In my years of working with horses, I’ve noticed a few things about some of the people who don’t typically interact with them. While everyone recognizes the stereotypical horse treats, like apples and carrots, very few people that don’t work with horses regularly actually know the main parts of a horse’s diet.
Can they eat grass?
Do they eat hay?
Let’s take a look and dive into a general overview of the different food components and how they play into the horse’s health as a whole!
First comes first, when looking into the diet of any animal, it’s extremely important to know what category they fall into.
Categories of Herbivores
There are two main categories of herbivores: grazers and browsers.
- Grazers, like horses, eat strictly pasture grasses and plants on the ground. They don’t eat bushes or leaves and generally avoid vegetation that’s higher up.
- Browsers, like goats, eat forage that’s typically higher off the ground such as bushes and leaves. They tend to avoid short grasses and generally ignore vegetation that’s low to the ground.
- There is a middle category called “brazers” that are typically are a combination of the two and eat both pasture grasses and leafy forage, but for some reason a lot of people leave that category out.
Forage
Because horses are grazers, they need food that fulfills that “grassy” requirement. This food is often a mix of pasture grasses that the horse can get while out in pasture and doesn’t include any weeds or thick brush. Each pasture mix is generally farm specific and can be tailored to the horse’s dietary needs. However, some horse owners don’t have the ability to provide enough pasture for their horses for a full diet. That could be due to the area not being particularly lush or even just not being a big enough space. Either way, this is where hay comes into play.
Hay
The purpose of hay is to make up what the pasture can’t. If a pasture isn’t producing well enough to completely sustain the amount of animals on it, hay is required to fill in the gaps. Many feed hay during the spring, summer, and fall seasons to compensate for unsuitable pasture conditions, but it’s also regularly used in the winter months when grass has stopped growing in the fields. This ensures horses get enough calories to maintain their body weight. Not only does it keep horses full and happy, but it also helps keep them warm in cold weather. That’s right! Horses that have hay constantly available in the winter tend to need less outside factors, such as blankets, to keep them warm than horses with limited hay. Overall, hay should be given on an as-needed basis with some horses requiring more than others.
Grain
Grain is used if the horse is still in need of more calories in the diet that hay and pasture can’t fulfill. For example, a trail horse that gets worked 8 hours over the course of a week might not need those extra calories and may be fine on just hay and pasture, whereas an endurance horse that gets 8 hours of exercise every single day might need the extra little bit to maintain their body condition. It’s comparable in people to how someone who exercises once a week wouldn’t necessarily need to change their diet, but a competitive runner would need the extra amount of calories to keep their weight up. There are about a billion different types of grain on the market, each tailored to horses of different needs. Some are designed to help foals grow, whereas others may be loaded with extra nutrients and calories for the senior horses that are prone to dropping weight. There are even some made to promote muscle growth in competition horses. The type of grain needed depends entirely on each individual horse’s health, age, and level of activity.
Minerals
The last and final component to a horse’s diet is minerals. Minerals are basically the last step of the diet that makes up for the faults in each of the other components. You could have a seemingly perfect diet for your horse, but if it’s lacking in magnesium or iron, your horse won’t be performing at its best. Minerals are added to a near-perfect diet to give it the proper balance that it needs to allow the horse the thrive. There are a million different mineral blocks and supplement packs to choose from, but the most important aspect is that it actively compliments the horse’s main diet.
Overall, understanding the components needed to create a healthy horse diet allows a better insight into how horse owners care for their beloved companions. Not only does it spotlight how each component works in relation to the others, but it also gives a clear depiction of why horses on different farms or with different workloads may be fed differently. With the right balance of forage, hay, grain, and minerals, any horse has the ability to thrive.
Hayyy Farms 
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