What is ‘Natural’ for Horses?

Przewalski's horses in their home land

Most people would like to keep their horses as ‘naturally’ as possible.

This is a big subject and there are many other aspects -

in this post we are talking about FORAGE.

It is natural for horses to be able to graze - it is WHAT THEY ARE GRAZING that is not natural forage for many domestic horses globally.

It is natural for horses to have a diet which varies over the year (cyclical) rather than grazing the same grass over and over so that only the length of it varies and it stays green for most, if not all year round.

Cyclical

It IS natural for them to be exposed to green grass briefly in spring and sporadically over the rest of the year IF it rains. Bearing in mind this is AFTER their metabolism has had a substantial rest when food was scarce over the long, harsh winter.

Then they consume the more mature grass and seed-heads in late summer /Autumn, to gain condition ready for the long hard winter coming up when forage becomes scarce again.

In their natural environment they roam vast acreages and stocking rates are therefore very low.

It is natural for horses to be on dry, sparse, fibrous forage (HIGH Dry Matter, LOW potassium/nitrogen) for most of the year.

It's not natural for them to be on short or lush green grass (LOW Dry Matter, HIGH potassium/nitrogen).

It is the latter that results in the digestive disturbances which disrupt the microbial populations and cause the mineral imbalances which disturb nerve and muscle function.

Forage that is short or lush green ALL YEAR ROUND is not natural.

It IS natural for horses to eat seed heads (grains) for at least part of the year.

Herbs

While herbaceous plants do make up 8 - 9% of the wild horse's diet, it is not natural for horses to graze lush meadows full of herbs including clover for extended periods.

This is high nutrient density forage as opposed to what suits them best:

**Equids are bulk or roughage feeders, selecting quantity over quality. They consume large quantities of low-quality forage and they survive and thrive in some of the harshest environmental conditions and extreme terrestrial habitats on earth.**

Clover is not natural for the horse as it simply doesn't grow in the semi - arid environments where their digestive system evolved.

** “Equids specialised to consume large quantities of low quality foliage as compared to ruminant animals…..Being non-selective feeders on grasses that are LOW IN PROTEIN” **

Herbivorous mammals suited to higher potassium/nitrogen herbaceous plants and legumes like clovers have a ruminant style digestive system rather than the mono-gastric one horses have.

More on steps we can take to approximate more natural forage choices for our horses coming up!

** “Wild Equids: Ecology, Management and Conservation” by Jason I. Ransom, Petra Kaczensky