b'NUTRITION PAT RAIATheHorse.com/NutritionFeeding the Horse That Wont EatReasons your horse might turn his nose up at his mealsand what you can do about itH elen Yakin-Palmer refers to herResearchers 13-year-old dun mare Cera as the most finicky eater on earth. Thatshave found that because finding a diet thats nutritioushorses have enough to maintain her body weightyettaste, smell, and texture prefer-tempts her palateis usually a zero-sumences when it game. comes to food.Sometimes shell eat something for one or two weeks, and then she wont like it anymore and refuses to eat it, and sometimes if she doesnt like the way something smells, she wont eat it, says Yakin-Palmer, of Myakka City, Florida. Then there are some thingssuch as her supplementsthat she wont eat, period. Its an ongoing challenge.Simply Picky? Cera is not alone. Horses have specific preferences for the tastes, textures, and smells of the things they ingest. Some-times those preferences are rooted in physical conditions, sometimes theyre not. So before you can figure out how to KELBY FENTON PHOTO COURTESY OF JESSE FRANCISfeed a finicky horse, you must determine why that horse is finicky in the first place, says equine nutrition consultant Clair Thunes, PhD, who owns Summit Equine Nutrition, in Gilbert, Arizona. If a horse isnt eating, you have to figure out what the underlying issue is, she says. Is it caused by ulcers, which can lead a horse to go off grain, or pos-sibly hindgut-related discomfort, which may result in them not eating hay? Is itthe issue. In fact, something as subtle as aare not eating, she says. It amazes me a dental issue that is affecting the horseschange in hay texture can affect palat- the way they can pick through the hay to ability to chew?ability, even if the hay comes from theeat what they want and leave the rest.These are questions Thunes says shesame provider. Thunes explains that hayPicky horses do the same with what always considers when working withharvested later in its growth cycle is morethey find in their feed buckets, she says. finicky eaters. Whatever it is, you havemature and, so, woodier with a higherWhen it comes to grain, some horses to eliminate the possibility of a physicalstem content. Some horses prefer softerprefer pelleted feed, while some like a tex-condition first, she says. hay, while others relish more stem.tured feed better. Ceras fickle palate wa-Meanwhile, owners of healthy horsesSome horses dont like grass hay at all,vered between the two, so Yakin- Palmer have a host of other things to consider, in- but if the horses are eating some of thetried a third option. On the advice of a lo-cluding whether the feed itself iscausinggrass hay, notice what part of the hay theycal equine nutritionist, she offered Cera a TheHorse.com|The HorseJanuary 202025Nutrition_Jan_use.indd 25 12/4/19 1:01 PM'