Keeping healthy levels of hydration in endurance horses is a massive challenge and many people wish they could increase water intake for their horses. And a big part of the challenge is that horses have a tricky (I call it just plain annoying) thirst response trigger.
For horses to ‘feel thirsty’ they need a certain level of sodium in their blood. BUT when they drink fresh water, it dilutes their blood sodium and that can switch off their thirst response, even if they are still dehydrated!
Which means you can have a thirsty (i.e. dehydrated) horse that isn’t actually ‘thirsty’! See … told you it is annoying.
But since we can’t magically rewire this system, we need to work with it.
And there is a really simple, very cheap workaround to get your horses drinking more and rehydrating faster.
And that is…
To offer their first drink of water when coming into a vet check as salty water!
To be specific… 0.9% salty water!
To make 0.9% salty water, mix 90 grams of salt (sodium chloride, also known as table salt) into 10 litres of water.
Using 0.9% salty water has been shown by research to increase water intake in horses
Research (Butudom et al 2002) showed that horses who were offered 0.9% salt water as their first water offering after being dehydrated drank 18.5 litres of water in total (of salty and then fresh water) in the first hour after finishing exercise.
Compared to…
Horses that were offered just plain water as the first and all subsequent water offerings after finishing exercise, who only drank 11.4 litres of water.
The reason the salt water ‘works’ is because when given salty water it maintains blood sodium levels and therefore maintains a thirst response which means horses will keep drinking.
How to put this into practice (& get your horse to drink more water)
Here is how to do this properly:
Make up your salt water solution by adding 90 grams of salt (sodium chloride) per 10 litres of water.
Offer this salty water as the first water your horse has access to when coming into a vet check.
Let them drink as much of the salty water as they like during their first drink. The horses in the study drank close to 12 litres of this water on their first post-exercise drink.
THEN, give them access to fresh water (no salt) for the rest of the time they are ‘in camp’. What should happen is they will still feel thirsty and drink more of the fresh water. The horses in the study drank close to an additional 7 litres of fresh water.
It is REALLY IMPORTANT to get your horses used to drinking the salty water at home during training! Once they get used to it, you should find they will very happily drink it.
Happy training! Hope this helps keep your horse hydrated and you less worried!
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When it comes to feeding the endurance horse, balancing the short amount of time and managing your horse’s calorie intake can be critical. How do top riders do it? Tarsha Walsh explains her best practices in three simple steps.
We hope you have had a chance to watch the ‘Feeding the 100-Mile Endurance Horse’ Masterclass with Tarsha Walsh. If you haven’t yet you can catch it here.
Here are Tarsha’s top tips for feeding during the loops:
Give your horse some grazing time or hay first. The hay will help to put some buffering saliva in the stomach and give it some level of protection from ulceration and reduce the potential negative impact of just putting grains into the stomach; and
Then, feed your ‘grain’. If your horse is happy to eat it, feed your horse’s normal grain between the loops, but keep the amount to 500 – 700 grams (for a 450 kg/990 lb horse). Don’t let them have more grain than this per loop.
Keep any ‘sweetfeeds’ with the high-sugar, rapidly digested molasses until just before the last loop and only use it then if you need to get your horse to eat!
Give your electrolyte paste as late as possible (and if your horse has had a good drink, it is OK to give it right before you head out again) because the last thing you want to do is give your horse a paste that then stops them eating.
Tarsha discusses this further during the Masterclass starting at time stamp 52minutes, 50 seconds.
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Feeding and nutrition can literally make or break an endurance horse. It is one of the only horse sports where a small imbalance in nutrition will bring your entire event undone.
To help you think through getting the feeding and nutrition of your endurance horses right, here are my 5 top tips:
1. Rely heavily on forages and fibres
Forages like pasture, hay and chaff, as well as fibres like beet pulp should always form the basis of your endurance diet. The diet should be at least 70% forages/fibres (equivalent to 8 kg of forage for a 450 kg horse, or close to 18 lb for a 1000 lb horse).
For horses that struggle to maintain weight, you should use the highest quality, highest energy forages you can find and incorporate high energy ‘super fibres’ like beet pulp into the diet.
For horses that need to lose weight, you can use lower quality, lower energy forages. That way you can still feed plenty of forage without overfeeding calories (which will just make your horse fat).
It is also a great idea to provide a variety of forages and fibres. We get the best results with endurance horses when we feed multiple types of grass hay, or grassy hay plus a mixed species pasture… plus some lucerne/alfalfa (for most horses) and high energy fibres like beet pulp. The variety helps to maintain appetites and also helps with gut health by encouraging a more diverse and therefore more robust gut microbiome.
It is also a good idea for stabled horses to provide a variety of forage lengths from short chopped chaff to long stemmed hay, with the majority of your forage being long stemmed hay.
Because forages often make up a significant portion of what you feed an endurance horse, testing your hay and pasture can be a really useful tool in managing a diet’s energy and protein content. And it also helps to ensure you are able to meet and correctly balance minerals.
How FeedXL Helps: FeedXL will help ensure you are feeding your endurance horse enough forage and also show you what is missing from the forage base of the diet. PLUS FeedXL will help you find the right feeds and supplements to fill up any gaps left in the diet by the forages.
2. Use grains carefully to top up energy
Forages and fibres will rarely be capable of meeting an endurance horse’s full energy requirements… which means energy levels in the diet need to be ‘topped up’. Most commonly it is grains that are used as the concentrated source of energy to top up an endurance diet. And they work well, BUT … grains come with risks, with the two main ones being:
A higher risk of ulcers, OUCH! And;
Hindgut acidosis
But it’s not all bad… we can safely feed grains without causing gastric ulcers or hindgut acidosis by following these rules for grain feeding:
Keep grain meals to less than 1 kg/feed to reduce the risk of ulcers. I like to keep grain to 800 grams per meal.
Always feed a processed (cooked) grain to reduce the flow of starch into the hindgut and reduce the risk of hindgut acidosis; and
Keep following Tip #1 above and keep the amount of forage and fibre up in the diet so you don’t have to add too much grain to meet energy requirements.
Depending on how much grain you are feeding, you may need to consider the level of omega 3 and 6 in the diet. Grains are naturally higher in omega 6 than 3. Balancing the omegas is extremely important part of the nutrition of your endurance horse as one of the biggest problems we have is soundness in the joints and muscles.
High amounts of omega 6 have a pro inflammatory effect which is going to increase the risk of muscle inflammation and joint inflammation. Keeping the omega 3 levels the same or a little bit higher than the omega 6 levels in the diet is good way to ensure we are keeping the inflammation at bay as best we can.
Flaxseed (linseed) oil is an excellent way to increase the omega 3 content of the diet and it also adds extra calories which can help reduce the need for grains. For more information on omega 3 you can keep reading here: https://feedxl.com/29-omega-3/
How FeedXL Helps: FeedXL will show you exactly how much extra energy your horse needs to have topped up in the diet and will help you find appropriate grains or feeds to meet energy requirements.
3. Control protein intake
Protein is critically important in an endurance horse’s diet. But there must not be too much… nor too little.
Too Much Protein
Too much protein will cause your horse to urinate excessively, potentially causing electrolyte imbalances and issues with dehydration. It may also cause high total protein in the blood which often leads to a higher creatinine level which can fast track a metabolic result at the vet gate.
So it is really important not to overfeed protein. The key is to get enough of the right type of protein!
FeedXL will help you balance the levels of protein in the diet correctly for your horse. And using FeedXL in combination with a forage analysis will help you get the diet as accurate as possible!
And when horses are kept in a stable you can sometimes smell the urea levels in their urine or the high ammonia levels in the bedding indicating protein is being fed in excess.
Too Little Protein
You can actually ‘see’ when your horse is not getting enough of the ‘right protein’. They simply don’t build muscle with work, or worse, they will start to lose muscle.
If your horse is not building muscle or is in fact losing muscle it will either be because they aren’t getting enough protein. OR they may be getting plenty of protein but the protein quality is too low.
If this is the case for your horse, have a read of our article ‘Understanding Protein Quality’ https://feedxl.com/30-understanding-protein-quality/ and use this along with FeedXL to determine how to best increase the amount and/or the quality of the protein in the diet.
How FeedXL Helps: FeedXL will calculate the amount of protein you are feeding your endurance horse and show you if there is too much or too little and help you to adjust the diet up or down for protein.
4. Balance electrolytes
Balancing electrolytes can be a difficult task, especially when we are training in uncontrolled environments with constant shifts in ambient temperature and humidity.
Horses lose a lot of electrolytes in normal bodily functions and this electrolyte loss increases exponentially when the horse is sweating from hard work. Hot weather increases electrolyte losses via sweating and humidity will dramatically increase the losses via the excessive sweating that occurs in humid conditions.
I’ve seen horses lose more than 20kg of weight as sweat within a couple hours of work. The amount of electrolyte in this amount of sweat is HUGE and it all needs to be replaced.
Replacing what is lost is vital to your horse’s performance and is particularly important for your horse’s recovery.
When horses are working hard and peaking in their training, imbalances in their electrolytes minerals can result higher heart rates, reduced sweating, inability to remove heat from the body, tying up episodes, severe dehydration and in extreme situations horses can collapse and die. Plus electrolyte deficient horses take longer to rebuild muscle glycogen reserves, cannot fully rehydrate themselves and as a consequence take longer to recover from hard work.
Keeping the electrolytes up in your horse’s daily routine is an effective way of ensuring they don’t become deficient and suffer these consequences.
How FeedXL Helps: Use FeedXL to determine your horse’s electrolyte requirements and to find high quality electrolyte supplements that have good levels of all of the electrolyte minerals (sodium, chloride, potassium, magnesium, calcium).
5. Feed appropriately during the loops
During the loops you are time pressured to appropriately feed your endurance horse and help them recover as quickly as possible. In most situations you only have 30-40 minutes to get them eating what they can.
From a gut health perspective it’s great for them to eat alfalfa (lucerne) prior to going back out on the loop in terms of preventing ulcers. From a performance perspective though, we probably want a little more energy than what just alfalfa can provide.
Focusing on the sugars and the carbohydrates is crucial. The best kind of feed is one that has processed / cooked grains and added oils to give longer lasting, more sustained energy. If your horse is a great eater and will eat anything during the loops it’s better to keep them on their usual feed if it fits this description.
If your horse is a fussy eater, try adding some fresh chopped up carrot or apples to your horse’s feed. Cinnamon is a flavor that many horses like so you can add a little sprinkle of cinnamon to the feed to help with appetite. Be aware though that some horses don’t like it so try it before the race!
If this is still not enough to encourage eating, then using a highly palatable sweetfeed or topping their usual feed with molasses are strategies that might help.
I have found it’s best not to feed a very ‘sweet’ sweetfeed (muesli or open feed) that’s loaded with molasses before or after the first loop. Feeding these high sugar feeds is going to challenge the horse with glucose peaks and then energy slumps.
BUT a sweet feed is great to feed before the last loop, especially when the last loop is not as long as other loops, so you can (try and) time the glucose peak to parallel with the same time as the last loop. Generally glucose peaks can last 40 minutes before energy levels start to drop.
If you have a very fussy eater, then using a sweetfeed or molasses at any time is OK because something is better than nothing!
To Finish …
Endurance horses need a truly balanced diet to be able to compete to the best of their ability. Getting enough but not too much energy, enough but not too much of the right protein and making sure vitamin and mineral requirements are met, especially for those oh so important electrolyte minerals can be the difference between best conditioned or vetting out.
Using the tips given here along with FeedXL to do all of the number crunching for you, you can achieve a scientifically balanced diet, perfectly customised for your specific horse!
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Did you know it’s perfectly ok to adjust the amount of feed you give your horse from day to day??
In fact it’s something we recommend you do, for a couple of reasons. First is that it helps keep your horse’s behavior level and calm. Horses are funny creatures in that they will express the amount of calories/energy in their diet in their behavior. Which means if you feed more than they need, you may cause a change in behavior, with potentially more hyperactivity than you might want.
To help prevent this, you can simply adjust how much you feed according to how much work is being done. Using FeedXL, you can create balanced diets (using the same ingredients with minor modifications) for rest days, light work days and harder work days, with less calories in the diet for rest days and increasing calories for light and harder work days. Then feed each diet according to the work your horse does on any particular day. That way you will be matching you horse’s calorie intake with his requirements and should see lovely level behavior, regardless of days off.
The second reason we recommend you adjust feed according to work is for weight control… because if you feed excess calories to a horse or pony you will potentially also get weight gain, particularly in easy keepers!
An added benefit is that you will save on feed costs by not feeding extra on days it isn’t needed. Bonus!
So while we advocate keeping feed consistent and not making sudden changes in WHAT is fed, don’t be afraid to adjust AMOUNT fed!
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Daily heart rate measurements should be a fundamental part of the day-to-day management of equine athletes. In this newsletter we will discuss the fitness of the horse, with “fitness” referring to the aerobic fitness of a horse and how fitness can be determined using measurements of heart rate at the trot. Aerobic fitness refers to the capacity of a horse to transport oxygen from the air, through the lungs and then be pumped by the heart through the blood to provide the muscle cells with the oxygen to support metabolism of fuels such as glucose and fat. Aerobic fitness is relevant to every equine competition, except perhaps Quarter Horse races, which are all over in less than 20 seconds.
Heart rates at rest
Heart rates (HRs) in a resting horse cannot be used to reliably assess fitness, as they are in human athletes. In human athletes, the resting heart rate, usually recorded first thing in the morning, gradually decreases with improved fitness. However, this technique is not reliable in horses because the resting HR can vary so quickly with the slightest disturbance to a horse’s relaxed state. For example, a very relaxed horse might give a heat rate of 30 beats per minute (bpm), but a few minutes the later the HR can be over 100 bpm, due to fear, sudden noise, excitement, or even anticipation of exercise.
This does not mean that resting HRs should not be recorded. In very relaxed horses, such as some endurance horses, a sudden increase in resting HR at rest can alert the trainer to a potential problem, such as a fever, pain, or other disturbance to the horse’s normal state.
Heart rates during exercise
The best way to simply assess fitness is to use HR measurements during exercise. The key is to measure HR and speed in the horse. This is best done by using a heart rate monitoring system for ridden horses that combines HR measurement with speed measurement by global positioning system.
It is important to measure speed, because not all horses trot at the same speed, and it is possible for the trot speed to differ a little from one day to the next. So the first fundamental measurement is speed, and then to assess the HR at a steady speed. Steady speed means a speed that is constant, not varying more than 1-2 kph, for at least 30 seconds.
Luckily, with the heart rate monitoring systems now available it is possible for riders and trainers to measure heart rate and speed during exercise in ridden (or driven) horses whenever they desire. These devices for horses measure HR and speed frequently, and the results can be easily downloaded to a computer or mobile device for monitoring.
When to measure heart rates
HRs at the start of trotting should be ignored for a few minutes because there is usually unstable HRs, due to excitement and the sudden disturbance to the cardiovascular system. In these first few minutes, HRs are usually higher than their true steady state HR. After a few minutes, the HR settles down. For example, HR might vary from 140-160 bpm in the first few minutes, and then settle down to a steady value in the range of 125-128 bpm, even though the horse has been trotting at 16 kph all the time.
If the HR does not settle down to a steady value, it probably means that the horse is excited. HRs on a day after the horse has not been exercised are often a little higher and more variable, due to excitement. These emotional disturbances are what make fitness testing of horses so challenging, but it is possible to measure fitness reliably if these factors are accounted for. It is always important to watch the horse carefully during the trotting HR test. Is it jumping around abnormally, or is there a new rider on-board? Anything that might disturb the horse from its normal state needs to be accounted for.
HRs during trotting can also be affected (usually abnormally increased) by different ground conditions, the use of a different saddle, riding hills, and so on. So it is very easy to record a false high value. When I examine heart rate data I look at the speed and HR record and look for the lowest HRs at the steady speed. I also test the horse several times before expressing confidence about the true result for each horse.
Signs of improving fitness
If a horse’s HR relationship to its trotting speed is regularly monitored it will be easy to observe trends over time, or even sudden changes. A gradual decline in HR at the same speed means that the horse is responding to training – it is getting fitter. An alternative might be that the horse is slimming down, and so it does not have to increase its HR so much to provide the oxygen needed for the trotting exercise!
What does it mean if heart rates increase over time?
A gradual increase in heart rate over time in a horse in training would be an unusual finding, but it could be explained by increased fatness of the horse. A gradually worsening respiratory problem could also cause HRs to increase.
A sudden increase in HR from one day to the next when trotting could mean that the horse was overly excited on that day, had developed a problem causing pain (such as a bruised foot), or had new gear that was not comfortable. Monitoring HRs regularly helps a trainer know when the problem occurs, and when it is resolved.
Measuring the trot HRs in the days after racing or competition is also a valuable method of assessing the recovery after a race. They should be the same as before the event or race. Higher HRs compared to before the race or competition could mean that the horse has a problem that needs investigation by a veterinary surgeon.
Conclusion
The technology is now available for all horse riders and trainers to regularly monitor HR during trotting. Each day of trotting offers an opportunity to make sure that the horse is responding to training as expected, has not developed any new problems, or has suitably recovered after competition or racing.
Comprehensive tests of fitness for intensive competitions, such as racing and eventing, should include assessments of the HR responses during trotting, as well as measurements of HR and speed during faster workouts. However, day-to-day assessments during trotting are fundamental to the day-to-day monitoring of all athletic horses.
Written by David Evans PhD BVSc
Dr David Evans graduated BVSc (Hons) in 1975 and spent seven years in veterinary practice prior to completing a PhD in equine exercise physiology at the University of Sydney in 1987. His current consultancy activities include university teaching and research in aspects of equine science. Dr Evans has contributed to 11 book chapters on aspects of equine exercise physiology, and to more than 80 refereed research publications. Many of these reports are concerned with aspects of fitness testing and scientific aspects of training and performance. As well, he continues work in Australia and overseas as a consultant to horse owners and trainers, with a focus on practical applications of the science of equine fitness measurement and training.
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When horses exercise, they burn up stored energy supplies, damaging muscle tissue and losing water and electrolytes via sweat. Feeding after exercise is important to replenish these energy, water and electrolyte stores and provide protein for muscle repair. Failure to do so can result in reduced performance, muscle wastage and slow recovery times. What you feed, how you feed it and when it is fed all play a role in determining how effectively you replace what your horse uses during moderate to high intensity exercise and how quickly they will recover.
Replenish energy reserves
When a horse exercises, its muscles use glycogen (glucose that is stored by the muscles), fatty acids and some amino acids as fuel. During fast sprint type, high intensity work, muscles operate under anaerobic (no oxygen) conditions and primarily use glycogen as an energy source. Under slower, low to moderate, intensity work the muscles will primarily burn fatty acids for energy under aerobic (oxygen using) conditions, saving muscle glycogen supplies for when it is needed for high intensity work.
If muscle glycogen supplies are depleted, the horse quickly becomes fatigued. Therefore, it is important that after exercise, muscle glycogen supplies are replenished, otherwise the next time the horse exercises it will start with less glycogen on board and will reach a state of fatigue faster.
The fastest way to replenish glycogen supplies in equine athletes is to feed a grain‐based meal following exercise. Grains contain starch, which is digested and absorbed as glucose and this glucose is directly used to replenish glycogen supplies. The grains fed should be cooked (either extruded, micronised, steam flaked or boiled) to maximise their small intestinal digestibility (so more of the starch can be digested and absorbed as glucose).
A grain‐based meal should be fed within an hour of completing exercise. Once the horse has returned to a near normal respiration rate and started to cool down the meal can be fed. If the horse has completed its exercise for the day, it can be fed its normal morning or evening feed at this time. If you are still taking part in competition (for example you are at a vet check point in an endurance ride) you should limit the meal to 200 g of grain per 100 kg of bodyweight (or 0.2 lb per 100 lb of bodyweight) so that you don’t induce a large increase in blood insulin levels (as discussed in our blog: Feeding Horses Before Exercise).
The horse’s normal ration of hay and/or pasture should also be made available immediately following exercise. If your horse cannot have grain in its diet or does not have grain as part of its normal daily ration you must not use grain to replenish glycogen supplies following exercise. Instead, these horses should just receive their normal non‐grain ration. It may take these horses longer to recover from very heavy exercise and as such they may not be capable of sustaining the workloads required for intense sports like horseracing, endurance and polo.
A note about overweight and lightly worked horses
If your horse is overweight or lightly worked, it isn’t necessary to replace glycogen supplies following work. The focus for overweight horses should be to burn calories and lose weight. Following exercise, their body will gradually replace any muscle glycogen that was burnt during exercise using other sources of energy like propionate, a volatile fatty acid absorbed from their hindgut that can be turned into glucose. Feeding grain after exercise will only serve to slow weight loss progress and may even cause weight gain. Overweight horses are also unlikely to exercise at an intensity that uses up any significant amount of glycogen.
Likewise, it is unnecessary to replenish glycogen supplies by feeding a grain meal following exercise in horses that are only lightly worked or horses that are only worked a couple of times a week. These horses are unlikely to burn much glycogen and/or they have plenty of time to easily replace what they did use before their next bout of exercise.
Look after the muscles
During exercise a horse’s muscles experience multiple little rips and tears that have to be repaired. The muscles also need to grow, strengthen and tone so they can cope with the work required of them. Ensuring crude protein and lysine requirements are met according to FeedXL will mean your horse’s muscles have access to plenty of amino acids to repair and grow, however supplying high quality protein in the form of whey protein concentrate immediately following work (within the first 15 minutes of finishing exercise) may help lightly muscled horses build muscle bulk faster.
Whey protein provides rapidly absorbed amino acids that first feed a horse’s muscles, second signal to them to slow or stop the muscle breakdown process that occurs during and following exercise and finally, provides muscles with the building blocks they need to grow and strengthen.
Dose rates of 10 to 20 grams per 100 kg of bodyweight of whey protein concentrate are commonly used. There are also equine specific whey protein and other high protein supplements available for this purpose. Timing is critical for these supplements to be effective; it must be given immediately after exercise (as opposed to giving it with the next meal).
Rehydrate
There has been much debate over the years about when to allow a hot horse to drink water following exercise, with the common perception being that allowing a hot horse to drink causes colic. While you may wrestle with whether to let your horse drink immediately following exercise, I would urge you to use your common sense and knowledge of your own horse. If your horse wants to drink following exercise and doesn’t seem to suffer any ill effects, then I would suggest allowing him to drink, as the positive effects of rehydration will be far greater than the benefits associated with not allowing a horse to drink until it is completely cooled. Drinking water will also help to lower a horse’s core body temperature following exercise.
You should observe a few guidelines:
Offer cool water that is at a temperature that is comfortable for you to hold your hand in (i.e. not too cold).
If you horse is a real guzzler, get him to take a few small breaks when drinking.
If you have observed your horse get colicky after a big drink, then it would be wise to allow access to water gradually after exercise. But if your horse drinks with no ill effects, there is no reason to withhold water following exercise.
Research has also shown that giving slightly salty water (which you can make by adding up to 9 grams of sodium chloride, which is common table salt, per litre to your horse’s water) as the first water your horse has access to, followed by giving access to plain water aids in achieving high fluid intakes and faster rates of rehydration.
Replace electrolytes
When horses sweat, they lose large amounts of the electrolyte minerals sodium, chloride and potassium. They also lose smaller amounts of magnesium and calcium. These minerals lost in sweat must be replaced to allow full rehydration and normal sweating and muscle function in subsequent bouts of exercise.
Ensuring that your horse’s requirements for sodium, potassium and chloride are met according to FeedXL and making sure your horse has free access to a salt lick is adequate to ensure electrolyte repletion on a daily basis. Under intense workloads (for example endurance) or when horses are working in very hot and humid conditions you may need to consider using a specially designed electrolyte replacer for horses.
When selecting an electrolyte replacer for your horse, read the label of the available electrolyte supplements carefully. Be wary of products that contain less than 800 grams per kg of actual electrolytes (sodium, potassium, chloride, calcium and magnesium). Some products on the market are more than 50% ‘filler’ (usually dextrose or glucose) which is of little benefit to the horse as part of an electrolyte replacement program. Some glucose is necessary for the effective absorption of sodium, but glucose should represent no more than 10% of an electrolyte supplement.
The use of electrolyte replacers is a large and relatively complex topic that deserves a dedicated FeedXL newsletter.
Summary
Failure to replace what a fit horse in moderate to high intensity work uses during a bout of exercise will mean that the horse gradually becomes less and less able to complete the work required of it. Using a digestible cooked grain-based feed in the first hour following the completion of exercise will restore muscle glycogen supplies. Feeding a high-quality protein supplement like a whey protein concentrate within 15 minutes of the completion of exercise will feed the muscles and allow them to repair and strengthen. Providing access to water, and initially slightly salty water following exercise will allow your horse to rehydrate itself. And finally, ensuring dietary requirements for the electrolyte minerals sodium, chloride and potassium are met according to FeedXL will allow your horse to replenish electrolyte minerals lost during exercise as it eats its normal daily ration.
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The question of whether you should feed a horse before exercise is one that is commonly asked. Most of us were told over and over again by our parents not to swim for 30 minutes after eating or we would get a muscle cramp, so we generally tend to think that eating before exercise is not a wise thing to do. But is this the case for horses? The answer is yes and no…
Empty stomach or full stomach before exercise?
The horse is a monogastric and a continuous grazer, so logic says that a horse’s stomach should never be empty. Having a full stomach is important for the horse as it stops gastric acids from the lower part of the stomach splashing around and irritating the upper sections of the gastrointestinal tract. This acid splash that occurs in horses exercised on an empty stomach is thought to contribute to the development of gastric ulcers.
Therefore, if a horse is stabled without constant access to forage, or if it has been more than 2 hours since the horse last grazed or fed, you should feed your horse before exercise. A small feed will protect a horse from gastric ulcers in 2 ways. Chewing the feed will stimulate saliva production and saliva acts as a buffer in the stomach. And the feed will fill up the stomach and prevent gastric acids from splashing around (for more information on Gastric Ulcers you should read our post Avoiding Gastric Ulcers).
What should you feed before exercise?
What you feed before exercise is very important. You should only feed forage before exercising your horse and preferably long stem forage like hay. Hay requires a lot of chewing and will stimulate plenty of saliva production which provides good buffering protection for the stomach. While any forage that forms parts of your horse’s everyday diet is acceptable, if you are concerned about gastric ulcers in your horses, alfalfa (lucerne) hay has been shown to be helpful when it comes to preventing or resolving ulcers. So, if alfalfa hay is available and is fed as part of your horse’s normal diet, this would make a good choice for a pre‐ride or exercise feed.
How much hay should be fed?
While you don’t want to give your horse a very large feed of hay before exercise, you do need to feed enough to provide some fill in the stomach. Depending on when your horse was last fed, you should feed between 200 – 400 g/100 kg (0.2 – 0.4 lb/100 lb) of bodyweight, using the larger meal size if your horse hasn’t been fed for 2 or more hours and the smaller meal size if it has been 2 hours or less since your horse’s last meal.
Here’s a guide to help you determine how much to feed your horse based on long it’s been since he’s eaten:
What should not be fed before exercise?
Never feed grain within 4 to 5 hours of a ride or exercise, and that includes any feed that is high in starches or sugar. The starches and sugars in these feeds are absorbed from the small intestine largely as glucose, which triggers the release of insulin from the horse’s pancreas. Blood glucose and insulin levels following a grain feed generally peak at 2 to 3 hours following a meal and return to normal within 4 to 5 hours. Insulin is a hormone that instructs the horse’s muscles and organs to store away glucose.
So, if there is insulin in a horse’s blood when exercise starts, the horse isn’t able to mobilise glucose stores to burn and fuel the muscles during work (because insulin is there telling the muscles to store all the glucose away). The horse’s ability to burn fat as an energy source is also reduced when insulin is present. The result of feeding a grain or high starch and sugar feed too close to when the horse is exercised is the horse that will run out of muscle energy supplies and fatigue quickly.
This concept is particularly important for high intensity exercise where a horse’s glucose supplies are burnt up very quickly. In endurance type activities, large grain meals should not be fed within 4 to 5 hours prior to the start of exercise, however smaller grain meals may be fed during exercise to top up muscle glycogen stores and prolong the time to fatigue.
In summary
Horses are constant feeders so they should, in theory, always have a full stomach. Feeding a small meal of hay just before exercise, particularly if it has been 2 or more hours since a horse’s last feed, will stimulate saliva production and provide fill in the stomach to protect the stomach from gastric ulcers. In contrast, grain or any feed high in starches or sugars should not be fed within 4 to 5 hours of exercise as these feeds trigger an insulin response which then stops a horse from mobilising the muscle glycogen and fat stores it needs to fuel muscles during exercise. And this will result in your horse tiring quickly.
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The fastest way to replenish glycogen supplies in equine athletes is to feed a grain‐based meal following exercise. Grains contain starch, which is digested and absorbed as glucose and this glucose is directly used to replenish glycogen supplies. The grains fed should be cooked (either extruded, micronised, steam flaked or boiled) to maximise their small intestinal digestibility (so more of the starch can be digested and absorbed as glucose).
