Balancing Ulcer Management and Weight Control in Horses

It’s important to find the right balance between weight management and the risk of gastric disease. | iStock

Q: My Arabian mare has both squamous and glandular ulcers. I find it challenging to address consistent foraging because she is not on pasture due to laminitis concerns from the past. I have resisted unlimited free forage as she has been prone to gaining excess weight. I use hay nets and hay balls to extend her feeding time but, based on her total feed requirements, she is still left with long periods when she is not feeding. Are there other ways to facilitate continuous slow feeding?

A: It’s such a common challenge in the modern world—balancing weight management of the obese or insulin dysregulated horse against the risk of gastric disease. The good news is recent research has helped us in a new direction, and the days of essentially starving these horses are behind us.

Hay and Equine Squamous Disease

Starting with squamous disease, where hay intake has the most direct impact on gastric disease, our goal is an intake of 2% of her body weight per day (as fed). That’s 25 pounds for a 1,250-pound horse, a lot more than commonly fed. We must balance this against the metabolic needs of the horse, and this starts with hay selection and rethinking the question of “What is good hay for horses?”

Spoiler alert: It’s often not the greenest, leafiest, or richest hay commonly fed; it’s hay that is nutritionally suitable such that a horse can consume the target 2% body weight per day and not exceed her caloric needs. I call it “munchy hay”—it’s all about the volume and chewing. You can add a ration balancer to your horse’s diet to meet her nutrient requirements that hay cannot meet. And the good news is munchy hay is often cheaper, so the cost of the increase in volume is often offset by a lower unit cost.

Alternative Forage Solutions to Reduce Calories

A next step in achieving more volume without increased calories (after reconsidering initial hay selection) is to soak hay to reduce its caloric content and, specifically, nonstructural carbohydrate content. Then, at the further end of this discussion is a renewed interest in feeding straw to horses. Straw is like celery for horses, all chewing and bulk with no calories. Historically shunned, a body of recent research has demonstrated that feeding up to 50% of the diet as hygienically clean straw blended with hay is safe, both overall and from a gastric ulcer perspective, and beneficial in reducing caloric intake. Hygienically clean barley, wheat, or oaten straw are all fine for this use.

Further, and perhaps most importantly, by providing the horse with roughage at all times, it’s also a step forward in improving your horse’s well-being. Extending the time she’s foraging translates into maintenance of a protective roughage ball in the stomach (which prevents splashing of gastric acid) and greater saliva and bicarbonate production, enhancing the natural defense mechanisms to help prevent ulcers.

Hay and Glandular Disease in Horses

The benefits of rethinking hay feeding for glandular disease are less direct. But, because glandular disease is a stress-based disease, making the above improvements for your horse’s well-being is expected to have positive benefits for the lower half of the stomach, too.

Take-Home Message

Feeding more forage doesn’t have to mean feeding more calories. Researchers have shown that selecting “munchy” hay—and, when appropriate, blending in hygienically clean straw—can allow horses to eat ad libitum roughage while supporting both metabolic and gastric health.

Although some U.S. horse owners might be less familiar with straw, owners abroad use it widely, and it can safely increase chewing time and promote normal foraging behavior. Work with an equine nutritionist familiar with the use of straw and other low-calorie roughage sources in equine diets to evaluate hay quality, analyze forage, and balance the diet correctly.

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