Special Considerations for Your Horse’s Diet

In This Chapter

• Exploring dietary supplements
• Rehabilitating horses with weight issues
• Feeding horses with allergies
• Changing behavior with diet

You know that hay or pasture is the basis of your horse’s diet, and that you can add grain or other goodies if you so choose. (If you’re not so sure, you can glean all this and more from Chapter Your Hungry Horse: Feeding Fundamentals.) But what if your horse has special circumstances? Can you do anything that’s diet-related to help a horse with health or behavioral problems?

The answer is a resounding yes. In this chapter, we give you the lowdown on those dietary supplements that fill tack-and-feed store shelves. We also give you pointers on how to safely slim down a fat horse (or bulk up a skinny horse) and how to control equine allergies with diet. And last, but not least, we take a look at behavioral issues and how you can manage them with diet.

The Skinny on Dietary Supplements

If you’ve ever gone into a tack-and-feed store, you’ve seen The Supplements. They usually take up one or two entire aisles, and they have names and functions that you never even imagined would exist.

How are you to know whether your horse needs any of this stuff? And how are you to know how to shop for and feed supplements to your horse? We can help you with that — read through the information in the following sections.

Determining when supplements truly are necessary

Remember

Here’s our philosophy on supplements: If your horse is generally healthy, if you spend your money on the best food for your horse (see Chapter Your Hungry Horse: Feeding Fundamentals to find out what that is), and if you work and train her properly, you probably don’t need any dietary supplements. (In fact, doing so may cause an imbalance in her body and even toxicity.) You need only one rule for the equine diet: Keep it simple.

Many people underestimate the activity levels of their horses; this can lead to not conditioning or exercising their horses enough to be competitive in whatever activity they like to do with their horses, such as showing, endurance, barrel racing, and so on. These folks try to make up the difference with supplements. No supplement is going to make a winner out of an average horse, or one who isn’t in good physical condition. That said, if you want to try some supplements on your horse and see whether they improve her performance, keep flies away, or make her coat shine like a diamond, go right ahead. Just remember that certain vitamins and minerals can cause real problems if given to excess. (Read Chapter The Building Blocks of Good Nutrition to find out which vitamins and minerals can cause problems.)

Remember

Here are some situations where a horse may genuinely benefit from supplements (see the following section for the scoop on the different types of supplements we mention):

- While in training: Joint supplements may be useful because the horse’s joints are being stressed. Antioxidants may be something to consider too, as long as you don’t overdo the vitamin A. (See Chapter The Building Blocks of Good Nutrition for details on vitamin A.)

- While under high stress: Stress makes it difficult for the body to properly absorb nutrients. Horses undergoing extreme stress, like being shipped long distances or traveling extensively on a show circuit, may benefit from a vitamin supplement.

- While pregnant: The last third of a mare’s pregnancy is very taxing on her body. Vitamin supplements designed for broodmares can be helpful at this time of gestation. (See Chapter Breeding Your Horse for more details on caring for pregnant mares.)

- While nursing: Nursing mares put out a lot of vitamins and energy to their foals in the form of milk. Vitamin supplements designed for lactating mares can help them stay in good condition during this time.

- While eating poorly: Horses who aren’t eating much because they suffer from a chronic illness probably aren’t getting all the vitamins they need. A supplement may be warranted in this case.

- While eating marginal hay: If you can’t get good hay for part of the year because of a lack of supply due to weather or other issues beyond your supplier’s control, you can supplement with vitamins and minerals. (Also consider using a good quality pelleted feed or hay cubes instead; we discuss these options in Chapter Your Hungry Horse: Feeding Fundamentals.)

- While in the senior years: Geriatric horses may benefit from vitamin and joint supplements. See Chapter Helping Your Horse Age Gracefully for more details on this.

- While having hoof problems: Horses with hoof problems (such as those in Chapter Tackling Common Ailments) may benefit from a hoof supplement containing biotin. First, be certain that you’ve ruled out any environmental causes such as overly dry conditions or stabling in shavings; both of these situations cause feet to dry out and become brittle.

- While recovering from illness: Horses who have been sick or suffering from an infection can benefit from supplements containing probiotics or prebiotics, especially if the horse has been on antibiotics.

• Probiotics contain the beneficial organisms that live in the horse’s digestive tract and are necessary to proper function. Illness or the use of antibiotics can disturb the balance of these bacteria.
• Prebiotics are nutrients that encourage those beneficial bacteria to grow.

Your veterinarian can advise you about the use of probiotics or prebiotics in your horse.

Remember

If you’re not sure whether you should be giving your horse a supplement for any of the preceding situations, don’t hesitate to discuss your concerns with your veterinarian.

Surveying different types of supplements

Keeping track of supplements is difficult, because so much variety exists. Here are some of the most popular and useful types of supplement products that are out there:

- Hoof: Strong hooves are something that every horse owner desires, and you can find several supplements designed to make hooves grow tougher. They usually contain a type of vitamin B called biotin, which is believed to contribute to hoof growth.

 - Joint: Supplements designed to help maintain healthy joints are probably the most abundant type of supplement on the market. Most of these products contain a combination of different ingredients, several of which may increase joint mobility.

• Many joint supplements contain the compounds of glucosamine and chondroitin. Some also contain methylsulfonylmethane (MSM). We use joint supplements containing these ingredients because some of these products have been scientifically proven to work. Coauthor Audrey uses them for her senior Quarter Horse gelding, and coauthor Dr. Kate uses them for a number of her performance horses.
• Other ingredients such as yucca and devil’s claw, which are both natural anti-inflammatories, are sometimes used in joint supplements. Although no double-blind scientific studies have been done to prove that these ingredients help joints, enough anecdotal evidence exists to make adding these to your horse’s diet a consideration.

- Vitamins: Just like humans take vitamins, so can horses. The difference is that if your horse is eating a quality diet of hay or pasture and has no special needs, she really doesn’t need a vitamin supplement. However, your horse may need a vitamin supplement in certain situations, such as pregnancy (see the previous section).

Other types of supplements on the market include the following:

- Allergy: Horses can get allergies just like people do, and some supplements purport to help them with allergic symptoms. These supplements contain antihistamines, or all-natural ingredients designed to reduce inflammation. (We discuss other options for helping horses with allergies later in this chapter.)

- Calming: Supplements to help nervous horses contain anything from vitamin B to valerian root to L-tryptophan. All these natural ingredients have been shown anecdotally to relax the nervous system. Just be sure that your horse isn’t nervous because of fixable issues like poor training, wrong diet, lack of exercise, or a stressful environment before you dose him with calming supplements.

Warning!

If you show your horse, be aware that some of the ingredients in these supplements will cause your horse to test positive on horse show drug tests, resulting in disqualification.

- Electrolytes: For horses who work hard and sweat a lot, electrolyte supplements are meant to replace electrolytes lost from the horse’s body.

- Fly control: Natural supplements meant to keep flies at bay may contain powdered garlic. Garlic is purported to be unpleasant to flies, and horses who eat these supplements are supposed to be less attractive to the flying pests.

- Skin and coat: Every horse owner wants a horse with healthy skin and a glowing coat, and these supplements are designed to provide just that. They often contain different oils and minerals that are supposed to foster a healthy skin and coat.

- Weight gain: Some of these supplements, designed for underweight horses, contain high-calorie ingredients to help the horse gain weight. Others are made up of natural ingredients meant to promote healthy metabolism.

Supplements exist for just about every equine condition you can imagine. If your horse is in need of a particular supplement, your veterinarian will probably recommend one. If you see a supplement for sale that you think may be helpful to your horse, ask your vet about it.

Choosing a quality supplement

When you’re shopping for dietary supplements, things can get tricky. Here are some guidelines:

Tip

- The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) doesn’t control supplement labels on equine products, so determining the quality of the ingredients or the product is difficult. One way around this is to look for a seal on the label that says NASC. Short for National Animal Supplement Council, the NASC seal indicates that the ingredients in the product meet certain standards for quality.

- If you find that you can’t clearly understand what’s in the product or what levels of ingredients are inside without having to use a calculator, you should be concerned.

- Unrealistic claims as to speedy results or the effects of the product indicate that the manufacturer isn’t being truthful. For example, don’t trust a supplement that says it can cure something.

- Don’t be fooled by higher and higher levels of active ingredients. Horses can assimilate only so much. The rest of the ingredients will be wasted — as will the extra money that you’re paying for the higher dose.

Remember

If you aren’t sure of the quality or quantity of a supplement that you’re considering, talk to your horse’s veterinarian. He or she is the best one to give you advice on this subject.

Feeding supplements to your equine friend

Most supplements are designed to be palatable to horses, who can be notoriously fussy about what they eat. Some supplements can be fed directly to the horse, added to pelleted feed, or given as a paste.

Remember

Follow the manufacturer’s directions on the label when it comes to administering the supplement you want to give to your horse:

- If the label recommends that the supplement be a “top dressing” to feed, simply mix it with a commercial pelleted feed or hay pellets (see Figure 8-1).

- If the supplement is in a powder form, add it to a pelleted feed, mix in a little water, and stir the mixture before serving it to your horse (see Figure 8-2).

- A paste supplement calls for administering the paste directly into the horse’s mouth with a syringe (see Figure 8-3). You do this by tying your horse securely by his halter and placing the tip of the syringe into his mouth. Depress the syringe plunger so the product goes into the horse’s mouth and onto his tongue.

Figure 8-1: Some supplements come in pellet form and can be fed directly or mixed into feed.

Figure 8-2: Use a small amount of a quality pelleted feed to mix with a powdered supplement.

Figure 8-3: Supplements in paste form must be administered directly into a horse’s mouth.

The magic of good food To illustrate how much a good diet matters to your horse’s well-being (and to prove that you really don’t need all kinds of supplements if your horse is being well fed), coauthor Dr. Kate tells a story of how she recently began riding with a new instructor to help improve her basic riding skills. The instructor has been everywhere and won everything at top levels in the American Quarter Horse Association world. Upon arriving at Dr. Kate’s 30-acre cutting horse ranch in Texas, the instructor was very impressed at how Dr. Kate’s horses’ coats gleamed even though they’re out in the hot sun all day. The instructor wanted to know what kind of supplements Dr. Kate was feeding her horses. When Dr. Kate showed the instructor the alfalfa and hay mix that she feeds her horses, along with the pasture they graze on, the instructor wouldn’t believe it. After being at Dr. Kate’s ranch for several weeks, she finally got it. Dr. Kate’s horses get to be outside on pasture, and they’re worked hard but they’re not stressed. In short, Dr. Kate does everything that she and coauthor Audrey promote in this book. And it works.

Helping Horses with Weight Problems

Horses love to eat, no doubt about it. Put food in front of a healthy horse, and it’s gone in no time. This penchant for chowing down serves the horse well in the wild, where food is scarce. But in captivity, when horses are given foods that are much higher in calories than the food that they’d find in nature, they can easily put on weight. Some horses are “hard keepers,” however. This means that no matter how much they eat, they can’t maintain a healthy weight. Both of these types of horses need specialized feeding programs.

Chubby equines

Warning!

Being overweight is bad for your health, whether you’re a human or a horse. Here are just a few dangers facing overweight horses:

- Too much weight on a horse puts considerable stress on his joints and can result in premature arthritis, or can aggravate existing arthritis and other joint problems. (See Chapter Tackling Common Ailments for more information on arthritis.) Overweight horses can end up permanently unsound before their time as a result of their excess weight.

- Even worse than arthritis, overweight horses are at great risk for laminitis. This crippling disease causes the horse’s coffin bone to rotate inside his hoof, rendering him lame, sometimes for life. (See Chapter Tackling Common Ailments for more details on laminitis.)

- Overweight horses also are at risk of developing equine metabolic syndrome. (See Chapter Tackling Common Ailments for more details on this illness.) Though much research is currently being done concerning this condition, a high starch/carbohydrate diet and subsequent development of insulin resistance is thought to be involved.

Horses who have too much poundage on their bones need help getting the weight off safely. Because the equine digestive system is designed to be constantly functioning, you can’t just cut back solely on the amount of food you feed if you hope to take weight off your horse. You also need to change what you’re feeding him.

Remember

Keep the following considerations in mind when you’re dealing with an overweight horse:

- Some illnesses can cause a horse to gain weight no matter what he’s eating. If your horse starts to become fat without an increase in his feed or a decrease in his exercise, contact your veterinarian before you change anything regarding his lifestyle. (In fact, be sure to talk to your vet before you make changes to your horse’s diet for any reason.)

- If your horse is very overweight, ask your veterinarian to help you develop an exercise and feeding program for your horse. The vet should take into consideration the horse’s current level of fitness, age, any soundness issues, and current body condition score. Flip to Chapter Exercising for Health for general information on exercising your horse.

See Chapter Sizing Up a Healthy Horse for details on determining whether your horse is underweight, overweight, or at a normal weight.

Changing feed

If you read through Chapter The Building Blocks of Good Nutrition, you know that certain types of horse food contain more fats and carbohydrates than others. If your horse is overweight, take a look at what you’re feeding him:

- Grains: The first thing you should consider is grain. If you horse does only light or moderate exercise, and you’re feeding him grain, that may be your problem right there. Grain — especially corn — is high in fats and carbohydrates, and can cause a horse to put on weight quickly.

A horse on a light or moderate work schedule likely doesn’t need grain, so eliminating or reducing the amount may be the right move. (Talk to your vet about how much you should cut down.) If you’re using grain to mix with supplements or medications, substitute a lower-carbohydrate option, such as a complete feed that’s low in carbs and with no added molasses, and cut back on the amount you give.

- Hay: If your horse is eating legumes like alfalfa hay or clover, his weight problem may be a result of these higher-energy hays. Your horse likely isn’t getting enough exercise to be eating this type of hay, so he needs something lower in carbs. A grass hay is a great substitution because it provides needed protein with fewer carbohydrates.

- Pasture: If your overweight horse is on pasture and you don’t have another option as far as the type of forage that he’s eating, consider confining him off the pasture for a few hours a day to see whether it helps him lose weight. (If you can’t confine him, fit him with a muzzle for a few hours a day that will allow him to drink but not graze.) If he still doesn’t lose weight, you’ll have to keep him off the pasture even longer. To keep him from getting bored, feed him grass hay while he’s confined.

Tip

The nutritional and caloric content of pasture changes with the seasons, so although your horse may get fat eating spring pasture 24 hours a day, that much fall pasture may not have the same effect on him.

Remember

Any changes you make to your horse’s diet must be done gradually. Slowly introduce new feeds by making the new feed one-quarter of the horse’s diet for the first three days. Then increase the new feed to one-half of the horse’s diet. Maintain this amount for three days, and then add enough new feed to make it three-quarters of your horse’s diet. If you’re substituting a new food for one you plan to discontinue, continue this for three more days until you finally switch your horse over completely.

Decreasing feed

Cutting back on a horse’s feed intake to encourage him to lose weight can be tricky. You don’t want to deprive him of his intrinsic need to chew. You also don’t want to create a situation where his stomach is empty for much of the day, because that can lead to colic, ulcers, and stall vices (see Chapter Tackling Common Ailments).

Remember

If you’ve already looked at what you’re feeding your horse (see the previous section) and have determined that he’s simply getting too much food, reduce the size of the portions you’re giving him without cutting back on the number of meals he’s getting. Another option is to decrease or eliminate any grain he’s getting and to switch to grass hay or a grass-legume hay mix.

Tip

Use this method to determine how much to cut back on your overweight horse’s feeding:

1. Because the average 1,000-pound horse should get 18 to 20 pounds of hay per day, begin by gradually switching from the same amount of legume hay that your horse is currently getting to grass hay or a grass-legume hay mix; cut out any grains or concentrates that your horse is getting.

See how your horse does on this amount.

2. If your horse continues to gain weight, cut him down to 15 pounds of grass hay or a grass-legume hay mix a day; if he maintains his weight but doesn’t lose, cut him down to 14 pounds a day.

Meanwhile, parcel this hay (whatever the amount) out into three to four feedings per day. Some horses eat more quickly than they ideally should. Horses in confinement — which is most horses these days — are especially bad about eating too quickly.

Warning!

Weight loss should be gradual. Do not cut your horse’s hay intake to less than 15 pounds per day (for a 1,000-pound horse). Horses fed minimal forage diets are likely under a significant amount of stress, predisposing them to developing gastrointestinal ulcers, colic, laminitis, and other diseases.

If your horse still doesn’t lose weight after this feed change/reduction, contact your veterinarian.

Underweight horses

When it comes to weight issues, horses usually have more problems with being overweight rather than underweight. That said, some horses are known for being “hard keepers,” meaning that it’s tough for their owners to keep these horses at a high-enough weight.

If you have a horse who can’t keep weight on, your first step is to have him checked out by a veterinarian. The vet should check the horse’s teeth and talk to you about your deworming program (see Chapter Getting Up to Speed on Routine Care for general information about tooth care and deworming). He or she may then make some suggestions as to how you can boost the horse’s calorie intake. This boost may involve giving the horse more of the same food, adding new foods, or changing the type of food altogether.

In some cases, horses can be hard to keep at a good weight because of genetic factors. Their metabolisms are such that they burn through calories at a higher rate than other horses and simply need more food to eat.

If deworming the horse, caring for his teeth, and increasing his feed don’t solve the problem, the vet should follow up with a fecal exam and blood work to see whether a health problem is causing the weight loss.

Controlling Allergies with Diet

Horses get allergies just like humans do. Sometimes their allergies are airborne. Other times the allergies come from diet. Whether your horse’s allergies are from what she’s breathing, touching, or eating, a change in diet may help. (For more details on allergies, see Chapter Tackling Common Ailments.)

Recognizing signs of allergies

Horses show signs that they’re allergic to something in different ways. These include:

- Coughing: When an allergen irritates a horse’s airways, she coughs. This coughing may be intermittent or constant, depending on the severity of the allergy.

- Loud breathing: Horses can develop something called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD (sometimes called “heaves”; see Chapter Tackling Common Ailments for more information). Although COPD may not be caused specifically by allergens, it can be aggravated by them. Horses who have COPD breathe loudly, almost like they’re wheezing. The loud breathing increases with exercise.

- Hives: Small itchy bumps that appear in a certain spot on a horse’s body, or all over it, are hives. Hives can erupt when a horse comes into contact with something that she’s allergic to, such as certain types of bedding or an insect bite. Breathing in allergens or eating something that she’s allergic to can also trigger hives in horses.

- Digestive upset: Horses with allergies to food can get sick when they eat something that causes their immune system to overreact. One symptom of this may be diarrhea or loose stool.

If your horse shows any of these symptoms, allergies may be involved. Other life-threatening or contagious diseases may be involved, however, so a veterinary exam is recommended.

Checking out options for allergic horses

Horses who have allergies can benefit from changes in their diet. Depending on what your horse is allergic to, certain feeds can make a difference.

- Many horses who have allergies that affect their airways can benefit from eating feed that’s low in dust. If your horse coughs a lot and your vet believes that she suffers from allergies, consider soaking her hay in a tub of water (enough to cover the hay) before you feed her (see Figure 8-4). Feeding the horse with a ground-level container is another good choice. Both methods reduce the amount of dust that wafts up her nose while she’s eating.

Tip

Horses with allergic respiratory symptoms sometimes are forced to eat hay cubes or other types of complete feeds that are dust free. However, because horses need the roughage that comes with hay, we recommended feeding at least some hay, and soaking it first. Discuss this possibility with your vet.

- If your horse gets hives and your vet believes that the condition is being caused by food that she’s eating, or if your horse gets digestive upset as a result of a food allergy, you need to find something for her to eat that doesn’t trigger her immune system to overreact. Trial and error is often the best way to determine what food is most suitable for your allergic horse. Gradually switch your horse’s hay or pasture to a different plant type and watch for an improvement in symptoms. For example, if your horse seems to be allergic to Bermuda, gradually switch her over to timothy to see whether that helps. If that doesn’t do the trick, try another hay, such as orchard, or possibly alfalfa. Although food trials like this can be frustrating, if you persist, you may eventually find the right diet for your allergic horse. Your vet can help guide you through this process.

Figure 8-4: Horses with airborne allergies have less reaction to hay that’s been soaked in water.

Affecting Your Horse’s Behavior with Diet

You may have heard that children who eat a lot of sugary foods can become hyper. This is a classic case of how diet can affect behavior, and it applies to horses as well. Keeping horses calm requires a balance of food, exercise, and training. Overwork and/or stall confinement can actually make a horse seem more hyper when the actual problem is that the horse is nervous or stressed because he never gets any downtime.

That said, certain types of foods can cause horses to build up more energy than they can easily burn. The result is behavior that the average horse owner doesn’t appreciate. The good news is that for many of these horses, a change in diet can literally change their personalities. (For the basics of handling misbehaving horses, flip to Chapter Connecting Your Horse’s Behavior to Health.)

Food-related misbehaviors

Most of the diet-related bad behavior seen in horses has to do with an excess of energy. Give a horse food that gives him gobs of energy and not enough exercise, and you have a recipe for disaster. Some horses are so affected by their diets that even hours of exercise every day won’t calm them down.

Here are a few bad behaviors that can be food related:

- Spookiness: Ever ridden a horse who feels like he’s going to explode out from underneath you? Who jumps at every sound and can’t be consoled no matter how much you talk to him or try to distract him? Although many horses are just built to be spooky due to genetics or training, others may behave like this because they’re getting too many carbohydrates.

- Difficulty under saddle: Some horses don’t respond to training when being ridden. They can’t seem to focus on the rider and want to do things like buck, run off, rear, or generally misbehave. Although most of the time this is due to poor training or riding, in some cases, it’s the result of a diet that’s way too high in carbohydrates.

- Bad barn behavior: If you’ve ever walked by a horse’s stall in a barn aisle and had him come lunging at you, teeth bared, you know how unpleasant a cranky horse can be. Most horses who act this way are unhappy about something in their lives, or just don’t like people, for whatever reason. Others are getting too many carbs and are crawling out of their skin with excess energy.

Not all horses react so violently to too many carbs in their diet, but enough do to make diet change one of the first recommendations vets and well-educated trainers suggest when clients express frustration with a horse’s behavior.

Remember

Figuring out whether diet is the cause of bad behavior can be tricky. Discuss this possibility with your veterinarian before you look for other causes.

Changing your “hot” horse’s diet

Take a close look at horses who are misbehaving for reasons related to diet, and you’ll see that they’re probably kept in stalls and are getting a legume hay (alfalfa in particular can make some horses high). Or, they may have a diet that includes grains, which are loaded with carbs. Another common ingredient in high-horse diets is sweet feed, a grain or hay mix or commercial feed containing molasses. The excess carbohydrates in each of these types of feed convert to sugar in the horse’s body, which becomes unhealthy energy with nowhere to go.

Tip

Take these high-carb foods away from a “hot” horse and you just may see a change in personality. If you suspect that your horse may be one of these carb victims, cut out the grain and the sweet feed, and switch to a grass hay from a legume hay. Give your horse a month on his new diet to see whether it helps. If it doesn’t, you may have a training or genetic issue. Get help from a professional trainer. (For details on how to find a good trainer, see Horses For Dummies, 2nd Edition, written by coauthor Audrey with Janice Posnikoff, DVM, and published by Wiley.)

by Audrey Pavia with Kate Gentry-Running,DVM,CVA