Feeding horses for calm behaviour
As a rider, it really is hard to top the feeling of a ride on a horse with beautiful calm, yet responsive energy. And for most of us, there is nothing quite as unnerving or unenjoyable as riding a horse that is completely full of itself and constantly reacting before thinking.
On a more subtle level, a horse that won’t concentrate or who is continually overreacting to aids can be frustrating and exhausting to ride.
While education plays a major role in determining a horse’s behaviour under saddle, feeding definitely also has an impact.
What you feed, how much you feed and when you feed it can make a big difference. Here are some tips for feeding to assist your horse to maintain a calm and responsive attitude under saddle.
7 tips on feeding for calm behaviour
1. Feed lucerne/alfalfa hay before you ride
A horse’s stomach secretes acid 24/7. Because horses evolved almost constantly eating, the upper section of their stomach never developed any protection from this acid. Instead it relied on the stomach almost always being full AND the acid being diluted by the copious amounts of saliva they produce while chewing forage.
Our modern day horses however can spend large tracts of time without eating or chewing, meaning their stomach can empty of fibre AND have a pool of highly acidic acid sitting at the bottom of it.
If you ride your horse in the ‘empty stomach’ state, you will bath the top, unprotected part of the stomach in acid that can be as low as pH 1 (think battery acid!) which will literally eat holes through the lining of your horse’s stomach! And lead to gastric ulceration.
Needless to say, this is painful and will lead to hyperactive, unsettled behaviour while being ridden… which is just your horses way of telling you they are in pain!
The solution is to simply feed lucerne/alfalfa hay before you ride. The lucerne provides fibre that physically stops the acid from splashing. And your horse will create lots of acid-diluting saliva while chewing it. The fibre will stop the acid from splashing around while you ride and the saliva will raise the pH of the fluid in the stomach and make it far less likely to burn through your horses own stomach lining.
While you are tacking up, have the hay available. If you horse hasn’t eaten for more than two hours before your ride, give them enough time to eat 2 kg (4.4 lb) before your ride to ensure their stomach is full of protective fibre and saliva!
And if you can’t feed lucerne/alfalfa for any reason, any hay will do! Lucerne is just best because it is a natural acid buffer and provides additional protection compared to grassy hays.
2. Don’t feed too much!!
Horses that are fed more than they need for the work they do can become hyperactive and difficult to control. When feeding your horse, be careful to define your horse’s workload carefully and feed according to their actual workload.
The national research council define workloads as follows:
Light Work: 1 to 3 hours per week of walking (40%), trotting (50%) and cantering (10%).
Moderate Work: 3 to 5 hours per week of walking (30%), trotting (55%), cantering (10%) and skill work such as low grade jumping, dressage or cutting (5%).
Heavy Work: 4 to 5 hours per week of walking (20%), trotting (50%), cantering (15%) and galloping or skill work such as high level jumping, dressage or cutting (15%).
So not only does the total number of hours of work need to be considered, but the type and speed of work must be taken into account as well.
Classifying your horse in a workload higher than they actually are and overfeeding is possibly the most common cause of hyperactivity (and equine obesity).
3. Feed a forage-based diet
Forage is soooo important when it comes to thinking about how to feed for calm behaviour!
Here is why:
Chewing forage keeps a horse more mentally relaxed and calm. If they have a forage based diet, with an absolute minimum of 1.5% of their bodyweight in forage per day (7.5kg for a 500kg horse) they spend more time chewing and mentally content which is then reflected in their behaviour.
Forage encourages the production of large amounts of saliva which buffers the acidity of the stomach fluid, keeping a horse comfortable and calm.
Forage provides the fibre that is able to stop acid splashing around in the stomach. If a horse’s stomach is empty because there is not enough forage in the diet, the gastric acid can splash up onto the unprotected upper (squamous) region of the stomach, ‘burning it’ and causing pain and discomfort. This discomfort frequently leads to changes in behaviour.
Forages feed the ‘good bacteria’ in a horse’s gastrointestinal tract. These bacteria then produce B-vitamins and hormones that are crucial for maintaining normal behaviour.
A high forage diet is also typically low in grain and therefore starch. Research has shown that these low starch diets are less likely to cause changes in behaviour.
Low starch diets are also less likely to result in starch overload to the hindgut. When starch overload does occur, bacterial populations shift toward the ‘bad’ starch fermenting bacteria and hindgut acidosis can result. Shifting bacterial populations and hindgut acidosis will both cause unwanted changes in behaviour.
PLUS the gut microbes literally communicate with your horse via the gut brain axis to not only change but CONTROL behaviour. Feeding a high forage, low grain diet helps to keep the hindgut microbes healthy and allows the ‘good’ fibre fermenting microbes to dominate. Which then helps to ensure ‘normal’ communication via the gut brain axis and this supports calm behaviour.
4. Alter feeding according to daily workload
If your horse tends to become hyperactive, especially following a day or days off, reducing the amount you feed from a working ration back to a maintenance ration on days off can help to solve this issue.
Developing one diet for days your horse is ridden and another with similar ingredients but smaller portions for days off means your horse is only being fed what they need on any given day.
To take this one step further, if you work your horse at varying intensities on different days you may develop a couple of different working diets. For example, let’s imagine you lunge your horse for 30 minutes two days a week (light work); trail ride for 1.5 hours mainly at the walk and trot with some cantering 2 days per week (moderate work); and have dressage and show jump lessons or competitions 2 days per week for 1.5 to 2 hours each with mostly trotting and cantering as well as skill work (heavy work). And your horse has 1 day off. You could have a maintenance diet for the day off, a light work diet for the lunging days, a moderate work diet for the trail days and a heavy work ration for the lesson and competition days. That way you are constantly adjusting feeding to suit workload and avoiding overfeeding.
5. Feed ‘cool’ feeds
Fibrous feeds that are fermented in the hindgut to release energy are the most natural and also the ‘coolest’ sources of energy for horses. Using forages like pasture, hay, and chaff to provide the majority of the energy in your horse’s diet will help to keep your horse calm and responsive.
Horses in light work should be able to happily exist on a diet made up almost entirely of forages with a balancer pellet or vitamin & mineral supplement added to cover vitamin and mineral requirements.
So if your horse is in light work, don’t be too quick to reach for ‘hard feeds’, stick with forages, especially if your horse’s temperament is an issue.
However, horses in moderate to heavy work often need higher energy feeds added to their diet as most physically can’t eat and digest enough forage to meet energy requirements.
In these situations where energy requirements can’t be met by forage alone, cool energy sources such as high energy fibres (sugarbeet pulp, soybean hulls, lupin hulls and copra meal), oils, high oil feeds like rice bran and well cooked grains can be used to boost energy intake while minimising impact on a horse’s behaviour.
Do be mindful that even with these cool feeds, if you overfeed energy (see Tip #1 Don’t feed too much!) you will still have potential to cause hyperactivity.
6. Avoid ‘hot’ feeds
Raw grains like corn and barley are poorly digested in the small intestine. Meaning if you feed these grains raw you will dump a lot of starch into the hindgut and cause a shift in the microbial balance away from the ‘good’ and calming forage fermenting microbes and toward the sugar and starch fermenters who are linked with negative changes in behaviour. So NEVER feed raw grains!
7. Feed a balanced diet
Some deficiencies like vitamin B1 (thiamine) and magnesium can have an impact on your horse’s behaviour. To support calm behaviour, you should make sure your horse’s requirements for these and other important nutrients are met and avoid nutrient deficiencies that can alter your horse’s behaviour.
A note on calming supplements
There are a plethora of ‘calming’ supplements on the market aimed at helping to calm a hyperactive horse. Whether these supplements work or not is difficult to establish. Many studies have been conducted to assess their effectiveness with contradicting results. Most however are safe supplements, commonly containing large amounts of the water soluble (and hence virtually non‐toxic) vitamin B1 and magnesium so if you want to try one, it is safe to do so.
Many also contain an amino acid called tryptophan. But to date there is no consistent reliable research to show it does have a positive impact on horse behaviour.
In summary
When feeding for calm behaviour, remember to:
always feed hay before you ride with lucerne/alfalfa being best
fine tune your horse’s diet to ensure you are not overfeeding, energy
adjust feed according to daily workload
feeding a forage based diet
use cool energy sources when needed; and
feed a balanced diet