They look like rabbit food, and the technology that made those bunny pellets a complete diet now is used regularly to make feeds for horses. Granted, pelleted feeds don’t usually exude the tempting aroma that most molasses-laced sweet feeds have, but they more than make up for that in terms of convenience and digestibility. Furthermore, feed mills have learned to apply pelleting techniques to practically every type of feed a horse can consume, from hay to grains to combinations of the two (often called “complete” feeds).







Tina Hines


One of the major advantages of pellets is that, compared to other types of feed, they are very low in dust. “Compete” pelleted feeds can include not only grains, but vitamins and other supplements. And manufacturers have created many types of pelleted mixes to suit all sorts of horses, no matter their activities.


Almost no commercial feed ration is left untouched by the pelleting process — sift through a prepared sweet feed with your fingers, and you’ll discover a smattering of pellets mixed in with the oats and corn and other grains. That pellet generally contains a vitamin/mineral supplement for the ration, bound up with a fiber source such as dehydrated alfalfa

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