Q. My horse sustained a tendon injury and needs to be on stall rest for several months. Prior to his injury, I had been feeding him a couple of pounds of high-fat performance feed each day, but someone recently recommended I switch to a ration balancer. I looked at the amount of protein, which is 30%, and I’m concerned. Surely that is too much protein to feed a horse on stall rest. I’m worried he will get overly excited. What do you recommend?

A. I am sorry to hear that you’re having to manage a lay-up; they’re rarely much fun and how the horse will cope with the restricted movement is a major concern. Often when horses are relegated to stall rest they’re fit, so this complicates things and makes it more likely that they might behave inappropriately. Exuberant equine behavior increases the risk of the rehabilitating horse becoming reinjured or the handler getting hurt, so I understand your desire to ensure diet isn’t contributing to the chance of this happening.

Horse people have long believed high-protein diet makes horses hot. But, good news! That’s not true. Protein doesn’t make horses hot. The caveat is that some high-protein feeds might also provide more calories, and feeding more calories than a horse requires can cause unwanted excitability.

However, high-protein ration balancers tend to be somewhat low in calories and are designed to have a feeding rate of a couple of pounds per day. I would expect a ration balancer to provide less calories per pound than your previous performance feed. Therefore, switching from the performance feed to a ration balancer will reduce dietary calories and might help your horse remain calm while laid up.

Protein in Equine Ration Balancers

On a pound-for-pound basis, a ration balancer will provide more protein than a performance feed. Feeding 2 pounds of a 14% performance feed provides 127 grams of crude protein compared to 273 grams provided when feeding 2 pounds of a 30% protein ration balancer. This might seem like a lot, but consider that most performance feeds have minimum serving sizes of around 6 pounds per day for an average sized horse, with a maximum intake sometimes in excess of 12 pounds. This would provide 382 grams of protein on the low end and 764 grams on the high end. In both cases, the performance feed servings provide considerably more protein than in 2 pounds of 30% ration balancer