Equine Nutrition

Structural carbohydrates—commonly referred to as dietary fiber or roughage—represent the absolute biological, physiological, and behavioral foundation of equine health and nutrition. As specialized monogastric hindgut fermenters, horses possess a gastrointestinal tract exquisitely adapted to extract life-sustaining energy from the fibrous cell walls of pasture grasses and preserved hays. Utilizing the Van Soest detergent fiber fractionation … Read more

Fat supplementation represents one of the most powerful, metabolically transformative advancements in modern equine sport nutrition and clinical veterinary medicine. Traditionally viewed as an unnatural energy source for an herbivore, decades of equine exercise physiology research have proven that horses possess an extraordinary capacity to digest, absorb, and metabolize dietary lipids up to 10% to … Read more

Electrolyte homeostasis and thermoregulatory fluid balance represent the biochemical lifeblood of the performance horse. Unlike human athletes who produce hypotonic sweat (dilute salt in water), the horse produces an intensely concentrated, hypertonic sweat secretion containing higher concentrations of Sodium ($Na^+$), Potassium ($K^+$), Chloride ($Cl^-$), Calcium ($Ca^{2+}$), and Magnesium ($Mg^{2+}$) than are present in blood plasma. … Read more

The equine gastrointestinal tract represents one of nature’s most sophisticated and delicate evolutionary adaptations: the specialized monogastric hindgut fermenter. Spanning over 30 meters in length with a total volumetric capacity exceeding 150 liters, the horse’s digestive architecture is anatomically partitioned into two fundamentally distinct functional zones: the foregut (encompassing the mouth, esophagus, small stomach, and … Read more

Managing Non-Structural Carbohydrates (NSC, comprising Ethanol Soluble Carbohydrates / ESC and starch) represents the single most critical, life-saving dietary discipline in modern veterinary clinical nutrition. For horses suffering from endocrine and muscle glycogen storage pathologies—including Equine Metabolic Syndrome (EMS), Pituitary Pars Intermedia Dysfunction (PPID / Cushing’s disease), Polysaccharide Storage Myopathy (PSSM Type 1 and Type … Read more

The Henneke Body Condition Scoring (BCS) system represents the universally accepted, scientifically validated gold standard for evaluating subcutaneous adipose reserves and metabolic health in equines. Developed in 1983 by Dr. Don Henneke and his research team at Texas A&M University, this standardized 1-to-9 numerical scale provides equine veterinarians, nutritionists, and horse owners with an objective, … Read more

Protein nutrition in equines is governed not by the raw, unrefined percentage of total Crude Protein ($CP$) on a feed tag, but by the precise biological value, amino acid profile, and pre-cecal small intestinal digestibility of the ration. For decades, horse owners focused solely on crude protein percentages, often falling prey to widespread myths regarding … Read more

Calculating the daily Digestible Energy ($DE$) requirements for equine athletes is the mathematical and metabolic cornerstone of scientific equine nutrition. Unlike human dietary standards that rely upon raw calories or kilojoules, equine ration formulation utilizes the National Research Council (NRC 2007) energy partitioning framework, tracking the flow of gross feed energy through fecal, urinary, and … Read more

Forage represents the single largest dietary component and the fundamental biological foundation of equine health, supplying between 70% and 100% of the horse’s daily dry matter intake. Consequently, selecting safe, high-quality roughage and accurately interpreting laboratory forage analysis reports are indispensable skills for modern horse owners, barn managers, and equine veterinarians. Visual appraisal alone—assessing color, … Read more