An overweight horse should not be fed less than 1.5% of its body weight in hay per day. Less forage than 1.5% may cause health issues such as colic, ulcers, and wood biting behaviors. Grass hay holds fewer calories than legume hays such as alfalfa and is better suited to a controlled diet.

Forage is the cornerstone of every horse’s diet, and your horse must have access to hay. If you are concerned about your horse’s calorie intake and seek advice on how to reduce your horse’s diet without reducing forage, please read on.

Can Hay Make My Horse Put on Weight?

Certain hay types such as alfalfa carry a higher calorie count than other forage such as grass hay. Horses consume the fiber portion of the hay that generally contains cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. In the cecum and colon of the horse’s digestive tract, millions of microbes break down the fiber into a usable form called volatile fatty acids. 

These fatty acids pass into the horse’s bloodstream and are transported to the area of energy need or stored as energy reserves in the form of adipose tissue or glycogen. Although certain grain types have higher calorie contents and may contribute to your horse’s weight, you will often find the real culprit of the excess weight lies in your grain feeds, which are high in carbohydrates and fats. 

The next most common culprit of weight gain in your horse is lack of sufficient exercise. So the first place to start reducing your horse’s weight should be cutting back on your grain feed and increasing your horse’s exercise. Horses may survive on only forage with mineral supplements but eliminating forage from your horse’s diet has severe consequences. 

Lowered fiber levels in equine diets have been documented to cause colic, gastric ulcers, and compulsive wood chewing behaviors in horses. Your horse needs fiber to keep the large intestine moving and functioning properly. 

Horses are non-ruminant herbivores or hind-gut fermenters and have evolved as grazers to spend about 16 hours a day grazing on grasses.  Their stomach secretes hydrochloric acid and pepsin to break down the food that enters their stomach, so they are uniquely adapted to a forage-based diet.

How Do I Know My Horse is Overweight?

You may be able to tell if your horse is overweight by certain physical signs. There are many reasons why a horse may put on weight, the most common being lack of physical activity and high fat, high energy grain diet. If your horse is overweight, it will exhibit these visible signs:

• Noticeable crease down the back
• Difficult to feel rib area
• Soft fat around the tail-head area
• The area along the withers is fat
• Noticeable thickening of the neck
• Fat on inner thighs.

How Much Hay Should I Feed an Overweight horse?

If you have an overweight horse, you should continue to provide the bulk of their diet in the form of hay. You should ensure that the hay should be coarse, long-stemmed, and high in fibers. Preferably cut later in the season than optimum hay. This type of hay causes your horse to chew more over a longer time, which keeps your horse from exhibiting hunger behaviors. 

Avoid legume hays such as alfalfa, long leafy grasses, and clover because of their high energy density. The general rule of thumb is to feed your horse between 1.5% and 3% of their total body weight per day, with an overweight horse, the hay intake alone should be 2% of your horse’s body weight if you have eliminated all other feed and forage.

If dramatic weight loss is needed for health reasons, you may reduce your horse’s hay intake to 1.5% of their body weight. This percentage, however, is the absolute minimum you may safely reduce the hay content to without the risk of gastrointestinal problems.

Will Horses Stop Eating When They Are Full?

Horses are generally good at self-regulating their food intake if given a chance. If they are only given a set amount a day, they may eat quickly and exhibit signs that they want more. Generally, if provided with plenty of access to feeds such as hay and without pecking order feeding issues, a horse will regulate their intake if they are not anxious about feed availability.

If your horse tends to overeat, it could be that they do not have enough forage in their diet. Stomach acids may bring your horse discomfort and increase the likelihood that they will overeat. Calculate your horse’s feed on the ratio of between 1.5%-3% of their body weight depending on age, condition, and exercise levels.

Divide this amount of forage between several feedings a day and aim to extend your horse’s chewing/feeding time. If your horse tends to guzzle its forage, you could decrease its consumption rate by pacing your hay net within a hay net or purchasing a hay net with smaller hole diameters. This trick extends their feeding time and has the psychological effect of making your horse feel full.

What Hay Can Horses Not Eat?

Although many horse owners go by eye for hay quality, it is not a clear indicator of the forage’s nutritional quality. However, you may look out for certain signs that the hay is not suitable as feed, including:

• Hay that includes weeds, dirt, or any form of debris
• Hay that has signs of insects infestation or diseases, particularly blister beetles in alfalfa
• Hay that is bleached or smells moldy, dusty, or fermented
• Hay bales that are excessively heavy, damp, or warm to the touch 
• Hay that is a year past one year since their harvest date.

Horses are also sensitive to molds and toxins and should never be fed lawn clippings as they may contain plant matter that is toxic to horses ((tomatoes, potatoes, rhubarb, etc.) Even pure grass cuttings are not suitable for equine consumption due to their high moisture and small particle size, which results in rapid fermentation. Fermented silage should also be avoided due to its high capacity for mold and spoilage. 

Quantitative quality analysis

It is essential to ensure that your hay is of high quality, especially when buying in bulk. You should take core samples from several bales and send them to a forage laboratory, which will provide you with a percentage analysis of:

• Dry matter
• Crude fiber
• Crude protein
• Minerals including calcium, phosphorous, potassium, magnesium 

How Long Can Horses Go Without Hay?

Horses evolved to spend most of their day feeding on grasses. Thus forage is an essential part of the horse’s diet, and without forage, they run the risk of physical damage such as colic, gastric ulcers, and compulsive wood chewing patterns. Forage should provide at least 50% of a horse’s daily intake, which should be 12 to 15 lbs (5.4-5.8kgs) for an average adult horse. 

Grain mixes, even ones sold as complete feeds, often contain less than 12% fiber, far below the 20% crude fiber found in hay. If hay is scarce or you cannot procure hay, you should supplement your horse’s diet with straw for chewing and mixed-grass or corn plant/alfalfa cubes.

These cubes may be used as a forage substitute (15lbs per day) or as a hay extender when poor quality hay is available. or beet pulp, which is high in fermentable fiber and a good source of calcium. Alternatively, you may supplement your horse’s diet with beet pulp, which is a good source of fermentable fiber and calcium. Fiber must be present in your horse’s diet, and lack of fiber may result in:

• Loss of the horse’s ability to move food particles effectively through the gut
• Loss of ability to conserve water and electrolytes
• Develop pack in the gut from high carbohydrate feeds
• Dehydration
• Colic
• Laminitis
• Cribbing and wood chewing behaviors.

How Do I Know If My Horse Is Hungry?

Horses are grazing animals and have evolved to eat forage for up to 16 hours a day, so what we interpret as greediness results from genetics. Signs that your horse may be hungry include:

• Pawing on the stable bed or, in extreme cases kicking of the stable interior
• Facial expressions of distress such as pinned back ears, teeth bared, and eyes fixed
• Cribbing or wood chewing behaviors.

What we interpret as impatience may have a physiological root.

Katheleen Crandell, who works as an equine nutritionist, points out that without a constant supply of forage, horses run the risk of gastric ulceration, which is alleviated by saliva and foodstuffs. The acting out of your horse may be due to gastric discomfort that they understand will decrease with a meal.

Conclusion

Horses are uniquely adapted to be constant grazers, and your feed should always take this evolutionary adaptation into account. Forage not only provides your horse with the fiber it needs to survive but also provides psychological benefits. Before reducing your forage level, ensure your horse’s diet is not grain-heavy, or provide your horse with a challenging hay net to keep it from eating too fast. 

Sources

• Rutgers: The Basics of Equine Nutrition
• Kentucky Equine Research: Advantages of High-Fiber Diets for Horses
• Research Gate: Lignin and Fiber Digestion
• The Horse: The Fat Farm: Nutrition for the Overweight Horse
• Kentucky Equine Research: Overweight Horses: How Much Hay Is Too Little?
• EquiNews: Dealing with a Hungry Horse
• Kentucky Equine Research: Kathleen Crandell, Ph.D.
• Equine Ink: WILL FEEDING TOO MUCH HAY MAKE MY HORSE FAT?
• Agric. Gov: Nutrition and Feeding Management for Horse Owners 

When you consider if a horse with arthritis can still jump, it will depend on the severity of arthritis, overall health, and figuring out if the exercise is helping or hurting. Horses can still jump with arthritis. But learning more about their condition first will help you understand just how much jumping they can handle.

Because arthritis is an inflammation of the joint, the pounding element of landing a jump can cause arthritis flair-ups. But the health benefits horses receive from daily outings are also instrumental.

At What Age Do Horses Get Arthritis?

The age that horses start to get arthritis can vary widely based on the horse breed and their daily activity levels and uses. Like humans, there are plenty of risk factors that can affect the age that a horse may or may not get arthritis.

Many horses will begin seeing symptoms of arthritis around 15 years old. This is due to a metabolic shift, according to Equisearch. This shift causes faster cell death in their bones, fibrous tissue, and cartilage. Around that age, and for a few years after, they also lose some elasticity in their ligaments and tendons.

While cartilage thins and bones lose some of the density, it can easily lead to arthritis from the constant pounding that is no longer being cushioned as well.

There are still plenty of horses who get arthritis much younger. So, don’t be alarmed if your horse begins experiencing arthritis even as young as 4 or 5 years old. Many horses will see early-onset osteoarthritis around this age, especially if they are used to excessive jumping or labor.

How Conformation Can Affect When Your Horse Gets Arthritis

Your horse’s structural deviations can have different impacts and implications on when they may experience the early signs of arthritis. With better confirmation comes a better chance that they won’t get arthritis or get it very late in life. It could also mean they just have a minor form of it.

Whereas, if your horse has a poor conformation, this could mean they will get arthritis earlier or will, unfortunately, have worse symptoms, which would further affect their ability to jump.

Even standing can cause minor joint degeneration in horses due to their size. Their conformation is so important because it will either help delay those deteriorations or escalate them.

Horses with Arthritis Continuing to Jump

Horses can continue jumping if they have arthritis. But you will want to consider their age, severity of arthritis, and how they are reacting to jumps. If they seem to be in pain or have trouble clearing a small jump, you will want to ease up. Continue getting them daily exercise but keep it less stressful on their joints.

If they seem to be having an easy enough time with jumps, continue letting them do them, but monitor and make sure you are listening to your vet with treatment plans and anti-inflammatory measures.

How High Can Horses with Arthritis Jump?

This question will best be answered by your vet. Most likely, smaller jumps will be all your arthritic horse should try to conquer. But you will need to understand the severity of arthritis before being able to determine just how high those little jumps can be.

It will also depend on the conformation of the horse, their weight, age, and other factors that your vet will want to advise on before deciding to let them continue jumping.

But plan for smaller, easier jumps than they were once used to.

Exercise and Arthritis

Exercise is key for horses of any age or condition. But a horse with arthritis will greatly benefit from additional exercise. Regular walks on easy trails, riding, and small jumps will help their circulation and muscles stay in strong shape.

The increased circulation helps to promote healing, and a continued routine of smaller jumps or exercise will help build stronger muscles to help keep their bone structure in line.

And above all, the exercise will be most helpful in keeping extra pounds off. If your horse has arthritis, the last thing they need is to put on unnecessary weight.

What Are Signs of Arthritis in a Horse?

Understanding the signs of arthritis will help keep the symptoms at bay for longer and can even lead to early prevention, which we will talk about a bit more later in this article.

According to VCA Hospitals, joint inflammation increases fluid in the joint when arthritis is present. This will typically cause a bulging in the joint capsule. But keep in mind, that is not a definite sign that it is arthritis. There are other reasons the joint could swell, which could be as simple as a strain.

When the swollen joint is also causing pain when bent, that is typically a good indicator that the horse is suffering from arthritis. In cases of acute arthritis, the joint may also feel warm to the touch.

You will also notice a limited range of motion in many cases. There is surface damage caused by the bone due to the thinning cartilage. New bone will form over the area, and it won’t be protected by cartilage anymore.

The absence of a protective layer can cause a range of motion to be slightly limited. So, you will most likely notice discomfort from the horse during certain movements, but you will also see a smaller range of motion.

With that range of motion is limited, you may also notice stiffness. And with older horses, you may see them having issues standing for long periods, as well as having a hard time standing up after sitting for a long time.

When you see these symptoms, you can still allow the horse to jump but only if it seems to not be causing too much pain. Listening to what your horse is telling you through their body language and actions will help you determine if they should still be jumping or not.

Should You Buy a Horse with Arthritis?

When it comes to buying a horse with arthritis, you should ask yourself why you are getting that horse. If you are hoping to have them for jumping or labor, you will want to consider how advanced or severe their arthritis is. While they can still do these things with arthritis, it can be more difficult, and they may not be able to do it for as long.

At the end of the day, horses can still do a lot with arthritis, and they would love and appreciate a good home. Even if they are dealing with some pain or stiffness from arthritis, they will still appreciate the exercise and will be able to complete many tasks.

If you want to have a horse to ride occasionally and not do anything too strenuous, you can still buy a horse with arthritis.

Keep in mind their age. If it is an older horse with arthritis, you shouldn’t expect vigorous jumping or exercise from them. But if they are younger and have a more mild arthritis case, you can still expect to get some good years of jumps as long as they are easier jumps, and you aren’t pushing them too long or too hard.

How Do You Prevent Arthritis in Horses?

Through healthy exercise, avoiding repetitive pounding on their joints for long periods, and supplements, and a healthy diet, you can help prevent arthritis in your horse.

According to The Horse, a study done at Texas A&M University suggests that prevention is very doable if you are paying attention and being very deliberate in your decisions for your horse.

When exercising your horse, make sure you don’t push them too long or too hard. Exercise will help them prevent things like weight gain, causing additional pressure on the joints, leading to arthritis. So it’s important to keep them active, but always consider the wear and tear you are inflicting on their joints during a certain exercise. 

Any anti-inflammatory supplements or treatments will help minimize swelling and help keep their joints in health condition, which will help to prevent the possibility of arthritis.

Arthritis and Jumping

Your horse should still be able to jump if they have arthritis. But you want to speak with your vet and have a full picture of their arthritis stage and understand their specific situation.

Your horse will need to do smaller, easier jumps with arthritis, but that will be perfectly fine for most horses. Jumping will help them keep off weight, invigorate circulation, and build strong muscles, which all help a horse with arthritis as well.