Prevent Gastric Ulcers – Top 3 things you must do for your horse
Podcast #62
Gastric ulcers are incredibly common in horses, but before changing feeds or reaching for an ulcer supplement, there are three far more important foundations to get right.
In this episode, Dr Nerida explains why forage is central to preventing equine squamous gastric ulcers and reveals the three practical steps every horse owner should prioritise: feeding enough forage, minimising the time horses spend without something to chew, and feeding hay before, and ideally after, exercise.
You’ll also learn why simply providing hay does not necessarily mean your horse is eating enough, how herd dynamics and restrictive hay nets can reduce forage intake without you actually noticing, and why weighing your horse’s hay may be one of the most useful things you can do for their gastric health.
📲 For help assessing your horse’s diet and making sure you are feeding enough forage to prevent gastric ulcers, download the MyHappy.Horse App https://apps.apple.com/au/app/myhappy-horse/id6633422324
💖 If you found this episode helpful, please follow the Happy Horse Nutrition Podcast and share it with a horse owning friend who is struggling with gastric ulcers.
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[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:55:52
Hello and welcome. You have found yourself back at the Happy Horse Nutrition Podcast. I'm Dr. Nerida, PhD, equine nutritionist, proud mum of a new puppy named Zuki, which I had to throw in there because she's so cute, and a potentially overly vigilant horse owner when it comes to gastric ulceration. So today's episode, we are going to be talking about the three things that are a must to reduce our horse's risk of gastric ulcers.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:56:20
I realized, possibly, how overly vigilant I might be when it comes to gastric ulcers, although I don't think there can be such a thing as overly vigilant when it comes to gastric ulcers in horses, but I did realize, I guess, how aware I am of gastric ulceration in horses.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:56:39
when I was at a clinic with Justin Cahoon, and it must have been back in, I'm going to say 2017, it was quite a long time ago, and we'd been riding for the morning, a beautiful group of, of, um.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:56:51
fellow participants, and in fact, um, some of them are still my dearest friends to this day, so if you're listening to this, Liv and Lisa, that is you. Um, but we were, yeah, we'd been riding for the morning, and Justin was sending us all off for a break for morning tea, and…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:57:08
And I piped up, without any permission from anyone, and said, and can you all please give your horses some hay to eat as well, so that they don't get ulcers? And this was a new concept to a few people.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:57:21
And Justin jokingly made the comment after morning tea, saying that I was just sitting there listening to ulcers form in horses, and I know it was true. I can't bear to see horses being ridden and worked when I know that they haven't.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:57:38
they haven't had hay. So, let me, um, circle, go full circle around, and we'll explain why that is, but, um, it is something that I'm very passionate about, um, in helping horse owners prevent, and I am very, very aware of it, and I do worry a lot about my own horses and gastric ulceration, because.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:58:00
The way that our beautiful horses' gastrointestinal tracts are set up, they are just inherently at risk of ulcers forming in their stomach.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:58:11
So, let me just do a quick definition of gastric ulceration in horses, because it… the… the…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:58:18
Disease…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:58:19
can affect both the upper section of a horse's stomach and the lower section of the horse's stomach. And I remember it was probably, even up to about 10 years ago, I used to almost roll my eyes and go, really? Do we have to use all of this technical terminology to describe gastric ulceration? So we've got.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:58:37
ESGD, which is equine squamous gastric disease, and EGGD, which is equine glandular gastric disease.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:58:47
And, and I thought it was a little bit of overkill, to be honest, to, um, have so much technicality used when we were talking about gastric ulceration. But what I have come to realize and, and realize with zero doubt.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:59:05
Is that the terminology matters and it matters because.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:59:10
where the disease is occurring in your horse's stomach matters. So, the gastric ulcers that occur in the top part of the stomach, in the squamous area, which is the equine squamous gastric disease, is essentially a different disease to the gastric ulcers that occur down in the glandular section of your horse's stomach.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:59:29
This podcast is going to be focused on the squamous gastric ulcers, so the gastric ulcers that occur in the top part of the stomach. So, a quick little recap on the horse's stomach physiology, and I do go into this in a lot more detail in podcast episode number 2, which is a walk down the horse's gastrointestinal tract.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:59:51
If you want… if you want this physiology in more detail, go back and have a listen to episode number 2. But the horse's stomach evolved over 55 million years, because that's how long horses have been on Earth.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:00:03
With two distinct sections, so the bottom section of the horse's stomach secretes gastric acid 24/7, and because it secretes gastric acid, it also learnt and evolved to secrete a really thick mucus.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:00:18
to protect itself from that gastric acid, so that that acid didn't eat holes through its own stomach lining. The top part of the stomach, however.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:00:29
did not form any protection from that gastric acid and instead it relied on the fact that horses were able to graze essentially 24/7 and they used the fiber that filled the gut as well as the saliva that diluted and buffered the gastric acid that was in the bottom part of the stomach.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:00:50
to protect itself from the acid. So, physically, the acid couldn't get up to the top part of the stomach, because the stomach was always full of forage and fiber, so it wasn't able to splash up there. And the liquid, the acid that was in the bottom part of the stomach was less.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:01:09
acidic because the horses when they were evolving and horses in the wild when they've got access to forage all the time they produce a lot of saliva and that saliva has got natural buffers in it and it means that the fluid in the stomach of a horse that is chewing on forage is less acidic and it's less likely to burn holes through the top part of the stomach.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:01:30
But the… the reason gastric ulceration occurs in the top part of the stomach is for whatever reason.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:01:38
A horse's stomach is allowed to empty or partially empty, so it's not, it's not packed full of forage anymore and, and the liquid at the bottom becomes more acidic because if horse is not chewing on forage all the time, then there's not that flow of saliva through the stomach.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:01:54
And the fluid becomes more acidic, so the pH actually drops.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:01:59
So the pH scale, for anyone who remembers back to their high school chemistry days, the pH scale goes from 1, which is highly acidic, through to 14, which is highly alkaline. 7 is in the middle, and that is neutral. Someone actually said to me the other day.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:02:16
Is the pH scale like the Fahrenheit scale and and seven is in the middle like it didn't didn't really make sense that seven was the middle. But when I explained that the scale went from 1 to 14, it makes perfect sense that seven is in the middle. So seven, seven is neutral.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:02:31
Now, a horse's stomach will sit… the fluid in a horse's stomach will sit somewhere between a pH of 3 and 4, which is very acidic. But a horse that is not chewing on forage, that pH can drop down to… in the 2s, and even into the pHs of 1.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:02:48
And a pH of one is battery acid, so highly, highly acidic. And if that acid then is allowed to splash up onto the top part of the horse's stomach, which the lining of the top of the horse's stomach is like the skin on the back of your hand.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:03:03
You imagine what would happen if you were dripping battery acid onto the skin on the back of your hand. You would get an ulcer pretty quickly, or a wound, an open wound pretty quickly. And that is what is happening inside your horse's stomach when they are forming their squamous gastric ulcers. The acid is allowed to to move and splash or be squeezed up into that top part of their stomach.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:03:21
And the acid that is in their stomach is actually eating through their stomach lining, and then when it does eat through the stomach lining, that is when you get gastric ulceration.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:03:32
So, the inspiration for this podcast episode actually came… I've been wanting to do an episode on gastric ulcers for ages, but…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:03:41
I saw a Facebook post last week, and… and that kind of put the line in the sand for me. You go, right, I really need to do a podcast episode on gastric ulcers, and… and…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:03:52
this Facebook post was one of many similar posts that I've seen over the years that I've been doing this, but it was a horse owner saying.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:04:01
I've got a horse. It's got gastric ulcers for the third time this year. I'm so sick of this. What should I be feeding it? And, and a lot of, and, and she, she went on to say that, um, the horse had, uh, was in an adjustment property. Uh, so it was, it was a, a boarding horse, not, not one, um, on the lady's own property. And she said that it had.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:04:24
ad-lib access to hay, and she outlined the feeds it was feeding, and it wasn't… it was a diet that looked okay and would have looked okay on paper. And she said, you know, I've heard that this feed might be better for a horse with gastric ulcers. And then all of the comments that came back were all focused on the feeds and the supplements.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:04:43
And the thing that I haven't been able to get out of my mind since I read that post is that no one mentioned the forage, and yet the forage for equine squamous gastric disease, so the gastric ulcers that are in the top part of the stomach, the forage is the most important.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:05:01
part of preventing those ulcers, and that this horse had been scoped, and it was diagnosed as having squamous gastric ulcers, and yet all of the comments had failed to mention that forage is the.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:05:16
Biggest part of preventing those types of ulcers in horses. So I'm like, right, this needs a podcast episode. And here is that episode. So there are three things that we must do as horse owners to prevent.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:05:32
Squamous gastric disease in our horses and this, we will go through and talk about them all in detail, but they are feeding plenty of forage, making sure that your time between.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:05:47
forage meals is not too far apart, so that they don't have long periods of foasting… foasting… long periods of fasting, and also feeding hay before, and I'm going to add in here after riding, but there are nuances to each of these things that we must do around forage.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:06:06
Um, so let's dive into a little bit of detail on those. So the first thing that we must do is feed plenty of forage.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:06:13
And what do I mean by plenty of forage? So the guidelines that are widely accepted around the world at the moment are that a horse should have a minimum of 1.5% of their body weight per day in forage.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:06:30
Sorry, that was my phone ringing while I'm on the podcast.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:06:32
I don't know if you can cut that out, David.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:06:36
So the minimum recommended is one and a half percent of their body weight. Now, what that looks like in practice is one and a half kilograms of forage per 100 kilograms of body weight, or one and a half pounds of forage per 100 pounds of body weight.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:06:52
And for a 500 kilogram horse, that then translates into seven and a half kilograms of forage per day.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:07:13
For a 500 kilogram horse, which is 16 and a half pounds of hay per day for an 1100 pound horse.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:07:23
So it's, it's…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:07:26
that's the minimum that we want to be giving them. I believe, as a nutritionist, that the more optimal amount of hay to give a horse is 2% of their body weight, so 2 kilograms per 100 kilograms of body weight, which is 10 kilograms of hay for a 500 kilogram horse, or…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:07:48
22 pounds for an 1,100 pound horse. My brain is struggling a little bit today with all the… with all the kilogram and pound conversions, so you'll have to excuse me if I… if I sound a little slow on some of them. So it's a… it's a decent amount of hay, like a small bale of.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:08:06
like a two string bale of hay that we call small squares, even though they're rectangles. I've never really understood that. They weigh anywhere from 20 to 25kg. So it's roughly around just under half to half of one of those bales of hay per day for an average size horse.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:08:27
Um, is the amount of forage that they should be consuming per day, or if you've got horses out on pasture, we would make the assumption that if pasture is readily available, they're going to be eating at least that amount of forage.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:08:42
per day. Um…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:08:45
Now, there are nuances around feeding plenty of forage, because there are horses who have got free access to forage, and in fact, this is one of the things that occurred to me with this horse in the Facebook post, is it had free access to forage, and yet here it is. It's the third time it's had gastric ulcers per day.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:09:02
So, the nuances are, the first one is, can a horse in a herd feeding situation that has that free access to a round bale, can a horse actually get to that round bale to eat? Or is there another horse in that herd, in that situation, that is chasing that horse away consistently from that bale.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:09:21
And not allowing it to weed. So I know that in my little track herd, if I put a free choice bale of hay out, and that was the predominant source of forage for them, I know that I would have to be really careful with my beautiful domino, my little paint mare.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:09:38
Because she is so far at the bottom of the pecking order, and poet Mike Gelding is so…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:09:45
bossy, to use a kind term, around… around food, and… and, you know, he makes sure that he gets the lion's share if there is, um, any sharing to be done. I'd have to be really careful with her that she actually had enough access to that bale.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:10:03
to eat her required forage intake per day. And that's even more so if you've got a slow feeding hay net over the hay bale. So I absolutely love slow feeding hay nets over either round bales or big square bales.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:10:17
Because, one, it saves a lot of wastage. Horses will get into their free choice hay, and they stand all over, and they pour at it, and they sleep on it, and they urinate and poo on it. They do all sorts of things to it, and they end up wasting so much of it. So if you've got it actually contained with a hay net, it's brilliant, and it also.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:10:36
For horses that are absolute gutses, and especially if it's a really nice hay, it does slow down their intake, so they don't eat through, you know, a whole massive bale in way fewer days than what they probably should. But for horses who are either shy feeders, or they're being bossed around because they're on the bottom of a pecking order.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:10:53
If you've got a small hole hay net over a hay bale, and they've only got limited access to that hay, it also means that it's much harder for them to fulfill their daily forage intake, because it's so much harder for them to get that hay.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:11:08
out through the hay net. So, so do be really, really conscious of herd dynamics when you've got, when you've got.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:11:15
free choice hay, and that would have been my very first question to this horse owner with this Facebook post is, have you sat and watched your horse feeding at that hay bale? How much access does she get per day? Is she able to actually feed?
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:11:32
Freely, or is she being hunted away from the hay bale and is spending long periods of time standing away from the bale while other horses are feeding because she's simply not allowed in to feed?
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:11:43
So, that was my question number one for that particular horse owner, and it's always… my first question in situations when people say, my horse has got free access to hay, my first question is always, do they actually get free access to hay, or is there herd dynamics preventing them?
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:12:02
The next thing to consider is, is the hay palatable, and are the horses actually eating the hay? So…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:12:07
it's not enough to have free access to hay. If the horses are not eating that hay, then it's of no benefit to them. So, you have to actually make sure in these situations where horses are getting recurrent ulcers, and in every situation, really, when we're relying on hay.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:12:27
As our horses forage base, it's one thing to give them free access to it. It's another thing entirely to make sure that they're actually eating the amount of hay they need to eat to keep themselves at very low risk of squamous gastric ulcers.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:12:42
This is a case for measuring how much hay a horse is actually eating. Now that is really hard when you've got multiple horses on the same round bale and it does come back more to monitoring the behaviour of those horses around that hay bale and seeing who's getting to eat hay and for what period of time and who's being hunted away from the hay.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:13:05
Um, and, and trying to gauge how, how much hay they're actually able to eat based on the amount of time they spend at the hay bale. But if you've got horses that you, you are feeding as much hay to them as they want to eat, measure how much hay they're actually eating. So if you, if you're putting out 10 kilos of hay.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:13:24
per day, but they're eating less than half of it, then they're not actually eating 10 kilos of hay. They might only be eating 5 kilos of hay. So it's really, really important to make sure.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:13:37
That the hay that you are feeding is actually also being eaten because it's only obviously when they eat it and chew it and swallow it that they're creating the forage mat in their stomach or they're filling up their stomach to protect it from acid squeezing or splashing up to the top part of the stomach.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:13:57
And it's also in chewing and swallowing the hay that they're creating all of the saliva that then does that beautiful job of diluting and buffering the acid that's in the bottom part of the stomach to make it less likely to be able to burn holes through the top part of the stomach.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:14:13
So, super, super important, uh, to measure the amount of hay you're feeding. This is really important if you are using slow-feeding hay nets.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:14:23
Um, so do make sure if you are using hay nets to restrict access to hay, that you're not restricting access to hay too much. So, I absolutely love hay nets, I use them, um, and hay pillows, I use them with my own horses, I recommend them to be used with horses all the time.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:14:40
Um, but… but do be careful with horses who are not necessarily, um, ferocious eaters, so… so I…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:14:51
I don't have this issue with my horses, because they're all so passionate about eating that hay nets only just do enough to slow them… slow them down with eating their hay. So they're very, very efficient still, even with eating through small hole hay nets. My horses are very good at extracting hay through small hole hay nets.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:15:10
But if you've got horses who are not that food focused, and most horses are really food focused, but there is some horses that are not as passionate about getting hay out through a hay net.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:15:27
And it will potentially restrict their hay intake so much that you will put them at increased risk of squamous gastric ulcers. So again, measure. If you're putting your hay in your horse's hay net, it's super easy. Grab a set of luggage scales.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:15:42
And you can weigh what your hay net weighs when you fill it up, and then if there's still hay after 24 hours, weigh it again and do that calculation to figure out, well, how much hay is my horse actually eating through a hay net?
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:15:56
And if it's less than that 1.5% to 2% of their body weight.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:16:01
what you might want to do is put some of their hay out so that they've got free access to that amount of hay, and they can eat it easily, and not be restricted with a hay net, and then still have some hay. Oh my god.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:16:18
Sorry, that was my phone again. I thought I'd put it on silent. So put some hay out that they have free access to, and then still put some in the hay net so that if they do eat all of the hay that they had free access to, they'll still have some to nibble and chew at.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:16:34
So that you're extending the amount of time still that they, that they want to, that they have.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:16:41
Hay for so that you're extending the amount of time that they're eating, chewing, producing saliva, buffering the fluid in their stomach, and reducing their risk of gastric ulcers.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:16:51
I did notice when we were at the recent Interschools competition, and I noticed that so many horses had their hay in hay nets, which is great.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:17:06
hay nets do so much to, you know, extend the amount of time it takes horses to eat hay, and reduce the risk of gastric ulcers, but what occurred to me when I was out there watching all these horses eating in hay nets, and particularly with some friends' horses, because, you know, I was in close contact with them and watching them, is.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:17:25
That these horses were being ridden for large periods of the day.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:17:28
So they sort of had lost essentially their grazing time through the day because they were being ridden and they had periods of time during the day where they had access to hay and could eat. But it wasn't like they had access to forage all of the time, of course, because they were out competing.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:17:46
And then at night, when we'd put the horses to bed, essentially in their little, um…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:17:53
showground stables for the night, um, all of their hay was in hay nets, and I'm watching the horses, like, they're quite hungry, and they're sort of trying to get the hay out through these hay nets, and… and I said to my friends, I said, in this situation, it would be better if you just put your hay on the ground, and just make sure that they have got lots of hay, like, don't…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:18:12
Don't make them work for their hay when they're away at a show, and they haven't had the opportunity to eat.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:18:17
throughout the day as they normally would if they were just at home and not being ridden for such long periods of time during the day. And I'd not ever really thought about it, but I don't, even for our popcorn, who is a very hearty eater, shall we say, and if I had her on hay only when we're at home, I would definitely put nearly all of her hay in a hay bag because she eats so quickly, even through hay nets.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:18:43
When we've got her at multi-day competitions, I never put her hay in a hay net. I always just leave it on the ground for her. One, because I wanted to get her head down and drain her lungs, which is a whole other story. And two, because I actually don't want to restrict.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:18:59
her hay intake when we're away at competitions like that. I want her to be able to eat it freely. I want her to be able to produce lots of saliva to really fill up her stomach overnight, and…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:19:11
And also too, I wanted to have time to eat plenty of hay and then also be able to have a rest because horses will rest overnight. And if we're making them work really, really hard at eating hay out of a hay net, they don't get so much time.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:19:27
to rest. So that's a little bit of an aside, um, but do be conscious of how you're using hay nets, where you're using hay nets, and how much the hay nets are actually restricting your horse's access to forage. Um, luggage scales are your best friend. Do… do start to weigh hay.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:19:45
And yeah, my recommendation would be when you're at shows and particularly multi-day shows, don't use hay nets to restrict their hay intake. I know that there's always exceptions to rules. So if you're listening to me going, oh my goodness, you know, my horse or pony would explode if I gave it.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:20:03
free access to hay, or you know that your horse would eat through all of its hay within a couple of hours, um, then, you know, do adapt this advice to your own individual horse. But for most horses, just make sure that they've got enough hay that it would last them all night, and enough variety of hay that they can pick and choose between some.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:20:20
And just let them have free access. Don't necessarily restrict their hay intake with a hay net.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:20:27
So, which leads us nicely into the second thing that we need to do for horses to minimise the risk of squamous gastric ulcers, and that is to minimise periods of fasting.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:20:39
So again, this goes back to this evolutionary viewpoint of a horse's nutrition, in that when horses were wild, free-roaming animals, they were able to pick and choose when they would graze. And if you watch, in fact, if you've got horses at home and they're grazing horses.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:20:57
you'll see this pattern. They will graze, or they'll have a little rest, and they'll go back and graze, and then they might have a little rest, and sometimes their rests are longer, sometimes they're shorter, but they don't go for long periods of time without actually going out and grazing, or eating some hay, or, you know.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:21:14
Taking in some forage.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:21:17
And I'm pretty convinced that horses know when their stomach acid is getting to a low pH, and know when their stomach is emptying, and that is when they will go and seek out more forage.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:21:32
Completely…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:21:34
through observation, um, but you see horses that have run out of forage, and in fact, I was at a racing stable a couple of weeks ago, and there was a couple of yards where the horses in those yards had smaller hay bins than all of the other horses in the rest of the.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:21:51
the rest of the farm and so by lunchtime those horses in those yards had actually eaten all of their hay which was killing me I'm watching them going I want to go into the to the hay store and go and get some more hay for them but the interesting thing was there was there was shrubbery around those yards and there was also timber posts and the horses had literally chewed their way through the timber posts because they're.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:22:16
so in need of something to chew that they were eating wood. And the posts were being held up by the rails, as opposed to the rails being held up by the posts, because the horses had eaten completely through some of the rails that made up these yards.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:22:33
And then the other thing we observed them doing was actually going around and chewing on the shrubs that were around the outside of the yard. So they're so driven to chew. They need to chew. They need to chew to produce saliva so that they can.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:22:51
balance and buffer the acidity in their stomach. Uh, and they also need to chew, because I know that they want to fill up their stomach.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:22:59
Keep it full of fiber so that the acid in the bottom part of the stomach can't splash up to the top part of the stomach so we because they have evolved to eat.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:23:10
not constantly, but almost constantly over a 24-hour period, we need to be really conscious of horse owners to try and mimic that as much as possible, and adapt our feeding program to mimic that as much as possible. Now, the rule of… rule of thumb that we tend to use as nutritionists and in the scientific community, this tends to be what publish… is what.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:23:29
what is published as well, is not to let horses go any longer than 4-6 hours without forage. Um, now, I… I…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:23:40
like to advise people to not let horses go longer than four hours without forage to chew on, so be that pasture or hay or some other kind of forage that you are using. Um, but keep in mind that long stem forage is best because that's what creates the most chewing and the most saliva, so it's always preferable to.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:23:59
to something like a chaff or a forage pellet, but don't let horses go for longer than 4 hours, with a hard rule to… to always try and minimise any period they might go without forage to chew on, um, that is longer than 6 hours. So 6 hours is a long time for a horse not to have forage.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:24:17
So what this means is if you're feeding out hay.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:24:22
and your horse has got access to… only got access to hay, and there is no access to pasture, spread the hay you feed out as much as you can over a 24-hour period. Now, of course, as humans, we have to sleep, and luckily for us, our horses seem to be less prone to gastric ulcers when they're fasting overnight.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:24:41
as opposed to fasting or going without forage during the day. So, there is a study in Icelandic horses that showed that, you know, periods of fasting overnight.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:24:56
had no impact on squamous gastric ulcer risk in horses. So, they… and the authors of that study, um…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:25:08
mentioned that it's potentially because horses do tend to sleep a little bit more overnight, and they were mostly stabled horses, and in fact, it was interesting in that study. They showed that horses that had 24-hour turnout had a higher risk of gastric ulceration, so…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:25:23
Take this with a grain of salt, and it's possibly because the stabled horses were not moving and may have been sleeping when they were in that longer period of fasting overnight. But regardless, the study did report that in the stabled horses, longer periods of time without hay overnight didn't translate then into a higher risk of gastric ulceration.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:25:44
But, as much as possible, you need to make sure that your horses have got access to forage 24-7.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:25:52
I am a big advocate of making sure that horses have got access to hay when they're **** to a float, waiting around at a show or a clinic, when they're ** ** waiting for farriers or dentists, when you've got them.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:26:09
more confined than usual for any reason, and away from their normal forage sources, give them something to chew on. Um, it's so, so important. It's important from a mental health perspective as well, because they're wired to chew. It's stressful for them when… it's feed deprivation for them if they don't have forage to chew on, and that is psychologically stressful for them.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:26:28
And that causes its own host of issues, which I won't go into, um, just now, but… but do try and make sure, as much as possible, that horses have got access to forage all of the time. Um, now, relating this back to the… the Facebook post that started this whole podcast, this is…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:26:48
This is the other another question about forage. And it relates, I guess, to the first, like the horse had access to free choice forage, but how much actual access was she getting to that hay bale? Was she being hunted away by herd mates and then therefore having these essentially enforced long fasting periods, during which her stomach would empty?
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:27:09
fill up with very low pH acid, and then put her at really increased risk of squamous gastric ulcers, which is the third time she'd been diagnosed. So, my guess would be that that horse was ulcerated.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:27:26
reasons not related to what she was being fed in her feed bin. So I would think that for that particular horse, it's going to have something to do with her forage access and her forage intake. So super important to make sure that horses are being fed plenty of forage.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:27:42
Um, and also to minimize the periods of fasting. I should have mentioned when we're talking about plenty of forage and going through all the, you know, kilograms per 100 kilograms of body weight, this is something that our My Happy Horse nutrition app does beautifully for you.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:27:57
You can enter in a horse's pasture access, you can enter in a horse's free choice hay access, or hay that you feed out in measured amounts per day, and you'll get a really quick.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:28:10
calculation on whether your horse is getting enough forage. Is it, you know, is it in the green zone? Is it in the red zone? Essentially, you'll know at a very quick glance when you enter the information about your horse and about the forages that they're eating, you'll know whether you're actually.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:28:26
feeding enough forage and in the fully paid version of the app you can see your horse's gut health score too and that brings their forage intake into more detail from a gut health perspective so if you haven't tried out our app I'd love you to download it from the app store and enter your horse's details in there and check what their gut health score is and what their forage intake looks like in terms of.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:28:53
what they need according to their body weight.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:28:58
And that brings us to the third thing we must all do to reduce the risk of squamous gastric ulcers and that is to feed hay before and also after you ride your horse. So feeding hay before your horse to me is one of if not the most critical thing we must do as horse owners for our horses.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:29:20
I always say, if I had two minutes with every horse owner in the world, this is what I would teach them. Um, and it's because when you ride your horse, the stomach gets squeezed, and also, too, with the movement of, you know, walking, trotting, cantering, galloping, that movement is what splashes the acid around in your horse's stomach.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:29:38
So your horses that are at an increased risk of gastric ulceration when they're under saddle or when you're working them.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:29:47
they might be in harness, it doesn't really matter what you're doing with them. If you are making them move, they are at increased risk of squamous gastric ulceration. So feeding hay before you ride means that two things, you will fill up their stomach with fibre, and the acid will no longer be able to physically splash around.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:30:05
And you are also diluting and buffering that acid with all of the saliva that your horse will create whilst chewing the hay before you ride, so that the fluid in the stomach is less acidic and less likely to burn holes through the top part of the stomach. So it's so crucial.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:30:22
One of my favorite things to do, in fact, is when I, when I, well, one of my favorite things to see, I guess I should say, is when I feed my horses hay before we ride. And it's just a, all of my kids, my nieces, anyone who rides horses here knows that number one thing you do is when you go to grab your halter to catch your horse, you also grab a flake of lucent hay and put it out at.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:30:46
that particular horse's spot, so that when that horse comes in out of the pasture, um, and is **** ** and ready to be brushed and tacked up for a ride, they've got loosened hay there for them to eat. But one of my favourite things to see is by the time we finish brushing and tacking up.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:31:01
The horses are all drooling saliva down their lips, like, you can… you can see the saliva. The hay is always fed from ground level, and that… that is a great thing to do, because…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:31:12
horses apparently, and I must go and find the research on this, but horses apparently make more saliva when they're eating from ground level, so do feed the hay before you ride off the ground. And then the hay after you ride.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:31:24
I just always think, if you've been… if you've been out, um, for half an hour, an hour, if you've been out on a long trail ride for a couple of hours, where hopefully your horse has also had a chance to nibble at some… some grass and various things along the way, when you come back from that ride, they haven't eaten for a period of time. So if you've still got some hay available there for them to eat.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:31:44
as you are unsaddling and doing all the things you do after you ride your horse. It just means that straight away, they're getting more fibre in their stomach, more saliva down in their stomach, and that adds additional protection. So, there was a study done on racehorses, it was actually done in Western Australia.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:32:01
And it showed that horses that were trained away from their stable had a higher risk of gastric ulcers. So these are horses that are being loaded onto a horse truck or trailer, transported to a track to be trained, and then transported back. And it's always stuck in my mind, that finding, because those horses.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:32:19
had a longer period of time after they were ridden before they actually got back to to some sort of forage to chew. So so do make sure absolutely feed hay before you ride, and also after you ride is a great idea.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:32:34
Now, I do go into more detail on this in episode…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:32:41
I'm just looking it up, because I can't remember what number it is. I think it's, uh, episode number 3 of the Happy Horse Nutrition Podcast. Feed loose and hay to your horse before you ride. So there's a whole episode about this, I won't go into any more detail on it here, but super important, um.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:32:57
to feed hay before you ride. So just to recap, the three big things that we need to think about before we go reaching for particular feeds or, you know, gut health supplements to prevent gastric ulcers in horses.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:33:13
those things won't be able to prevent gastric ulcers unless the forage base of your horse's diet is right. So the three big things are feed plenty of forage, and use the My Happy Horse Nutrition app to figure out what plenty is for your horse, and whether or not you are giving your horse enough. It makes it super easy, because you'll see if you're in the red or in the green.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:33:32
Um, minimise fasting, so don't let your horses go for longer than 4 to 6 hours without forage to chew, and feed hay before and after you ride. If you get those 3 things right, your horse is going to be at a dramatically reduced risk.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:33:49
of squamous gastric ulcers, and then anything we do as far as the feeds and supplements on top of that will just act to reduce their risk even more. One of the really interesting findings, and I'll leave you with this, in the Icelandic study is that horses that were fed some amount of supplementary feed.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:34:09
were at a further reduced risk of gastric ulceration. And the interesting thing is that those feeds were not low non-structural carbohydrate feeds or anything special to do with gastric ulceration. They were mostly processed grain feeds, and they reduced the risk of gastric ulceration. So, in a follow-up episode to this episode, I will talk about.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:34:30
other strategies we can use on top of the three that I've spoken about today to further reduce the risk of your horse's gastric ulcers. With that, I will just say thank you so much for being here. Thank you for listening to our podcast. If you find the time to follow us, that would be so appreciated.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:34:48
If you know anyone who's struggling with a horse with gastric ulceration, please share this episode with them, and I will catch you in the next episode.
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