What Do Horses Eat? A Feeding Guide to Hay, Grass, Grain and Water

Ask a ten-year-old what horses eat and the answer comes back as hay and apples. The first half is right and the second half is a side dish. A horse’s digestive tract is long, tuned to a steady trickle of fibrous plants, and almost every feeding decision comes back to protecting that design.

What do horses eat in the wild

Wild and feral horses, from the mustangs of the Great Basin to the herds on the barrier islands of the Atlantic coast, spend most of their waking hours grazing. They eat grasses first, then sedges, forbs and the leaves and bark of shrubs when the grass runs short. So what do horses eat in the wild, day after day? Mostly dry and green grass, with variety coming from season and place. Movement matters as much as the menu, because a free-ranging horse may walk many miles a day between grazing patches and water.

Nothing in that diet resembles a bucket of grain. Wild forage is high in fiber and fairly low in sugar and starch, and the horse takes it in small amounts almost around the clock. A stabled horse cannot copy this exactly, but the principle carries over: lots of forage, in small portions, spread over the day.

Hay: the foundation of the ration

For most horses that live in barns, paddocks or dry lots, hay is the main feed. The usual grass hays are timothy, orchard grass, Bermuda grass and brome, and in the West a lot of oat hay and mixed grass hay is fed too. Alfalfa is a legume with more protein and calcium than grass hay, and it suits growing horses, hard workers and mares nursing foals. Owners often feed a grass and alfalfa mix.

Quality shows in the bale. Good hay smells sweet, looks green to pale gold, feels leafy and flexible, and carries no mold, dust or weeds. Moldy or dusty hay can cause respiratory trouble and colic, and a horse should never be offered it. Hay is best bought from a supplier who stores it dry and, if the horse has metabolic problems, can provide a lab analysis of sugar content.

How much to feed is a question of arithmetic. Adult horses eat roughly 1.5 to 2 percent of their body weight in forage each day, so a horse that weighs 1,100 pounds eats somewhere around 16 to 22 pounds. The hay calculator turns that into flakes and bales. Weigh a flake on a luggage scale once; a “flake” varies enormously from one bale to the next.

Some horses do better on hay cubes or pellets. They are useful when hay is short, when a horse has poor teeth and needs soaked feed, or when the hay quality is uncertain. Check the mouth and the body weight of any horse that starts leaving stems behind; the dental care page covers what a mouth problem looks like.

Grass and pasture

Fresh grass is the closest thing to a natural diet, and it is also the feed most likely to cause trouble for an overweight horse. Spring and fall growth, and grass stressed by cold or drought, can be high in sugars called nonstructural carbohydrates. For ponies, easy keepers and horses with insulin resistance or a history of laminitis, that is a real risk, and a vet will often recommend a grazing muzzle, restricted turnout or a dry lot with hay in a small-mesh net.

Pasture also has to be managed. A paddock grazed down to the dirt gives little food and a lot of dust, and horses will eat the weeds that are left, some of which are toxic. A rule of thumb is to move the horses off when the grass drops to a few inches and let it rest. In much of California the grass dries out by early summer, and a horse that grazed all spring may need hay almost overnight.

Whatever the change, make it slowly. A horse moved from hay to lush pasture, or the reverse, should be given the new feed over seven to ten days. Starting with an hour or two of grazing at a time lets the gut bacteria adjust.

What do horses eat besides hay

If you are wondering what horses eat besides hay, the short answer is pasture, salt, water and, for some animals, a measured portion of concentrate. Plenty of horses need nothing beyond forage, salt and water. Others need more energy or nutrients than forage supplies, and that is where concentrates come in. Options include oats, corn, barley, and the commercial pelleted or textured feeds that blend grains with vitamins and minerals. Beet pulp, soaked, adds fermentable fiber and calories without much starch. Rice bran and vegetable oil are fat sources for horses that need weight without a sugar load.

A ration balancer is a small daily portion of concentrated protein, vitamins and minerals, and it suits horses that hold weight on hay or pasture alone but are short on nutrients. Fed in a small amount, it fills gaps that forage leaves, which is why it suits a good-weight pony or a retired horse better than a bucket of sweet feed does. What horses eat besides hay should match what the individual animal needs, not what the neighbor’s horse gets. Senior feeds are built to be soaked and eaten by horses with few teeth.

Feed grain in meals of modest size, and always by weight rather than by scoop. A common ceiling is about half a percent of body weight per meal, roughly five pounds for a 1,000-pound horse, and horses with metabolic problems or ulcers may need less. Large grain meals can overflow from the stomach into the small intestine, where starch ferments in the wrong place, and that is one route to colic and laminitis. Any supplement or feed program for a horse with a health concern is a conversation for the vet.

Water and salt

Water is the most important nutrient on the list. An adult horse at rest commonly drinks around 5 to 10 gallons a day, and hot weather, hard work and a diet of dry hay push the figure higher. A horse that drinks too little is at higher risk of impaction colic, so a clean, always-available supply matters more than any feed choice. Check troughs and buckets daily, scrub them often, and in winter keep them from freezing, because a horse that drinks less is at higher risk of impaction colic.

Salt is the second thing to put out. Forage contains little sodium, and horses lose it in sweat. A plain white salt block or a loose salt feeder gives a horse the option to take what it needs. Horses often take little from a hard block, so a horse in hard work may not get enough that way, and loose salt is easier to measure.

Treats, fruit and what to skip

Carrots, apples, melon and a few peppermints are fine in moderation. A handful of treats is a reward and a training tool, not a meal, and a horse with metabolic trouble may need to cut them out. Offer apples in slices, not whole, and take care that hands stay flat so no one loses a finger.

Some foods do harm. Avocado is toxic in every part, with the leaves worst, and can cause colic, swelling and heart damage. Onions and garlic break down red blood cells, and the anemia can take days to show. Chocolate carries theobromine and caffeine, which are poisonous and also show up in the drug tests of competition horses. Bread dough and any food that is moldy should never go into a horse either. Lawn clippings are a classic mistake, because they ferment fast and have caused colic. So are fence-line piles of garden trimmings, which can hold toxic ornamental plants. Cattle feed that contains certain additives can be poisonous to horses too, so keep it in a separate bin.

Toxic plants and signs of a feed problem

A hungry horse on bare ground will sample things it normally ignores. In California, red maple leaves, especially wilted ones after a storm, can destroy red blood cells. Oleander is deadly in small amounts. Yellow star thistle and Russian knapweed cause a nervous disorder in horses called chewing disease, which is usually fatal, and fiddleneck, a common weed on rangeland, can damage the liver. The University of California publishes a Livestock-Poisoning Plants of California leaflet that covers these and more. Walk the paddock regularly, pull weeds and ask the local extension office what is growing in the area.

Warning signs that a feed program is not working include weight loss or a rib-showing coat, a cresty neck and fat pads on a horse that is gaining, loose manure for more than a day, whole grain in the droppings, quidding (dropping partly chewed feed), and a horse that gets dull and stops eating. Colic signs, such as pawing, rolling, looking at the flank and sweating, are an emergency and the first aid kit guide lists what to have ready until the vet arrives. Heat in the hooves and a bounding pulse at the fetlock point to laminitis, and the hoof care page describes what to look for.

Alfalfa gets special mention in some areas. It is not harmful to most horses, but in regions where enteroliths form, high alfalfa feeding is one of the risk factors, and the page on enteroliths explains it. For a horse with unexplained weight change, repeat colic or any suspected metabolic problem, the vet decides the plan, and the American Association of Equine Practitioners keeps general owner resources at aaep.org.