Question

I own a 13-year-old Hanoverian gelding that I compete as a novice-level event horse. He is stabled 17 hours a day and given access to pasture 7 hours each day. He is given a mixture of two feeds, an 11% protein sweet feed and a senior feed, morning and night. He also gets beet pulp, corn oil, bran (one cup), and an antiulcer product in his evening feed. During his time in the stall, he gets about 10 lb of timothy hay. He has a history of surgical colic. Since I purchased him a few years ago, he has always been an energetic horse with a big spook. While he looks fit right now, he seems duller than normal without nearly as much energy as he should have for his state of conditioning. Can you review his diet to make sure there is not a nutritional component to his sluggishness?

Answer

The diet seems perfectly adequate, meeting the nutritional needs of the horse as long as he has additional salt at his disposal. Though nothing is notably absent or oversupplied in his diet, I have a couple of suggestions that you might consider.

• Your horse’s diet contains a lot of fat and fiber. He derives few calories from starch. Some horses need a little more starch to sustain their energy levels, particularly with an increase in workload or in the summer heat. This lack of spark could be remedied simply by adding more oats and barley to his diet. Both of these cereal grains are high in starch. You can add either to his current diet, and it would take only 1-2 lb per day to see a difference.
• If you are concerned with top-dressing oats or barley to his diet because of his history with colic, another approach would be to add beet pulp to his morning feeding so he gets it at both meals. Although beet pulp is not high in starch, it adds calories and raises glucose levels, thus providing energy enough to make a difference.
• Although you don’t mention how much corn oil you are feeding, adding more would also boost calorie consumption. You can increase the amount of oil to one cup per day, divided between at least two meals and preferably three. Corn oil is notorious for imbalancing the omega-3 to omega-6 ratio in the diet. Therefore, you might consider changing to canola oil. Flax and fish oil are excellent sources of omega-3 fatty acids as well.
• Sometimes horses on high amounts of concentrate (even those high-fat, high-fiber ones) will have subtle issues with hindgut acidosis. Considering your horse’s history of colic, this is noteworthy. Kentucky Equine Research (KER) developed and markets a product called EquiShure, which is a buffer that corrects pH fluctuations in the hindgut. I have seen many horses that were not on high-starch diets or had intermittent colic bouts that had tremendous relief after being on EquiShure. Most showed positive changes in attitude and increased willingness to work. Another product from KER, RiteTrac, combines EquiShure with ingredients that keep the stomach healthy. If you choose to proceed with RiteTrac, you could eliminate the current ulcer preventive.
• Could there be a physical condition affecting your horse? A slight lameness that might be changing his mindset and affecting his work ethic? Is he sensitive to working in hot weather? When temperatures soar, some horses become lethargic. Is the horse sweating properly? Does he exhibit normal sweating patterns when worked? Anhidrosis (lack of sweating) is not common in the northeastern United States, but it is frequently diagnosed in warmbloods. Anhidrosis makes horses extremely tired and is detrimental to their health.