Feeding to keep your horse ZEN!
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P.S. We love AI, but this content is 100% human generated. 💕
Author: Dr Nerida McGilchrist | PhD Equine Nutritionist and Founder of My Happy Horse
As a horse rider, I am sure I am not alone when I say there are few things in life that make me feel more alive, more connected and more at peace than a ride where my horses and I just flow together. They are calm, I am focussed and things between us just… flow 💗.
And I am also sure I am not alone when I say there are few things more unnerving, more frustrating or more terrifying than a horse that is hot, nervous, reactive or even downright dangerous!
Now, there are many things that contribute to a horse’s behaviour… base temperament, training, environment, pain and stress to name just a few. And often when a horse misbehaves, we go looking for one of these problems to explain it.
But what if I told you that what you are feeding is one of, if not the biggest influence on your horse’s behaviour. Yes, everything else will still have an impact, but if you get nutrition right, the foundation for zen behaviour has been laid. And once you have that foundation, other situations are far less likely to create undesirable behaviour.
How do you feed for beautiful behaviour?
I am glad you asked! Here are my 5 best tips to keep your horse zen!
Tip 1 – Look after the hindgut!
Your horse keeps trillions of microbes in their hindgut to help them with the task of digesting fibre. We have understood these microbes’ role in digestion for a long time! But what science is showing us, is that these microbes are also crucial for many other roles including controlling your horse’s behaviour via the gut-brain axis.
And yep, when I say ‘controlling’, I mean controlling!
The good microbes in your horse’s gut produce hormones like dopamine and serotonin for your horse. If you feed in a way that disturbs the balance of good to bad microbes, the production of these hormones and various other neurotransmitters will shift, and this will change your horse’s behaviour! You are likely to see more hypervigilance, reactivity, hyperactivity, aggression and other undesirable behaviours.
So feeding to keep your horse’s hindgut healthy is crucial if you want zen behaviour.
Here are the three key things to do that:
Feed lots of forage. Aim for at least 2% of your horse’s bodyweight in forage per day (10 kg/day for a 500 kg horse).
Feed lots of different forages and fibres. This creates fibre diversity and the fibre diversity creates microbiome diversity. Horses with a more diverse microbiome are more likely to exhibit ‘normal’ behaviour.
Feed grain VERY carefully. If your horse is being fed grain or grain-based feeds, keep the amount to a minimum. My preferred maximum amount for the best behaviour is 0.5 kg per 100 kg of bodyweight, or 2.5 kg/day for a 500 kg horse, max! Always feed digestible, cooked grains, with extruded or boiled grains being the best options in Australia.
And, never, ever, ever (ever!) feed uncooked grains to your horse (with the exception of oats). Uncooked grains like cracked corn or crushed barley will dump large amounts of starch into your horse’s hindgut.
The starch is rapidly fermented, acid accumulates and in the process your horse’s good microbes die off and the bad microbes start to take over. There is honestly no faster way to create undesirable, unpredictable behaviour!
When you feed in a way that supports a healthy hindgut, your horse’s microbes stay healthy and they will send calm messages to your horse’s brain! It sounds like sci-fi, but trust me, this is how it happens, and the impact is HUGE!
Tip 2 – Feed lucerne hay before you ride!
One very common and often misunderstood cause of undesirable behaviour is stomach pain, which occurs when you ride your horse on an empty stomach.
Visualise this… Your horse’s stomach has two distinct regions, the upper ‘squamous’ region, and the lower ‘glandular’ region. The upper region is lined with skin, just like the skin on the back of your hand. The lower region creates acid, 24/7.
The lower region protects itself from the acid with thick mucous. The upper region has no such protection. Instead, the upper region relies on; 1) the stomach staying full of forage to physically stop the acid from splashing up there, and 2) the saliva created when forage is chewed to buffer the acid and make it less acidic.
If you ride your horse on an empty stomach, your horse has lost both of these protective mechanisms and what you will be doing is splashing acid, with a pH as low as 1, all over the unprotected upper region of your horse’s stomach. Which is effectively like consistently tipping battery acid all over the back of your hand… ouch!
With that going on in their stomach, you can imagine it must be really hard to behave! Our horses, being the stoic creatures they are will often put up with the pain out of sheer obedience. And being prey animals they will instinctively hide pain! But you may see signs of irritation, frustration or anxiety, like agitated tail swishing or head flicking or hyperactivity. And, some horses will really act out!
The cure for all of this is to feed lucerne hay before you ride… literally as you are saddling up, give your horse lucerne hay. The hay fills their stomach with forage and saliva and prevents acid splash and acid burn… creating calm, happy behaviour in the process.
And if you don’t believe me, try it! I can’t tell you the number of people who come back and tell me how profound the difference is in their horses once they start doing this!
Tip 3 – Don’t overfeed and adjust how much you feed regularly
Horses are funny creatures in that they express the amount of energy in their diet, in their behaviour! So one of the easiest ways to cause hyperactivity is to overfeed your horse. Therefore, when determining how much to feed your horse, be guided by their level of energy (in combination with their body condition).
If they are flat or dull in their behaviour (and not overweight), you might need to increase their hard feed. If they are hot and reactive in their behaviour, you might need to decrease their hard feed.
Also, if you have a horse that does get hyper, don’t be afraid to adjust how much you feed on a regular basis… DAILY if you have to!
Let me explain… if you have a horse that does 3 days per week of moderate intensity work, one day of light work and 3 days are rest days, adjust her feed according to how much work she does on any one day. That way, you aren’t feeding her on rest days the same amount as her moderate work days and she won’t build up a store of energy to release next time you climb aboard!
Tip 4 - Feed a balanced diet
A balanced diet is a diet that contains enough forage, not too much (if any) grain, and meets all of your horse’s daily nutrient requirements. Some nutrients, like magnesium and vitamin B1 are critical for proper nervous system function and a deficiency or imbalance of these nutrients will affect behaviour.
So when feeding for beautiful behaviour, work with a qualified nutritionist or use a diet calculation tool or app to correctly balance your horse’s diet!
Tip 5 – Feed cool feeds
Some feed ingredients can affect behaviour more than others in some horses. If you have a particularly sensitive horse, and have put each of the first 4 feeding tips into practice, you may find benefit in switching to what we consider ‘cooler’ energy sources. These are typically the oils and fibres.
Suitable options include most oils (avoiding the very high omega 6 oils like corn and sunflower oils), beet pulp, lupins, lupin hulls, copra meal and flax, hemp hulls or any other alternate fibres.
Do calming supplements work?
We often joke that calming supplements only appear to work because as your horse’s rider, your energy affects their energy. If you are anxious, they will be anxious, so when you give your horse a calming supplement, you calm down and therefore they calm down! While there is an element of truth to this, calming supplements can be hit and miss.
What I will say, with certainty about calming supplements is that if all you do is use a supplement to ‘fix’ behavioural problems, they are not going to help. If your horse’s nutritional foundations are not supporting calm behaviour, a supplement will only be an (ineffective) patch. So before you spend your $$ on supplements, put these 5 tips into practice and see how much difference they make!
Born to be zen!
Nearly all of our horse’s behavioural issues are caused by us! Our horses have an ancient gut and a long standing relationship with their hindgut microbes that sets them up for calm, consistent behaviour. When we humans get involved in our horse’s diets, we tend to do all sorts of things that disrupt gut health and function and with it, we disrupt behaviour.
By following the feeding tips given here, you will keep gut health intact, support normal gut-brain axis communication, control energy intake and ensure nutrient requirements are met. And these things combined will give your horse the best shot at zen behaviour… enjoy! 💖
For more information on feeding and nutrition, please listen to the Happy Horse Nutrition podcast🤍
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.