Imagine building your house out of rotten wood or disintegrating bricks

Remember the fable about the man building his house on sand? Or the nursery story about the three little pigs? Same with the body. Structure and foundation matter, and it's the same with our bodies - human or horse. It's up to us humans if we want to eat ultra-processed ready-meals full of CRAP, and this is not me being potty-mouthed; it simply stands for Carbs, Refined, Artificial & Processed. Defective, fake food that promotes dis-ease, but surely none of us want to build our horse's body from defective ingredients ...

So, how does our horse's body makes new cells, organs, tissues, skin, muscles, bones and brain cells? Food! The the raw materials come from the food we, as their carer, fuel their body with. So next time we put the feedbowl down in front of beloved Ned, maybe we should be asking ourselves if we're fine with what's in there becoming part of Ned for the long term.

Would any of us be happy feeding our horse something that is scientifically known to damage their hormone-producing factory, or an ingredient so mutated by multiple changes in its genetics and biochemistry that scientists are now saying it's the reason behind the last 50-years' disease culture, causing an explosion of multiple autoimmune diseases?

And would we want to fill Ned full of synthetic vitamins and minerals that his gut system neither recognises or know what to do with, or dose him up on fructose and pectins which feed the unfriendly bacteria in his hindgut, triggering the hindgut-dysbiosis leaky-gut domino effect, risking both colic and laminitis?

Just a few examples from a huge list of questionable ingredients in many of our feed brands. But - there's a simple, and very cost-effective way to change all this. We need to ignore the spin and fake promises, and go back to feeding our horses how they're meant to be fed.

Whether horse or human, the body's biology, biochemistry and physiology needs certain raw materials to run optimally - the right balance and quality of protein, carbohydrates, and the key vitamins and minerals in the right dose for each of us that support our wellbeing and function.

Think of the body's genes as the computer software the runs everything in the body. Just like our computer software, it will only do what we instruct it to do via the keyboard, and the nutrient quality in what we feed are those very keystrokes that send messages to the genes telling them what to do - either create health, or disease.

Imagine what messages we send our own body with a double cheeseburger, large fries and a giant coke, compared to what message we might send instead with a plate of wild salmon with broccoli tenderstems and a sweet potato. It's the same for our horses - they're made of what we feed them, and the quality of the information from their feed will dictate whether they're healthy or not. To requote Juliet Getty, "Feeding your horse in a manner that is contrary to their innate physiological needs is making their body scream for help."

So, how many different feeds and supplements have you got in the feedroom?!

Is your feedtime more like a military manoeuvre? A scoop of this, half a scoop of that, a gloop of this, a slosh of that, oh and don't forget 79-grams of those, then 853ml of water, err now which chaff did I put in because he didn't like that other one, and mustn't forget to add in that new thingy, then 30g of the other one or was it 20g, plus two capfuls of that oil, now where's the ACV and bluddy heck who's nicked me turmeric again urgghhh ...

If my inbox is anything to go by, we're beyond confused. Nothing seems to work so we keep trying more different bags of 'stuff'. No wonder we feel so flipping guilty as we frisbee a feedbowl of something new at Ned then leg it quickly so we don't have to watch them sniff it, then pull that face that says, "Seriously. You trying to poison me again?" Our TB, Carmen, had that look to a T when I led her to her first feedbowl of health, compared to the molassed-coated 17% sugar chaff she was on previously 😶 ...

When my horses became chronically sick back in 2006, and I was starting to learn, then study, how what I fed my horses significantly affected them, I spent a ton of time on Dr Google and many forums. This was a post I came across on the HHO forum, around 2006/7:

"I worked for a feed company for a couple of years. We were encouraged to sell their feed of course and diss other brands. What went into them was whatever was cheap and laced with molasses, add a few aromatic herbs and Bob's your uncle. I don't do that anymore."

Thankfully it now seems forever ago that my beautiful herd became terribly sick, but the learning never stops. My horses (and home fluffs demanding breakfast at 5am, god luv'em) have always been my reason for getting out of bed every day, and learning to keep them healthy has become my obsession. I still read every new research study and nutrition model I can lay my hands on, and one thing's for sure - there's a whole lot of junk and misinformation out there that's doing nothing but keeping our horses sick, while making the producers rich. There's no such think as junk food - there's just junk, or there's food. It's no wonder we're confused.

In our human world, the standard western diet comes from over 70% of ultra-processed food, mostly from commodity crops like wheat, corn, and soya (three of the worst bulk ingredients in most equine feed brands today), turned into thousands of food-like products that bear little resemblance to our evolutionary diet. It's what I call the aforemention C.R.A.P diet - Carbs, Refined, Artificial and Processed. Those who eat these nutrient-depleted, addictive foods are the sickest among us - this diet not only makes us sick but drives our body to consume more and more fake food-like substances, desperately looking for the missing nutrients. ⁣And sadly, this is also what most shiny horse-feed bags are as well - C.R.A.P. And we’re up against powerful biochemical mechanisms created by this crap (intentionally being rude there) because they've hijacked our brains, hormones, metabolisms, and created addictive cravings.

You only have to look at our vegetables. They're no longer grown for flavour, nutrient density, or phytochemical richness - they're chemically designed for yield, disease resistance, drought, shelf stability, and hardiness for transport. Oh, and don't forget 'shape' - heaven help us if the carrot we're about to eat is a bit wonky 🙄. If you've tasted the difference between a pale yet perfect-looking tomato in the middle of winter, or an organic, heirloom tomato picked from the vine in late August, you'll know exactly what I mean.⁣

Food, it turns out, is the biggest driver of imbalances in our biological networks, whether human, horse or dog, and also the biggest lever for rapid change, reversal of disease, and creation of health. The longer I do what I do, the more apparent it is that vets and doctors haven't seen the power of food - not their fault; they're simply not trained in nutrition or how to use food as medicine. And yet, change the diet to how the body is meant to eat, and I've seen real miracles happen over the decades. Except ... they're not miracles.⁣

There is no other activity we do every day that has more power to change our horse's biology than what we feed them. Food carries information - molecules, instructions and codes, that program a body's biology with every bite, for better or worse.

Real, whole, nutrient and phytonutrient-rich food beneficially influences our biological systems by turning off inflammation, increasing antioxidant systems, balancing hormones and brain chemistry, and boosting the body's own natural - and very sophisticated - detoxification system. Feed real food, and It increases energy, optimises the microbiome, and switches on disease-preventing, health-promoting genes.⁣

With every bite, we program our horses' biology either for health, or sickness. Eating natural, species-appropriate food is literally eating medicine.

What we need to do

The food we feed our horses not only feeds their inner biology and physiology, but also determines what kind of inner garden, aka the microbiome, we're growing in their gut system. This garden is filled with bugs that determine more about their health and mental well-being than we can ever imagine. Feeding to create a healthy gut microbiome is one of the most important things we can do to get for our horse to stay healthy. If their gut bacteria are sick, so are they.

So, what can we do to go beyond the standard nutrition that's available to us in our feed merchants, to really transform our horse's health and achieve optimal performance? You may be surprised to hear that the answer is incredibly simple - we need to feed our horses what they're meant to eat. It really is as simple as this. Yet sadly, today's feed industry isn't helping us with this at all. (All covered further on in our Why what we feed has to be right page).

Put simply, if we mess about with how, and what, a horse is meant to eat - and this applies to us all - food can either hurt or heal - the quality of the food we feed will either create inflammation, or not. Horse or human, what we put inside our bodies impacts everything - mood, energy and physicality; emotional health, relationships, movement, immunity and gene expression - everything about how well we all function depends entirely on what we eat or feed. And it all comes from food that nature creates, which you may have noticed doesn't come with an ingredient list or a barcode 😉. ⁣⁣

A personal note

I'm now going to show my age. Anyone remember back to the 60's/70's? I know there's a few of us out there based on the many comments I get from clients mentioning that "things seemed so much simpler then". I seem to remember that life was sunnier as well, but that may be because I have so many awesome childhood memories of sunny days hooning around on ponies 😉.

Anyhow, many moons ago, back in the late 1960's, I was a pony-mad nearly-teen helping out at the local riding school at weekends. I was so lucky - my family lived in the glorious Surrey Hills countryside, and you couldn't ask for better trail-riding country. After a weekend of helping taking rides out across stunning Crown Estate forest, every Sunday evening us three young helpers would ride the ponies bareback through the forest to turn them out onto endless acres of lush meadow grass, where they'd have a lovely week off until the following Saturday morning, when we'd bring them all back again for the weekend's lessons and hacks.

Yes, you read that right. Lush meadow grass. I know! But you read that right. Proper, real, long, lush, meadow grass! Yet not once was there a hint of footiness or lameness. I don't recall any of those ponies being unsound in any way, and trust me when I say we did a lot of trekking, plus riding holidays as well. And as for laminitis, let alone any of the all-too-familiar metabolic labels we have today, or the all-too-common practice today of having to keep horses off grass … these were all words and labels we'd never heard of back then. Those truly were the days.

So what went wrong?

Well ... a lot. These days, globally we now support a system that promotes the growing of commodity crops using loads of chemicals, that are then turned into artificial, refined, ultra-processed fake junk that evolution has said from the get-go that horses should never eat. But the equine food industry says otherwise, with lots of fake promises of amazing health stamped on their shiny bags (usually accompanied by a massive backhander to the producer to allow their fake promises to appear).

These foods then create huge healthcare costs, while also destroying the environment with glyphosate spraying (a confirmed carcinogen), poisoning our water and our air, and declining biodiversity. The true cost of the impact of how we feed our horses is much more than what we pay at the checkout. ⁣

So, let's get straight to the nitty-gritty - it's all about 'Why what we feed has to be right.

NB - As mentioned earlier, please be assured that I'm in no way affiliated to any feed company whatsoever. My overriding passion (and frustration) on this subject of all-things-horse-feed was borne from watching my own herd crash with near-irreversible sickness, and my non-stop studying since the mid-2000s as a result.

Why what we feed has to be right

"There's no question. Ultra-processed foods - and the food system that produces them -

are at the root of today's chronic disease culture."

Dr Mark Hyman

I'd like to start with a quote from one of the many Institute of Functional Medicine's nutrition gurus, Dr. Jeff Volek, Ph.D., Registered Dietitian and Professor, Ohio State University, as for me this totally hits the nail on the head:

"We're running into a lot of metabolic problems because we're constantly inhibiting the body's ability to burn the fuel that it was evolved to burn."

So here's a FACT. Feeding the wrong food that the species is evolved to eat, whether human or horse, drives inflammation, oxidative stress, hormone and neurotransmitter imbalances, overloads the body's natural detoxification system, depletes energy, damages the microbiome and changes gene expression to turn on disease-causing diseases. Real, whole, nutrient and phytonutrient food does the opposite.

Just like us, our horses truly are what they eat. Every carb, fat, and protein that goes into us - whether healthy or not - is what the body uses to build new cells. And every plant nutrient, mineral, and other nutrients in food has a huge say in how the cells live, work, and rejuvenate themselves - or not. Without healthy, nourished cells, there's no health and there's no energy.

Food also drives whether there's a healthy immune system or not. The right food trains the immune cells in the digestive tract, interacting with the body's DNA programming, updating it as it goes based on its life experiences.

Becoming a conscious consumer about the diet we feed our horse is the first step towards upgrading their nutritional status, because we can’t out-exercise, out-school, or out-rest an inappropriate diet. The overall health of our horses is entirely under our control; we are completely responsible for what we choose to feed them, and we have to get it right because their food sends one almighty message to the body - create health or create dis-ease.

Think of it like the code that programs the software. The hardware is the genes; the software is how those genes are turned on or off. And food not only regulates the genes but also the hormones, i.e. testosterone and estrogen, adrenalin and cortisol, and for our metabolic horses it's insulin and leptin - food as fuel is that powerful that it can alter the brain chemistry, and if there's too much of the ultra-processed, factory-made, refined filler-driven feedstuff, with a healthy dollop of synthetic and artificial, it may also trigger addictive patterns. ⁣

And when it come to calories, if eating was just about calories life would be so simple, but all calories are not created equal - calories are information - information that the body's cells need to function, information that the metabolism can use to either run efficiently or not. It's about the chemical information from the micronutrients in the feed that radically influences the immune system, central nervous system, skeletal and soft tissue structure; you name it – again whether human or horse, food as fuel provides the raw materials for muscles, bones, brain, and every other part of the body; ⁣everything from mood, energy and physical health of the whole organism (body), at cellular level, with every single bite.

And ... it goes deeper. That bite then feeds the trillions of bacteria living inside the gut microbiome, determining whether it grows good bugs or the pro-inflammatory gut-damaging bad bugs, to either create or stop inflammation, and enhance or hurt the immune system. Healthy depends entirely on the source and nutrient-density of the food.

When we feed our horses the right information, the body will function at its highest level of balanced homeostasis and performance. When we feed foodstuffs from feedbags with questionable calorific information, i.e. refined/synthetic ingredients, high starch, fillers, by-products or inflammatory fats, the body doesn’t know how to utilise that data, and dysfunction is the result.

Blood sugar imbalances, mood swings, weight gain, rest/sleep disturbances, stress, chronic pain and inflammation, and serious gut dysfuntion - just some of the many side effects that can happen when our feed choices for our horses are lacking nutrient density.

How we feed our horses basically means one thing - if we put garbage in, we'll get garbage out.

If your horse is struggling and you're questioning your horse's feed regime, then this page might help sort the wheat from the chaff, as it were. You'll hear me say 'species-appropriate' a lot, and I'm sure there'll be a raised-eyebrow or two; after all, those shiny bags in our feed merchants are meant to be 'appropriate' for our horses, aren't they? Well, not all them.

If it comes from a plant, eat it; if it's made in a plant, don't

An example, and let's look at a modern-day human diet trend - you may have heard of the Paleo, aka Paleolithic diet, which deliberately attempts to replicate the diet of our paleolithic hunter-gatherer ancestors, while deliberately avoiding the foods that entered the human diet once we adopted agriculture around 10,000 years ago. The paleo diet means sticking to foods our earliest ancestors enjoyed before the advent of farming and processing.

The Paleo method of eating argues that the inbuilt human gene pool hasn't had enough time - as in 10,000-years - to adapt to agriculture, so for the human body to thrive at its species-appropriate and natural best, we should all still be eating what our ancestors did - typically lean meats, fish, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. In other words, foods that in the past could be obtained by hunting and gathering, and avoiding foods that then became common when farming emerged about 10,000 years ago, such as dairy, legumes and grains.

Okay, for sure us humans have continued to evolve over the last 10,000 years, and there will no doubt be many scientific examples showing genetic adaptation to foods that weren’t available to our pre-agricultural ancestors, but it's still an interesting concept.

However, from a horse's genetic issue, the internal engine and function of our modern-day horse is still the identical same as its ancestors from a few million years ago, not just a mere 10,000 years. Our modern-day equine feeds have only been around for the last 40-50 years, since intensive farming and pasture improvement programs began, and - reality-check time - from what evolution created over 50-million years, mankind cannot change in 40-50 years.

Some of these factory-made foods are the furthest feedstuffs removed from what our domestic horse ate less than 50-years or so ago, and I can vouch for this as I was around back then. In terms of evolution, 50-years isn't anywhere near enough time for the remotest blink of genetic adaptation for our equids to safely adjust to these bags of ultra-processed feeds.

As a comparison, we just need to remind ourselves of what happened when us humans began eating 'processed' food from those shiny new supermarkets back in the 1960s. The human race got sicker; enter obesity, diabetes type 2, heart disease, autoimmune disease ... the list goes on. And sadly, since our horses have been chowing down on those ultra-processed feedbag contents, they've got sicker too - just look at all the myriad of metabolic diseases our horses have experienced in the last 50-years to see the evidence staring us in the eye.

Wild horse v. domesticated horse - their gut system is no different

So, with today's domesticated horse being no different physiologically to its wild ancestors, let's quickly remind ourselves of how we've messed with them and look at the wild horse v. domesticated horse, which have brought on underlying stressors for today's horse. One thing's for sure - this is not how evolution meant it to be ...

• In the wild a horse will walk up to 40-miles/day in rest/digest mode – a domesticated horse will walk barely 2-miles/day during turnout.
• The wild horse lives in a family herd, born and raised, bar young stallions who will eventually branch out to start their own band. A non-familial man-made herd will already have some stress elements in there – think of it as being with your work colleagues – you’ve just got to get on with them!
• The wild horse herd are all the same breed with their own body language; the domesticated herd are made up of various breeds and might not understand each other, i.e. the body language between an Icelandic and Haflinger is very different to each other.
• The wild horse's day centres around constant feeding on low-quality roughage, browsing and moving on for what they need; in domestication it’s the wrong type of forage on a small area and often both access and time allowed on it is restricted.
• The wild horses' natural feeding sources were - and still are - grasslands, typically arid areas such as semi-desert/steppe/tundra landscapes with a harsh, dry climate and very little nutrient in the soil. The grasses that grow there are coarse and stemmy which is where the fibre is, and low in nutrients such as sugars and proteins; this has meant that the horse's gut system has developed to find its energy in the plant fibre via the organisms in the hindgut. This is not the same landscape of our pastured pets of today; we turn them out on neon-green, overly-nutritious, non-stemmy, grass leaves with no fibre content but full of pectins, sugars, starches and proteins meant for cows.
• The wild horse doesn't get given a feedbowl with C.R.A.P. in it (Carbs/Refined/Artificial/Processed). Nuff said on that one. 😉

Long and short, a horse is nothing more, and nothing less, than a hindgut fibre-fermenting machine - that's it, full stop. A horse is meant to eat nothing more, and nothing less, than long, stemmy, dry, very un-green, grasses, full of cellulose/hemi-cellulose fibre in the stems, exactly what the fibre-fermenting hindgut microbes need to chow down on, and where today's wild horses still roam very happily.

How did it go wrong? Someone back in the day decided to ship those happy horses over to our western world where we get lots of rain and our grass is anything but long, stemmy, dry or un-green. Today's horse is still a hindgut coarse fibre fermenter, getting their energy from the forage/roughage fibres - this is how evolution created the horse's gut, and their gut system remains exactly the same today, its function being to extract fibre from low-nutrient plants for their energy.

It's how nature designed the horse, to constantly feed on high fibre, low-nutrient rough forage, while slowly roaming and browsing for hours at a time, feeding as they go and with short sleeping breaks. Very different from how we keep our horses these days.

In a nutshell, today's horses' fragile biology is not evolved to eat neon-green, grass leaves and human-engineered, ultra-processed, refined feed 'stuff', made in a factory. Yet feed a horse like a horse, as in coarse, dry, stemmy forage/roughage, aka 'hay', and preferably meadow hay which comes with a range of diverse grass species, and a grass-forage-only feedbowl carrier for the supplementation of deficient forage nutrients in their diet, and you'll have a calm, healthy, balanced horse all over again. It really is as simple and straightforward as this.

Pulling this together ...

First up, what we feed our horses should be as appropriate to what horses are meant to eat - and that's grass-forage/roughage. Reminder, a horse is a hindgut rough grass-fibre fermenter with an absolute need for forage, full stop. It should also be as uncontaminated as possible, as in chemical-free, to support the incredibly sensitive, biological digestive function, immunity, and behavioural response of horses.

Secondly, and contrary to what the advertising says, horses don't need additional hard (bagged) feed over and above a forage diet. What they do need is their forage-only diet balanced with what's deficient, as in the chemistry, in their forage. We're talking specific minerals - magnesium, phosphorous, zinc, copper; we're talking sodium (salt), certain proteins (the equine gut makes some of them), and essential fatty acids/EFAs - the omegas 3 & 6; all are needed to balance the known chemistry deficiencies in our UK-grasslands. We don't need to add vitamins as the equine gut system produces most of them, with grass forage providing the rest.

Before you panic that this sounds like a minefield (well, it is, but we've got you covered), all these missing nutrients are combined in what's known today as 'forage-balanced mineral balancers', and we have our own, our EquiVita range - more on this below.

The best way to get all this essential nutrient-balancer supplement into your horse? Easy - a simple feed carrier, as in a small amount of something that they're naturally meant to eat, i.e. grass forage, and preferably grown organically so no chemicaly spray residue, to get those yukky minerals into them. Grass nuts/cobs/pellets or chaff - whatever works best for your horse, but some form of native grass species is all you need to put in the feedbowl, soaked, as the carrier for the missing chemistry.

Simple and straightforward - no need for several different bags promising allsorts. So, take the pressure off yourself, and think of all that lovely space you're going to now have in your feedroom. Meanwhile, here's how we do it. 😀

How to feed our horses healthy

Rule 1 - A healthy gut system, and especially the hindgut

For true overall health we need a healthy gut system because quite literally, life-force completely depends on it. Food nutrients are the body’s building blocks, and the gut system's job is to digest, assimilate and absorb the nutrients in the fuel (feed) that we give it. If perfect all-round health isn’t happening, it’s usually because we've given the horse something the gut didn't know what to do with and there’s now something going wrong in the gut, so our No.1 priority is to take care of our horse's gut function and sustain a healthy microbiome environment.

Here’s why:

• The hindgut is where a horse's energy is created. Once the carbs, proteins, fats and starches have been dealt with in the small intestine, what’s left is the plant fibres – cellulose, hemicellulose, lignans ( woody fibres, especially important to promote motility of the intestinal peristalsis movement - this is why you see horses chewing on wood/branches), that all head into the large intestine, aka the hindgut, a generic term for a further collection of organs, specifically the cecum and two colons.

• The microbes that do the breaking-down - the fermenting - of the plant fibres, live in the cecum - it's basically a vat full of micro-organisms, and also where the vitamins B6, B12 and three essential amino acids - lysine, methionine and threonine - are produced. These microbes take up residence not long after birth via the foal eating its' mother’s faeces, hence why the first 4-5 months of a foal's life are so important to build the lifelong microbiome. This may also explain why, if foals are weaned too early, adult horses may be sicker than others, especially if antibiotics are prescribed as a foal.

• Taking care of our horse's microbiome is crucial, so much so that the microbiome is now being referred to as 'the missing organ'. But before you start panicking that this is something else you have to focus on, you don't have to do anything bar feed what a horse is meant to be fed - grass forage! But preferably not alfalfa or straw, nor corn, wheat, soya et al, popular ingredients in many feedbags, all pro-inflammatory, inappropriate fillers that may trigger the growth of those pro-inflammatory gut microbes that disrupt the microbiome.

• Around 80% of our horse's immunity is also created by the beneficial gut microbes in the intestinal tract, and it's these microbiota that are the major regulator of the immune system, so our horse’s defence system relies completely upon them functioning optimally. Look after the microiome, and it'll look after the body right back - feed them junk, and this only feeds the bad bugs.

• Let’s not forget that antibiotics also wreak havoc by destroying bacteria in the body indiscriminately – the word ‘antibiotic’ literally means ‘kill all’. The gut microbes are temporarily eliminated until they are re-introduced and given the chance to colonise again. Unfortunately, the microbial balance can be upset far quicker than it can be restored, and once damaged, it also alters the pH of the gut environment to acidic, which is bad news as the GI tract should always be at neutral pH. Hence it’s really important to support gut health during a course of antibiotics.

• Finally, lest we forget, a mammalian body is one big chemical engine, whether horse or human, and all body activities are chemical in nature – a body needs the right chemicals, in the right measures, to keep itself alive and thriving. It's well known that our UK grass forage is deficient in certain nutrients so we need to add them back in by way of a forage-balancer.

Rule 2 - The right forage - hay, hay, and more hay

Okay, so to the perfect world, and it's hay only, 24/7, 365-days/year. Yikes! Trust me, I hear you - Hay Only?! But trust me again - there are some very good reasons why it should be hay only.

Fifty-plus years ago, before intensive farming practices began, our UK soils were healthy and nutrient-rich, and our grasslands that grew in these soils were healthy and nutrient-rich as a result. A horse grazing in a typical UK paddock back then would have had the choice of approximately 30-40 different plants and lovely, long, fibre-filled stemmy grasses growing long and allowed to go to seed (no-one 'topped' back then). Each species brought its own specific nutrients and lots of lovely prebiotics to nourish the gut microbes, at the same time containing natural sources of digestive enzymes and naturally occurring, beneficial bacteria essential for a balanced diet.

These days, because of intensive farming, selective seeding, chemical fertiliser spraying etc etc., the grazing is limited to sometimes as few as four varieties of grasses if we're lucky, never mind our soils now acidic and drained of any minerals that only buttercups can thrive on. Also, by the very nature of today's livery yards, horses are rarely kept as a loose herd, more often individually isolated in designated, small paddocks, so what grass they have is usually over-grazed, and sick.

But - it's a much Bigger Picture than this - see the separate Hay page in this chapter. And as for whether it's okay to feed haylage and/or alfalfa, sorry, but it's hay only, and apologies in advance to the haylage-fans - see the separate Haylage page in this chapter. It's also important to be mindful when feeding alfalfa - agreed, some horses do well on it but for the metabolic horse, Dr Kellon advises it's best avoided - see the separate alfalfa page.

Rule 3 - Fortify! Aka forage-balanced minerals

Reminder - us mammals, both horse and human, are one big engine of chemistry, so we’re talking trillions of chemicals and minerals like iron, calcium and magnesium, phosphorous, potassium, zinc, copper and selenium. We’re also talking vitamins, amino acids, fats and proteins, and so on and so on. Collectively, they're all called 'nutrients'.

While each individual mineral has its own actions, there are thousands of reactions occurring at any given moment in time in the horse’s body, which involve many complex interactions with other minerals, vitamins, protein and energy sources. It can seem like a minefield, but once you get your head round it, it's simply about keeping everything in balance (my favourite 'B' word). There’s more info on this in our Mineral Solutions page.

Nutrients are the body’s fuel, and they literally affect everything. From how we feel, how we rest and sleep, how strong the immune system is, how healthy the body is; food shapes our destiny, whether horse or human – this is a cast-iron mammalian trait, and bottom line, the key to good health are nutrients. Vitamins, minerals, trace elements, amino acids and other active components – they're all essential for the organism - the body - to function optimally in balance.

More importantly, these chemicals have to be in the correct ratios to work in harmony with each other. It’s all well and good adding in one extra mineral, i.e. magnesium, but because the whole organism is that big engine of incredibly complex chemical reactions all interacting with each other, this means that if we add in extra of one chemical, it will unbalance all the others.

This is why we need a balanced mineral solution, appropriate to the equine metabolism, in line with what their daily requirements are (as per the NRC guidelines). In the perfect world a horse’s natural grass forage diet should provide what they need, but these days it’s now well-known that grass is deficient in the equine-essential micronutrients, i.e:

• Minerals - the important four
• Magnesium - at least 10g/day deficient
• Phosphorous - at least 5g/day deficient
• Copper - at least 400mg/day deficient – in SE England, considerably more
• Zinc - at least 1200mg/day deficient – again in the SE, considerably more
•  Essential fatty acids (EFAs) - the Omegas
• There are two fatty acids that are considered to be essential, hence the name, because the horse's gut can't produce them, so we need to add them to the diet. We're talking the two fragile omegas, Omega 3, the non-inflammatory Alpha Linolenic Acid (ALA) and Omega 6, the pro-inflammatory Linoleic Acid (LA) - both are required for robust immune reactions. While growing grass has some level of essential fatty acids, hay is almost completely devoid of them.
• Most commercially-fortified feeds add vegetable oil or soybean oil which are high in omega-6/pro-inflammatory, while low in omega-3/non-inflammatory, so if an additional source of omega-3 is not added, the diet will be unbalanced with too much omega-6, leading to inflammation throughout the body. For the science geeks ...
• ... grass typically offers these two in a 4:1 ratio of ALA:LA, similar to other browse foods like leaves and buds, but when grass is cut, dried and baled as hay, these fragile omega-3 EFAs are lost, so horses on hay will have a dietary deficiency of omega-3. Linseed is the superstar here as it provides ALA to LA in the same balanced ratio as grass, i.e. 4:1, so feeding linseed is a useful way to balance the omegas 3 & 6/ALA:LA to reduce inflammation. Even better for the metabolic horse they can also reduce circulating insulin.
• During summer, growing grass has around 4% fat with 75% omega-3 as alpha-linolenic acid. This level of intake isn't available all year, so outside of the growing grass period, or if a horse is on a hay-only diet, a study reported at the Equine Science Society showed via blood tests that 100g/day of linseed equals the same daily omega-3 intake as a horse on pasture.
• Amino acids, the building blocks for protein, i.e. lysine and methionine, with lysine at least 10g/day deficient, and methionine around 2-3g deficient.
• Sodium/Chloride, aka Salt - an absolute essential for so many reasons, i.e. the body requires a specific sodium-to-potassium ratio to normalise blood pressure. Sodium is key for healthy kidney function - it helps regulate body fluids, and it provides essential natural electrolytes which play a key role in normal nerve/muscle function and blood sodium levels. But - sodium is also needed to balance potassium levels in the grass, with rye grass and clover particularly high in potassium. Feed at least a tablespoon daily, and double this if your horse is in hard work or sweating.

Pulling all this together, we need to add in the missing nuts and bolts to the required levels needed to the forage our horses eat, and especially if there’s dried forage, i.e. hay/haylage, in the diet, which is usually the case for most horses here in the UK.

Our EquiVita Mineral Solution

Our EquiVita range of mineral solutions is balanced appropriately to compensate for the known mineral deficiencies in our UK grasslands, according to the NRC guidelines. We've kept it nice and simple:

• For all-year round cover, our standard EquiVita balances the deficient nutrients in the grass during the summer.
• Our VitaComplete range - our 3-in-1 convenience range to save you extra tubs in the feedroom - it's our same EquiVita option + Linseed + Salt

See our Mineral Solutions page for the latest science and updates.

Vitamins

Scientists have questioned for years how wild horses fulfil their vitamin requirements - these days the science knows the answer. The simple answer is that the equine gut and liver produce all their vitamin needs.

• Vitamins A and E - Long and short, we don’t need to feed vitamins to horses, so says Dr Christina Fritz, no matter how much the feed industry will try and tell you otherwise. Growing grass pasture is rich in both vits. A and E, which the horse stores in its fat tissue then uses them up in winter or when less available. That said, vit.E degrades completely in hay although if hay is still green there’s still some intake. However, with most of our UK-grazing horses on either partial or full hay diets, and especially for the metabolic horse on a permanent hay diet, vit.E needs supplementing. Thing is, just about every vit.E supplement out there is synthetic, which the liver neither recognises or knows what to do, so will simply biotransform it ready for excretion - as the saying goes, "An expensive way to make urine."

• Vitamin C - and there's no need to feed vit.C to horses - it only needs to be fed to humans and guinea pigs. Horses produce their vit.C in the liver from glucose, and there’s always enough glucose in their forage.

• Vitamin D - Horses produce vit.D in their skin from sunlight, just like us, but horses also have a vit.D precursor in their hay, so there’s never a vit.D deficiency in horses. It's catalyst, vit.K, is produced by the microbiome, plus like vit.D also has a precursor in hay.

• The Big-Guns - the Vitamin B's - and the entire vit.B complex is produced by the horse's gut microbiome. Only two of the B’s can become deficient – B6 and B12, both of which are created in the hindgut in a specific activated form that the equine gut both recognises and knows what to do with. However, in the event of dysbiosis/SIBO, faecal water/diarrhoea or colic, it's recommended to feed the activated form of B6 - P5P - for a month or so to help the liver continue to biotransform the body's toxins.

• B12 is needed to build haemoglobin – what makes blood red – and transports oxygen from the lungs to the blood, so if there’s not enough B12, there won’t be enough blood cells built. Over-trained horses are prone to a B12 deficiency due to the stress put on their respiratory systems and heavy sweating, which can disrupt their microbiome, so they’re often noted as B12 deficient.

• However, B6 is in another league - it's activated form is pyridoxal-5-phosphate, aka P5P. Regular B6 comes in an inactive form - pyridoxine, the type you'll see in all standard B-vit complex supplements. Thing is, the equine gut can’t utilise pyridoxine because the gut receptors only recognise P5P, so if you're supplementing with a regular B-vitamin mix, it's kind of pointless - as the saying goes, 'an expensive way to make urine'. (Note - unlike humans, the equine gut can't convert pyridoxine to P5P). However, if there’s a microbiome disruption, P5P production becomes disrupted, which is seriously bad news as P5P is critical for the liver's toxin biotransformation/metabolising process. WIthout P5P, the liver can't metabolise the ingested toxins so they get released back into the bloodstream to circulate around the body, creating a profoundly negative multi-metabolic toxicity syndrome known as Cryptopyrroluria, aka KPU.

• KPU is now appearing to be behind the majority of metabolic disorder syndromes that we're seeing today, and all because we're not feeding enough equine-appropriate fibre through the hindgut. Hence, it’s essential to focus on restoring the hindgut function with hay 24/7.

• A quick word on the B-vit/hoof connection - Since all of the B vitamins are involved with protein, fat and carb metabolism and interactions, they play a very important role in hoof health. Healthy metabolism wouldn’t exist without the B-vits because their primary role is catalyzing energy production in the body, as in - they activate the important enzymes that break down protein, fats and carbs, and ... the hoof wall has a high protein concentration.

• A horse on a quality species-appropriate (hay) forage-based diet is unlikely to be deficient in the B vitamins, because as we know, the equine gut very cleverly manufactures the full B-complex range. However, as we also know, our UK grasslands and hay are notoriously low in nutritional value, so there's every chance that poor-quality forage - and especially haylage - is disrupting the fine balance of the hindgut microbiome colonies of good v. bad microbes, which as mentioned above has a direct effect on the production of B6, especially considering the general nationwide poor-hoof-quality reputation. Hence, because of the high concentration of protein in the hoof wall, and especially if you've thrown heroic efforts at your poor-hoof-quality horse and nothing's working, have a read of our KPU page and see if it resonates with you.

So there’s minerals, and our EquiVita Mineral Balancer, done.

Rule 4 - The feedbowl

Now we get to the Big One, because nothing’s going to balance a body and sustain health if we’re feeding all this nutrition into a feedbowl full of donuts. However, there's a lot of opinion out there, a lot of spin by the feed manufacturers, and a lot of misinformation.

Once thing's for sure - there are good feeds, there are questionable feeds that really don’t nourish the horse at all, and then there are downright pro-inflammatory bad feeds filled with inappropriate, gut-damaging fillers and by-products.

We're talking about that base feed carrier in the feedbowl, and contrary to what the spin might have you believe, you don’t need much - just something simple, healthy and species-appropriate that the equine gut knows what to do with, to add in the missing nutrient nuts and bolts to make sure we can get them into our horses, so we need it palatable for ease of digestion and transit. In other words, a forage-based carrier.

However, the feedbowl is where it can often goes wrong, because there's such a huge selection at our local agri-merchants which makes it very confusing.

As important as what to feed is also what NOT to feed, especially for the gut-sensitive or metabolic equine, which sadly so many of our domesticated horses are these days. For example, no grains, no by-products or fillers, no salt blocks (they weather with weather and denature, as well as creating a haven for moulds and bacteria), and obviously no molasses, although you’d be amazed at how many feeds still list some form of molasses as an ingredient; even some practitioners still think it's okay to feed molasses!

Back to general feeds, and many of our well known brands include some of these questionable ingredients. Collectively these actively feed the pro-inflammatory unfriendly intestinal bacteria who thrive on carbs and sugar, so they multiply in their trillions, which in turn kill off the friendly, beneficial flora and the gut lining, through which toxins leak into the bloodstream, wreaking havoc on the body and wrecking homeostasis. All covered in our Gut System page.

It’s a downward spiral, doing very little to nourish our horses, so it's always advisable to check the ingredients on your feedbags. Ingredients tend not to be on the bag itself; they're usually on the analysis which is usually attached as a white label sewn into the top of the bag.

See the next part in this section, The Feedbowl - what's really in those feedbags? for the spin behind the spin, and a list of many of those bad ingredients in our feedbags that we should be avoiding.