Fussy Feeders

In some instances, certain medications may have side effects that cause a reduced appetite. One example here is pergolide which is commonly used to control the clinical signs associated with pituitary pars intermedia dysfunction (PPID), otherwise known as Cushing’s disease. It is important to speak to your vet if you notice your horse’s appetite has been affected since being on any medication, but keeping the meals varied and interesting for them can sometimes help. However, since sudden and frequent changes to the horse’s diet are not advisable, adding different flavours to the feeds can be a good compromise. These can help to vary the taste of the feed, hopefully reducing the need to keep switching feed types and being left with uneaten and wasted products. Flavours can include mint, garlic, fenugreek, cinnamon, apple juice, peppermint oil, honey, fruit cordial or even different herbal teas, such as chamomile. These can be added to the normal feeds, and mixing in some warm water can help to enhance the aromas and entice your horse to eat up.

Fruits and vegetables are a great tool to tempt fussy feeders, as well as providing variety and enrichment to the diet. Safe choices for horses can include carrots, apples, bananas, parsnips, watermelon, cucumber, celery, turnips and swede. These can simply be chopped up and mixed in with the feed, or otherwise grated or blended to make it more challenging for your horse to selectively pick them out. If you are chopping them, it is important to always cut them lengthways rather than in circles or cubes, to reduce the risk of choke. Be cautious when introducing crunchier fruit and vegetables for horses with poor dentition as they may present problems with chewing.

Remember that fruits and vegetables are not calorie or sugar free, so should be used in moderation. However, carrots are around 80% water so the overall sugar content is quite low, making them a safe option as a treat in small quantities for horses needing a low sugar diet. For further information about the sugar levels in your horse’s favourite treats click here.

There are a variety of herbs which you can add to your horse’s feed to help with palatability, and some feeds may even have these included already. These can include:

• Cinnamon
• Thyme
• Mint
• Garlic
• Oregano
• Ginger
• Rosemary
• Fenugreek

If you compete in affiliated competition, it is important to be cautious about any herbs or flavours you are adding to your horse’s feed, as they may pose a NOPS (natural and other prohibited substances) risk, depending on the source. Click here for more information on NOPS.

In these situations, one of the most important things to check is whether there is a problem with your horse’s teeth or any other musculoskeletal issues that may be affecting their chewing or grazing behaviour. Other questions to consider include:

• Have you recently got a new supply of forage or opened a new bale?
• Have any other horses on the yard stopped eating the forage too?
• Does there appear to be any problems with the forage, like mould, dust or an abnormal smell?
• Has anything else in your horse’s management changed, such as a change in grazing?
• Have there been any potentially stressful events for your horse, like a moving yards, a change of companions, a change of carer, increased exercise or increased travel?

Once these have been ruled out, there are a number of strategies you can try to help encourage your horse to eat their forage. It can be worth trying different types of forage (e.g., changing from a hay to a haylage or vice versa), to see if your horse prefers one or the other. This can be a particularly useful option to try if your horse is new to you and you are unsure what type of forage they had in their previous home. If you have a hay steamer available, this can sometimes help to improve palatability as it can give the hay a sweeter smell. New forages should always be introduced gradually wherever possible, including a change onto a different batch or source of the same forage type.

Using large holed haynets or feeding forage from the floor or in a bin can make the hay or haylage more easily accessible to your horse and there will be less ‘work’ involved to eat it, in comparison to a small holed haynet. A variety of forage types, including chopped and soaked fibre feeds, can also be used to encourage grazing and browsing behaviour as well as providing a source of enrichment. More information on forage replacement feeds can be found here.

It’s not unusual for horses to be unsure about eating soaked hay initially so it’s always advisable to increase soak time really gradually – starting with just 10 minutes or less and then building up the duration slowly. This not only allows them to get used to the different taste but also gives their gut time to adapt to the increased moisture intake. Feeding a combination of soaked hay and dry hay can also be helpful, with the proportions gradually being adjusted each day until the full ration is being soaked. Fresh water should be used for every soak, and soaked hay should be fed straight away rather than being left in the sun.

Something else to try and improve palatability of the soaked hay is to add different flavours to encourage your horse to eat it. These could be applied using a spray bottle to get more of an even coverage. Options here could include diluted fruit juice or cordial, or even herbal teas like peppermint or chamomile. If you have a steamer available, following up a soak period with a steam cycle can be beneficial to improve the forage’s hygienic quality as well as its palatability.

If your horse is really not keen on soaked hay, an alternative option to reduce the overall calorie contribution from the forage would be to include some straw in replacement of up to 50% of their hay provision. More information on feeding straw can be found here.

Horses often prefer the water from the field tank rather than fresh from the tap, and so if they don’t normally drink much out of the bucket while they are in the stable or away from home, try filling it with water from the tank in your field. In cold temperatures, it is not uncommon for water intake to decrease, and adding some warm water to the bucket to ensure it is not freezing can be helpful.

Another way to entice a fussy drinker to their water would be to add some flavour with a little cordial or food flavouring, such as those listed above. To encourage consumption of electrolytes, try adding apple juice to the water or sugar beet pulp juice to aid palatability. Alternatively, soaked fibre feeds like alfalfa pellets, grass pellets or sugar beet pulp can be made with extra water to further increase fluid intake. Chopped fibre feeds can also be mixed with water and electrolytes to be given after harder work or competition to aid rehydration and recovery.