Transcript:

[0:04]

[Music] Have any of you listening ever had to feed a large group of horses — whether they're individually stalled in barns, or you may have had a bunch of horses in paddocks or out in pasture? I remember my first experience of feeding large groups of horses, most of them in university settings, and it was out in California a couple decades ago.

[0:36]

In the morning — you know, crisp California air, always a little bit warm, sun’s out rising over the mountains — we would fire up our tractor with the wagon, and just that smell of the farm is something that once you smell it, it just sticks with you for your entire life. We’d pull up to our hay barn, loading up bales of alfalfa hay, and that sweet aroma of alfalfa — I just love it. Then we would drive over to a big pile of steamed, crimped corn — and I cringe at the thought today.

[1:21]

As my career has progressed over the last couple decades in science and research, I’ve realized how much we have changed how we feed horses just in these last 20 years. But it still feels like yesterday — we would drive that tractor down the lane, the mares would line up, we would toss them their hay around the pasture, and then scoop out the corn into individual feed dishes. We now know today that feeding straight corn to horses is probably not a very good practice; it can lead to a lot of issues.

[2:02]

It got me really thinking — we have rapidly changed our approaches to feeding horses today, in the 2020s, compared to the early 2000s and late 1990s. And then going back 100 years, or 2,000 years ago — when horses were under human care, stabled or held in large paddocks or pastures — what did they feed them? How did they keep them going? How did they meet their nutritional requirements? And then, what about 4,000 or 5,000 years ago, when horses were first domesticated? What did they feed them?

[2:54]

Why care? Because it is so important to horse ownership to understand how to feed them. But again, this is all part of their story. In understanding our horses today, you need to understand where they were 100 years ago, 2,000 years ago, 4,000 years ago — to fully appreciate what we have in them today. That’s why we tell these sagas about horses and their origins.

[3:35]

“Secretariat being led… he is the horse and the horse is the best thing in the world, isn’t it? I’ve always loved them — really ever since I was a little girl.”

“Everybody’s in line — and they’re off! Secretariat away very well, has good position…”

“The love — I never thought owning a horse could mean so much to me.”

“Secretariat now taking the lead…”

“The madness — what kind of a horse is that? I’ve never seen a horse like that before…”

“Tightening now — he is moving like a tremendous machine…”

“Their story — Mustangs are more involved in the early development of this breed than I thought they were…”

“Secretariat has opened a 22-length lead! He is going to be the Triple Crown winner…”

[4:28]

Welcome to *Mad About Horses*. Hello, I’m Dr. Chris Mortensen. I’m an equine educator and scientist. I’ve been doing this for over 20 years. Ever since I was a little boy, I’ve loved horses, and I’ve dedicated my life to learning about them and sharing that knowledge freely with the masses around the world. I’m just so passionate about this, and I’m going to make you this promise today — stick with me. Equine nutrition is not just one podcast; this is going to be a series of podcasts in the coming years.

[5:03]

It is complex today because of where we’ve been — but it can be easy. There are so many tools available to you today. One is, you can go to madbarn.com and get your diet analyzed for free — no obligations. It’s services like that that are helping horse owners better understand their animals’ dietary needs. Understanding the history of where we’ve been and where we’re going helps you understand your horse better. So when you look at them today, tomorrow, or the next time you see a horse, you’ll have a greater appreciation and understanding of their ancestry — the trials and tribulations they’ve gone through over the last few thousand years.

[5:54]

It’s going to be an intriguing story today, and I’m very excited to talk about it. Now, going back to the origins — this is what one of our very first podcasts was about: the origins of the horse. In that podcast, I talked about why it’s so important to understand this. Just to quickly recap, you’ve got to go back 55 million years. The Earth is hot, humid, sticky — the atmosphere in North America and Central America is full of trees, semi-tropical forests. The dinosaurs are long gone — 10 million years before that, they’re gone — and you have this furry, small… I don’t even think you would recognize it as an equid, but it kind of looks like one, but it doesn’t.

[6:52]

It’s about one and a half feet at the shoulder — or what we consider four hands. It’s not very heavy, and it’s creeping through these dense woodlands, munching on leaves, munching on twigs, nuts, berries. That is going to become the horse in 50 million years. That animal is the earliest one we can identify in the fossil record that says, “Okay, that line — we can trace it up to what we have today” — this 16-hand, over 5-foot-at-the-shoulder animal we call horses, donkeys, or mules.

[7:36]

Their diets today are built on grazing grasslands. Over the last 50 million years of evolution and development, these animals have had to change from this browser-herbivore diet to a hindgut fermenter that we have today — one that eats primarily forage. That is the bread and butter of every equine diet today — forage. Evolution has driven that to the point where today, horses’ digestive systems are totally dependent on what we feed them forage-wise.

[8:17]

With domestication, we’ve made things a little bit more complex — because think about what we’re asking them to do. If you start and just imagine: What does a horse need to survive? We can go to wild or feral horses, or you can go to the Shal’s horse — some say Przewalski’s, but Shal’s is the proper Polish pronunciation. If you think of a mature horse out on the plains or prairies of Asia or America, what do they need to survive? Obviously, water is the big one.

[9:10]

All animals need water — if we don’t have water, we will die quickly. We can survive some time without food, but we still need food because we need to pull nutrients out of it to keep the body going. Out in the wild, horses need water and they need food — forage. They’re meant to eat small meals of forage all day long. Their digestive systems have developed to eat these small meals. Their stomachs are small in comparison to their entire digestive tract — only about 10% of the digestive tract is the stomach. Feed, food, or forage is not in the stomach for very long, and then it moves down the rest of the digestive system.

[10:02]

I’ll give a quick caveat — yes, out in the wild, horses can survive fine on just what they can forage out on natural grasslands. Yet wild horses, on average, only live 15 to 20 years. Today, in the 2020s, domestic horses are living on average 25 to 30 years, and some horses are living into their 40s now. A lot of that can be attributed not only to advancements in veterinary medicine — we have some incredible veterinarians around the world taking care of these animals…

[10:39]

But it’s diet — we have learned so much in the last few decades on how to feed horses. So if you take that — right — what the horse needs: water, then forage, which gives them their protein to build muscle and cells and everything, the energy, the calories — that’s the fuel, you know, that’s the gas tank of the body. They get that in carbohydrates and fats. They need fiber, which they get in forage. So think of leafy greens or a stalk of celery — if you chew on that, it’s high in fiber. Horses need that because that feeds and helps the bugs — the good microbes — in the hindgut that horses use to digest that feed and get energy and nutrients out of it, including vitamins and minerals. Those are the basics that they get out of that.

[11:33]

Now, when we go and say, “Okay, you’re now under our care — under human care — so why don’t we just feed them hay all day long and call it a day? Give them hay, that’s what they eat in the wild.” Fine. Well, it’s a lot more complex than that. Because what we’ve done is — remember domestication — we’ve taken them, stuck them between fences, or put them in stalls, or put them in paddocks, and said, “Now you’re under our care.” And now it falls on us — our responsibility — to feed them and water them, to make sure they have feed and water each and every day. This is a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week obligation to these animals.

[12:25]

We’ve also said, “Hey, I’m going to jump on your back and I’m going to ride around with you,” or “Hey, I’m going to hitch you to this wagon,” or “Hey, I’m going to hitch you to this chariot,” or “You’re going to plow this field for me.” And what that has done is — that exercise or work has pushed them to where a forage-only diet is not going to meet their full nutritional needs. And that’s where we know today — we know, after study after study after study over the last 50 years — that when we ask these horses to work, it causes them to sweat. So they lose salts, right? That’s one thing. You’re going to find out in the history — they’ve known this — that horses need salt, which is interesting.

[13:10]

They need more energy or they’re going to lose weight. So we were feeding corn, like I talked about — and I still cringe at that thought. And I wasn’t making the decision, and my professor at the time — I know she looks back and cringes at that too — but we didn’t have all the data at the time, and it was an affordable option to maintain these horses in California. They were getting a lot of good nutrients out of alfalfa, but now that we understand things like non-structural carbohydrates, which can lead to metabolic disorders — things like that, that we’ll talk about in later podcasts.

[13:52]

When we’ve domesticated them and limited them from their normal grazing, and then we hook them up to these wagons or jump on their backs — they need more nutrients. And I’ll just say this flat out: forage only is not going to provide everything a horse needs. That also includes horses that aren’t under work — horses just out on pasture. They too need extra nutrition. They need some sort of dietary supplement under most conditions, because — just as an example — selenium deficiency is a big one in many soils around the world. So the forages that grow, the hay that we feed them, would be deficient in selenium if grown on those soils. If you feed that only to a horse, they’re not reaching their selenium requirement, which is an important antioxidant. So that’s why it’s gotten a little bit more complicated than just feeding them forage.

[14:51]

That domestication process — limiting horses — has pushed humans to find other feeds other than just hay. Now, I’m going to give credit to “Feeding the Ancient Horse” written by Thomas Donie, who wrote this about 10 years ago in the *Journal of the Veterinary History Society*. Fascinating paper. It’s just so fun to think about horses over the last 5,000 years, and how we’ve developed them into the horses we have today — but also their impact on human history. And I think that enthusiasm comes across in this podcast. Looking at the stories and what we know from the written histories from thousands of years ago — they were very sophisticated in how they fed their horses.

[15:54]

Now, you go back 5,000 years ago — they were kept in paddocks or large pastures, could have been herded. The Mongolians, known as great horse people, managed large herds. You can go online and see hundreds, if not a thousand-plus horses that they’re herding. These are domestic horses, and they go and pull out the ones they need and keep them in large herds grazing across the plains of Asia. That’s probably how they managed them early on. And the earliest written histories we have on horse feeding date back nearly 3,400 years to the Hittites. There was a man named Kikkuli — I hope I’m saying that right — he was a master horse trainer 3,400 years ago. In tablets archaeologists have recovered, they captured some of his writings from 3,400 years ago. He was training horses to pull chariots, and we have some of that information about how they fed them. They were feeding them basic rations of hay with oats and barley — and this is in Central Asia — and even sophisticated enough to say they need hay throughout the night.

[17:24]

Here we are in 2024, as I record this today, and we are still trying to convince horse owners: you should provide forage throughout the day. But our lives have gotten so busy in the 20th century, 21st century, that we feed horses twice a day. In my career, especially in the last 10 years, I’ve really been pushing horse owners to try to feed three, four, five times a day. We’re looking into the research of hay nets to slow down how quickly horses can feed. We’re saying feed them overnight so they don’t have empty stomachs in the morning. Kikkuli was talking about this 3,400 years ago — that’s how sophisticated they were, and where they’ve come from. It’s exciting to read that and think, “Oh, we’re so modern today because we have so many research studies, and equine science has become such a huge field in the last 50–60 years” — but they knew.

[18:32]

The ancient Greeks talked about them. I mentioned Hippocrates in the “Benefits of Horse Riding” podcast — how even then, over 2,000 years ago — you’re talking 2,300–2,400 years ago — horseback riding was considered good for your physical and mental health. Well, Aristotle, who lived around the 4th century BC — so 2,400 years ago — was writing about horse nutrition. To quote him, he said: “Young green pasture that is forming seed is good for the condition of a horse’s coat, but when the grass has stiff awns, it is not so good.” End of quote.

[19:27]

So even then, they knew that feeding mid-growth — not super young growth plants, but younger growth — was better than when the stalks got really fibrous, or went to seed with big heavy seeds at the end. They knew that wasn’t good for them — they needed younger, lusher forage that was packed more with protein, carbohydrates, and other nutrients. They had no idea then of specific nutrient classes, but they just knew — 2,600 years ago — that when you let horses graze on forage, it needed to be younger and mid-growth forage.

[20:07]

That’s like today, when we tell horse owners: let your horses graze on pastures that are 6–8 inches tall — or 15–20 centimeters. That’s for most grasses; it depends on what forage you’re feeding them on — but that’s the stage where it’s optimal nutritionally for a horse, rather than something that’s 10 or 12 inches long. And you don’t want them to graze pasture less than 3 or 4 inches, because the horse will nibble the grass all the way down into the dirt. So 6–8 inches — or 15–20 centimeters — is the sweet spot.

[20:49]

And they knew that — and Aristotle was writing about that 2,600 years ago. The Romans, 2,000 years ago, they too knew pastures were important. Claudius Columella, who was a Roman author on agriculture, stated that pastures need to be well-watered and spacious. We always recommend at least two acres of pasture per mature horse, so they knew that horses need to be spaced to keep the pastures productive.

[21:13]

They even went on to say, quote, “The less palatable grasses are left to seed in rough patches where the horses also dung and urinate. Tall-growing weeds colonize these areas. And then, where swards are overgrazed or where pastures are overgrazed, the lawns become depleted in plant nutrients, and they’re not productive.” So they knew these traditions, and we’ve carried them on for thousands of years. The basics of horse nutrition date back to the Hittites — probably before that — so 4,000 years ago.

[21:53]

So when you go out to feed your horses today, or tomorrow, or whenever you see them next, remember — people have been doing this for thousands of years. Imagine the young girl in Greece carrying the feed bucket out to her family’s horse and spending time with her horse. She did that under the same moon and stars that you stand under. That’s what gets exciting when you think about this stuff.

[22:21]

Now, looking at the history of what type of pastures — this is fascinating. Because I opened up talking about alfalfa, which is a very common hay around the world for horses now. But alfalfa originated in Central Asia. Alfalfa is not a plant or legume species that is naturally found all around the world like certain grasses. It originated in Central Asia, and it was the Persians who, in 490 BC — so you’re looking at 2,500 years ago — invaded Greece and introduced alfalfa to the Greeks for their horses. One of the Greek historians said, “The best breed of grass for horses is alfalfa.”

[23:25]

So alfalfa was a very popular plant that they fed. But then you had your grass hays — whatever was typical for the region you lived in. Even in ancient Greece, they fed their horses hay. There are many instances in the archaeological record of humans feeding horses hay that date back, like I said, to the Hittites — you’re looking at 3,000–4,000 years ago. So they obviously had to know how to grow hay, how to cultivate hay, how to cure it, and then feed it to their animals.

[24:02]

So when you throw hay to your horse, again, think of the young Egyptian — probably with their wooden rake — tossing hay to their horses. It’s fascinating to think about. Now, mentioning forage — obviously that’s where we start. But where did the grains come in? Because we know there has to be some sort of supplemental feed, or the horses will waste away; they will break down. There are many instances in the written record, dating 2,000–2,300 years ago, of cavalry horses not being fed proper diets and then breaking down in warfare.

[24:46]

But it got me thinking — okay, when did we start feeding grains? Like I said, just 20 years ago, feeding straight corn was still a common practice. There are people listening who probably feed straight oats. I would say a lot of people still do that — and again, that dates back thousands of years. Now, did horses live as long 100 years ago? Probably not. If we go back 2,000–4,000 years, the horse lifespan was probably similar to what it was in the wild. They might have lived into their early 20s, but it’s really with modern nutrition and modern medicine that horses are able to live longer and be competitive or productive for more years in their lives.

[25:38]

But they knew — they were feeding oats and barley back in the day, so they were helping them meet their caloric needs, their energy needs. Again, we’ve carried on these traditions for thousands of years. And I’ve mentioned this name before — Xenophon. Talking about the cavalry and the history of equestrian sport — he lived about 2,500 years ago. He’s the one who said you’ve got to have a good feeding regime for horses going to war. His horsemanship manual, written for the Greeks back then, detailed how to properly care for horses.

[26:20]

Even he recommended feeding a morning and evening meal of grain to horses. The type of grain the Greeks were feeding at the time was barley. It was widely available, and it was the grain of choice for horses in Rome and Greece. So if I asked you today, in 2024, “What’s the most popular grain to feed a horse?” — I just mentioned it, and you’re probably thinking oats, right? Oats. It wouldn’t be corn — I know I opened with feeding corn — but corn is interesting. It dates back to Mexico over 9,000 years ago, when humans were starting to cultivate it in early agriculture. But remember — the Europeans didn’t come to the Americas until the 1500s, and that’s when horses were reintroduced.

[27:19]

So Europeans and Asians — where horses had been for most of their domesticated history prior to the 1500s — were feeding other grains. Oats was actually a very popular feed in China and the Near East, where horses were obviously a massive part of the peoples there. Oats has become more of a common feed in the last few hundred years. Back then, they had it figured out — right? They were feeding the horses forage, they were feeding them grain to make sure they maintained body condition. So it begs the question — if they figured it out 2,000 years ago, would it have changed much until we got these advancements in science?

[28:03]

The other way to ask it is — do you think horses a hundred years ago were more similarly fed to the way we feed them today, or more like the Hittites 3,600 years ago? Patricia Harris, out of the UK, wrote a very interesting paper in *Developments in Equine Nutrition at the Beginning and End of the Century*, and she kind of wraps this all up. In the early 1900s, we were feeding them pretty similarly to what the Greeks fed. This was published in the *Journal of Nutrition* a couple decades ago, but it explores horse nutrition over the 20th century — and it is a night-and-day difference. It has changed so much that it’s going to be really interesting, near the end of my life, to see where we are — because it has changed so much in the last 5–10 years. So imagine the last 100.

[29:07]

Just to sum up what they were feeding horses in, say, 1908 — it was hay, alfalfa hay, grass hay, oats, corn, barley. The only ingredient they really know that changed was they used to feed linseed, but now that’s pretty much been replaced by soy. Soy is one of the top protein sources for concentrated feeds in horses today. When you look at what was fed the most 100 years ago — at least in the United States — oats was popular among individual horse owners, but actually corn was the number one staple.

[29:56]

In 1912, it was noted that 9.3 million metric tons — which was 27% of all the corn produced in the United States a little over 100 years ago — was fed to horses and mules. That was the fuel — that was the gasoline — that the United States, Europe, and other parts of the world, including Canada, were producing. Today, we produce fossil fuels to fuel our machines. Well, before machines, we had to grow these crops to fuel our horses, which were the primary engines — again, why we owe so much to them. 9.3 million metric tons. Now, oats was 4.1 million metric tons — that was 47% of the total oat crop. Half of the oats produced in the United States in 1912 was fed to horses and mules.

[30:52]

Now, today, oats is preferred over corn. This is late ’90s — and I told you 20-something years ago we were still feeding corn — but it’s when things were starting to change. Because right when I started graduate school, or even my undergrad, horse nutrition over the next 20 years went through a total revolution of what we should be feeding horses. And even today, it’s changed — where the recommendations are forage, forage-based diet. It’s circled back to forage being the most critical part of horse nutrition — that’s where we start.

[31:28]

But I remember working at the racetrack early in my career. I was hot-walking racehorses, working for one of the top trainers in California, and I remember our feed room had at least 10 different bags of feed — and I had no idea, this was during my undergrad, what we were feeding them. I remember the apple flavoring that I can smell to this day. But — high grain diets. These were horses exercising intensely. We know forage is huge, but still, the top athletes need extra nutrition in supplements and other things.

[32:20]

But how did we get from top athletes — 10 different bags of feed, corn — you know, late ’90s, early 2000s — to today, in 2024, where we shouldn’t feed straight corn? And why did it change from 1912 to 2024, or 1908, or whatever year you pick? Well, what drove it was the post-war era of World War II. And this changed academia in the United States and Europe. The war was horrific, but just speaking from my own experience and from my old professors — and then their professors — after World War II, the United States had the GI Bill, so they sent a lot of soldiers to the universities. And there was this huge investment in science and education, and then even things like the Space Race drove so much innovation that we have cell phones today — we have pocket computers — we have access to all the information.

[33:32]

Today we’re in the information age, but it was that post–World War II period in the 1940s and ’50s where you had this huge interest in research and education. Now, you had some stuff going on before then — not to discount any prior research — but it was nothing like this postwar boom. We saw this massive increase in animal science, in raising cattle and sheep — and this is even despite horses being way less important than they were before World War II, because we had automobiles, we had modern machines, we didn’t “need” horses. There still was a segment — like you, listening to this podcast, like me — that loved these animals and realized we still needed to investigate them.

[34:15]

The late 1960s, I think, is when we saw a major shift in equine nutrition and equine science. One of my good friends, Dr. Sarah White-Springer — she’s down at Texas A&M — and others wrote a very nice article just a few months ago called *The Past, Present, and Future of Equine Science*, published in the *Journal of Equine Veterinary Science*. In that article, she writes how one of my societies that I belong to, the Equine Science Society, was formed when 27 equine nutritionists and physiologists came together to start talking about horses, sharing research, collaborating, and developing an equine science program. This was 50 years ago.

[35:10]

I remember going to my very first Equine Science Society meeting over 20 years ago, and the majority of papers have been equine nutrition. The majority of research has always been nutrition because it’s that important to horses. We’ve done so much research in the last 30–40 years that our understanding of equine nutrition is greater than it’s ever been in our history. When we look back at what we fed 100 years ago, when we look back at what we fed 3–4,000 years ago — yeah, it was enough to keep horses going, but they weren’t at their top efficiency. The horses that were dealing with colic, or the horses that had metabolic issues — they were culled, you know, they were removed from the herd. They weren’t top athletes competing around the world, they weren’t going to the Olympic Games.

[36:18]

We have such a greater understanding of what to feed them because of all of the research we’ve done — like things such as forage testing. They tested forage 100 years ago, but their analytical chemistry understanding back then was nowhere near where we are today. I remember going to this meeting back in the mid-2000s — we have “Hot Topics in Equine Nutrition” — and labs and scientists from around the world — United States, Europe, South America, Central America, Mexico, Japan (a lot of great research comes out of there), Korea — would come together. And in this one year, I remember it seemed like every presentation was about feeding fats to horses. Prior to this research, we didn’t understand feeding fats to horses as well as we do today. We didn’t push feeding fats to horses.

[37:22]

I remember teaching my students 15 years ago — we now know feeding fat, like in the form of oils, there are omega-3 fatty acids and omega-6s. What are they, and why are they important? We didn’t know that 30–40 years ago — we had an inkling, but we didn’t know how good they were for horses. So today, that’s a big part of their diet. We’re getting away from feeding that straight corn, because diets high in carbohydrate — sugar and starches, like what’s found in corn — lead to metabolic disorders in horses. It’s not healthy for them.

[38:02]

So, to sum that all up — equine nutrition is somewhat complex today, but that rapid change has really come in the last 50–60 years, with PhD scientists like myself, my friends, some of you listening — some of you are aspiring to be equine nutritionists or equine scientists. Industry is driving a lot of innovation today. Companies are pouring millions of dollars into research and advancements in equine science and equine nutrition. So it is exciting. But I’ll tell you — thousands of years ago, they woke up early, like you do, and fed their horses. They got the hay, they gave them some sort of supplemental feed in the form of grain back then. But today, your diets are either bags of feed with some supplements, or you’re supplementing feed in different ways. Back then, just like today, they did what they thought was best — and what we are feeding is constantly evolving. Who knows? I’m really excited to see where we’re going to be in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years down the line — and I know the only goal, which warms my heart, is to improve the quality of life of our equine companions.

[39:43]

It’s always so exciting to look back at horses, and then look forward to where we’re going. And I did open up with Mad Barn free consulting — I mean, go get a free consultation on what your horse is eating. It’s free, there’s no obligation. You go to madbarn.com, top right, “Analyze Diet,” click on it, fill it out. One of our qualified equine nutritionists — these are people that have studied this and know this, they’re the experts — they’re going to analyze your diet for you and see if you’re missing any nutrients. Because we’re that advanced today — we have computers, we have the science, we have the research to say, “This is what a horse needs day in, day out,” based on how you use them — if you don’t ride them, to “I’m competing,” or “I want to compete at the Olympic Games” — everywhere in between. We know what those horses generally need. And then if there’s any specialties with your horse — “Hey, my horse is doing this” — again, an equine nutritionist, you want to speak to them because they will help you give the best diet you can for your horses.

[40:50]

The other thing — I just want to thank you for listening. Again, I think it’s important that you know how much I appreciate you clicking download, pressing play, getting excited about the information, and sharing this passion for horses with me. If you can share any of your favorite episodes on social media, that will really warm my heart — just as a little thank you to me, for the hours I put in week in, week out, putting this podcast together. That helps so much, because that’s how podcasts grow. And if you haven’t yet, if you don’t mind just clicking on a five-star review — iTunes, Spotify, or whatever app you’re using — that helps, because that shows us that we’re doing the right thing, and we can start developing other avenues of education across other platforms, which are in the works.

[41:46]

madbarn.com — also, “Learn” tab, articles, social media links — TikTok, Facebook, Instagram. Check it out. You can always email me — podcast@madbarn.com. But thanks for listening, and thanks for caring. And thank you for the passion — the passion, the passion, the passion. You just have to look at horses in awe, and love them with everything you’ve got.