Laminitis guide: Part 3 - how to feed a horse with laminitis

In the third and final part of our series on laminitis, independent equine nutritionist Donna Case BSc (Hons) takes a look at how best to feed a laminitic horse

If you have a horse or pony prone to laminitis you will know how important it is to get the diet right, but often it can feel worrying knowing where to start. The main areas that tend to cause a problem include general overfeeding and obesity, sudden changes in grazing, as well as a diet high in starch and sugar (Non Structural Carbohydrates). You may have heard this more recently referred to as Hyperinsulinemia associated laminitis (HAL).

The first place to start is with an assessment of your horse’s weight. Not all horses with laminitis are overweight, but being overweight is a predisposing factor, so healthy weight is important. Doing a Body Condition Score (BCS) will be useful. If you are unsure as to how to go about this, most feed or welfare websites produce guides that are readily available. Although using a weigh tape is not completely accurate, I would recommend you use one of these too on a regular basis as it will allow you to monitor changes and progress that can be shared with your vet.

What is key is that we tackle weight loss in a safe manner. The last thing you want is to accidentally starve your horse, which can lead to various other problems such as gastric ulcers. As such you need to ensure that you do not feed below 1.5% body weight per day on a dry matter basis and that also your horse does not go for longer than 4 hours without access to some form of forage. In real terms what this looks like for a 500kg horse is around 9kg hay or 11kg haylage. Some horses can consume this really quickly and then be left for long periods with nothing to eat, so finding ways to extend feeding times is necessary, such as double netting or small hole haynets, which enable food to be offered little and often..

As well as working towards a healthy weight and controlling calorie levels, we also need to ensure that the overall diet has 10% or less combined starch and sugar content. Whilst this is relatively easy to achieve with the hard feed, many owners forget about grass and forage which is where the majority of your horse’s sugar intake will come from. If out grazing 24 hours a day a horse can easily consume the equivalent of a bag of sugar, around 1kg, sometimes even double this! If you stop and think about that, if you spend hours searching for the lowest sugar hard feed, but fail to sort his grazing you will not be addressing the main problem.

Strategies such as using a muzzle, strip grazing or a track system can all help to reduce sugar consumption and reduce calories from excessive grazing. Don’t be fooled by just reducing the turnout time, as many will then binge eat and consume just as much as they could in a 24hr period so may need to be removed from the grass completely. Try not to make any sudden changes to grazing, which can also cause a surge in sugar intake and instead try to change fields gradually where possible. Adding a pre/probiotic can help to support the hindgut microbiome with this.

Hay itself can easily contain 12% sugar, so a section of 2kg will deliver around 240g of sugar, and your average horse will be eating far more hay than this. Whilst soaking does not guarantee that it is suitable for laminitics, it will help to reduce the Water Soluble Carbohydrate (WSC) levels. In general, I recommend soaking for 6-12 hours, but in summer due to potential fermentation I would not advise soaking beyond a couple of hours.

Whilst a late cut hay may be lower in sugar, please do not make any assumptions as sugar levels in forage really can vary massively so analysing what you have may be useful. The overall calorie level of the hay is crucially important too if you are weight watching, so if you are struggling to find what you need, a hay or partial hay replacer from a feed manufacturer may be beneficial.

In addition to choosing an appropriate hard feed with no greater than 10% combined sugar and starch, it is important to ensure all of the necessary vitamins, minerals and amino acids are delivered. A balancer can be really useful as it will deliver quality protein for muscle repair and development as well as the correct blend of vitamins and minerals in a low calorie format. Whilst the correct vitamins and minerals are important for any horse, this is especially so to meet the needs of those facing a health challenge such as laminitis.

Finally, for those who require help with weight gain, there are various higher calorie feeds that are suitable. Alternatively, oil can be added to top up the ration at a rate of 100mls per 100kg body weight per day. If adding oil, you will need to increase the level of Vitamin E in the ration by 1iu per 1ml added. Splitting hard feeds into smaller meals throughout the day will help to reduce the amount of sugar and starch consumed with each meal.

Thank you to equine nutritionist, Donna Case BSc (Hons), for providing this advice.

Also in our laminitis guides:

Laminitis causes, treatment and prevention

How farriery can help laminitic horses

About the Author

Donna Case has over 10 years experience as an Equine Nutritionist and has appeared in many of the UK's leading equestrian publications, including Horse & Hound Magazine, British Dressage Magazine, and British Eventing Magazine. During her time as a nutritionist she has worked not only in high performance yards, but also at high profile events themselves in the stable areas on call.