If there is anything as fragrant and tempting as a bran mash, redolent with molasses and apples, a horse doesn’t know what it might be. Many an owner has been caught licking the spoon before dishing out that warm concoction to a barn full of horses nickering in anticipation. It’s a scene from a cold winter’s night, almost straight from a Christmas card.

Not only are bran mashes comforting to serve on a bitter evening, they’re also a traditional meal for an ill or convalescing horse, an old-timer with teeth problems, a horse which has a tendency to colic, or a mare which has just foaled. Bran mashes also have been recommended for years as an easy-to-digest, soothing choice for horses undergoing long-distance shipping, and for those which have had an unusually hard workout, such as a long day’s foxhunting. Purported to have a laxative effect, bran often is given to any horse which has been stressed or which might not be drinking enough water. But are all these applications for bran mashes based on fact–or are they just old horseman’s lore?

Bran, What It Is, And What It Isn’t

A byproduct of the milling process, bran is the outer seed coat of a grain kernel that is ordinarily removed. Bran can be made from practically any grain, but the two types most commonly fed to horses are wheat bran and rice bran. (Rice bran, which is relatively high in unsaturated fats, often is used as a fat supplement in the diet of high-performance horses.) For our purposes, we’ll be speaking of wheat bran when we say "bran