hay!
It is REALLY important that you always feed SOME hay, even if it is just straw… because the long stem fibre, the chewing required to eat it and the saliva production it generates are all so important for your horses’ physical and mental health.
Feeding 1% of your horses’ bodyweight in hay per day is the absolute, only when you’re desperate, minimum amount of hay you should feed per day.
This is equivalent to 1 kg of hay per 100 kg of bodyweight, which is 5 kg of hay per day for a 500 kg horse, or approximately one fifth of a bale.
Per week this is 35 kg or around 1.5 bales of hay.
And 150 kg or 6 bales of hay per month.
If you are feeding these tiny amounts of hay, you MUST must make sure you are using other ingredients to provide additional fibre and a lot more energy or your horse will lose significant amounts of weight and be at high risk of diseases like gastric ulcers and colic.
What if I can’t find enough hay?!
Good question, and even I struggle with what to do in these situations!
If you can’t find enough hay to feed these amounts, you can substitute in other feed ingredients as partial hay replacers.
Feed ingredients that can be used as partial hay replacement include:
High Energy Options
Hay cubes
Chaff
Lupin or soybean hulls
Sugarbeet pulp
Copra meal
Low Energy Options
Straw
Oat hulls
Sunflower seed hulls; and
Safe and palatable browse (trees and shrubs) if you happen to have it available!
A Few More Things
There are a few more things I want you to keep in mind when it comes to nutrition during a drought. These are:
Make sure hay or straw or some kind of forage is available 24/7 to keep your horse chewing and reduce the risk of gastric ulceration. Use slow feeding hay nets to slow down there intake and make their daily hay allocation last longer!
Always feed a balanced diet. Whenever possible have a nutritionist check your diets or use a nutrition app to make sure your combination of feed ingredients is actually meeting your horse’s daily nutrient requirements. Varying hays can throw some odd curve balls at your horse so you want to make sure you’re covering all their nutrient bases.
Always make sure there is salt and clean, fresh water available; and
Be extra conscious of vitamin E. It is one vitamin your horse will struggle to get enough of during drought, especially when they have no access to green pasture for prolonged periods of time. If you want to make extra sure your horse is getting enough vitamin E, put a 1000 IU human vitamin E capsule into their daily feed.
Make sure everyone can get to food!
If you have multiple horses in the same paddock, it is really important that you take care to make sure they can all safely feed from hay feeders to avoid the horse or horses lower in the pecking order from missing out.
It will rain…!
Droughts are always challenging. But hopefully the information shared here helps you to feel a little more confident in knowing what to focus on when feeding your horse when you find yourself dealing with skies that will not rain!
Hang in there!! It will rain… eventually! ❤️
About the Author
Dr Nerida McGilchrist
Dr Nerida McGilchrist is an Australian equine nutritionist with a PhD and over two decades of experience. As the founder of Equilize Horse Nutrition, and advisor to some of the world's largest nutrition companies, she’s built an international reputation for blending science with practical solutions. Now, she’s bringing her expertise to My Happy Horse to make advanced nutrition accessible to all.