“There are lots of reasons horses go off feed, but every time a horse goes off feed, they’re trying to tell us something, and we need to listen,” said Kelly R. Vineyard, MS, PhD, Senior Equine Nutritionist with Purina Animal Nutrition. She listed strategies for encouraging horses that won’t eat or won’t eat much during the 2024 Purina Equine Veterinary Conference, in St. Louis, Missouri.
Why Won’t the Horse Eat?
When trying to pinpoint the reason a horse has gone off feed, the first thing Vineyard recommends is looking at the supplements in his diet. She’s observed that when you pull a laundry list of supplements out of the feed, often the horse will go back to eating. This is because many top-dressed supplements simply aren’t palatable.
Next, Vineyard advises inspecting the feed. “Horses will go off feed if there’s something wrong with it—if it’s moldy, if it’s stale, even something like a dirty feed pan can make horses go off feed,” she said.
Then you have causes such as stress and medical issues, including gastric ulcers, pain, critical illness, trauma, sepsis, and more. “These are more serious, and we’re really going to have to do our due diligence and address the underlying condition to get these types of horses back to health and having a better appetite,” she said.
Encouraging Horses to Eat
Whether a horse simply finds a feed unpalatable or you’re trying to keep a horse eating while addressing medical issues, there are several feeds and forages you can offer.
“Number one on the list is green grass, just having the horse go out and graze,” said Vineyard. “If the horse won’t graze green grass, we know they don’t feel well.” Other options include:
- Grain-based sweet feeds, which are highly palatable.
- Straight oats, since horses are attracted to starch.
- Alfalfa hay.
- Bran mash.
- Beet-pulp-based complete feed.
- Senior complete feed.
“If we can turn these horses out, if we can feed them better hay, even just reducing meal size sometimes can help,” said Vineyard.
Then you might have to do a little trial and error to identify a horse’s meal preferences. That might include switching between textured and pelleted feed, wet and dry feed, and feeding near or away from other horses.
“There is a behavioral component to feeding horses together that may encourage a little competition,” she said. “So if a horse is not eating well on his own, put him in a stall next to a horse. Sometimes hearing the other horse eating can motivate them to start eating again.”
Lastly, Vineyard recommended adding flavor enhancers (e.g., molasses, applesauce, honey, chopped carrots) as a temporary, not long-term fix.
Feeding the Sick Horse
Horses battling illness or trauma might not want to eat, yet these are the horses that need nutrition most. “We know that providing nutrition is really important in this critical phase of illness, and prolonged food deprivation is going to have long-term consequences,” said Vineyard. “Especially for the microbiome—those bugs in the hindgut need fiber, and if they go too long without fiber they’re going to start dying off, and that’s going to create a cascade of problems.”
In these cases, nutritional intervention by way of enteral feeding can help preserve cellular and tissue function, maintain muscle mass, promote recovery, and even save a horse’s life. Vineyard explained horse to use a nutritionally complete enteral diet, such as Purina WellSolve Well Gel, to support horses that can’t or won’t eat. The established benefits of enteral feeding include:
- Providing a source of luminal nutrients for enterocytes.
- Maintaining the integrity of the mucosal barrier.
- Providing essential nutrients to facilitate healing.
- Providing fiber to maintain a healthy hindgut microbial population.
“The common denominator is providing good nutrients to help promote the body’s ability to heal and prevent the fiber-digesting microbes from dying,” said Vineyard. “We can have better outcomes if we feed these horses good nutrition while they’re ill.”
Related Reading
- Storage’s Effects on Commercial Equine Grains
- Effects of Adding Rice Bran to the Equine Diet
- Nutritional Management of the Competitive Equine Athlete
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