Fenugreek, a commonly added palatant, was the most consumed flavor in the study. | Photo: iStock

We know that high-fiber feeds are good for equine gastrointestinal health because they mimic horses’ natural foraging diets better than traditional concentrate feeds. Some owners report that their horses don’t like how high-fiber feeds taste, however, prompting manufacturers to add flavoring to improve their palatability and consumption.

Because most palatability studies on horse feeds have been conducted using concentrate diets, a research team at the University of Glasgow, in Scotland, decided to look at horses’ flavor preferences when consuming high-fiber diets. Viola Farci, a PhD student at the University, presented their findings at the 2019 Equine Science Society Symposium, held June 3-6 in Asheville, North Carolina.

In the two-part study, Farci’s team first tested whether five commonly used feed flavorings (apple, carrot, fenugreek, garlic, and mint) and five less-common flavors (banana, cherry, cinnamon, citrus, and vanilla) would increase eight adult horses’ feed consumption. They offered each horse two buckets of high-fiber soaked feed at a time—one with a test flavor and one unflavored—and measured each horse’s feed consumption after three minutes. The researchers repeated this for each of the 10 flavors