How Much Hay Should an Overweight Horse Eat?

Some horses are known as ‘easy keepers,’ which means they keep lovely condition but may tend to gain weight. If your horse is overweight, high energy grains and a concurrent lack of exercise are the most common cause. Hay is hardly ever the real cause of excess weight in horses.

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.