How does horses diet change throughout the year?
In nature, a horse’s diet changes through the year according to what food is available. In spring and summer, there’s lots of rich green grasses. In fall, things get a little tougher and drier. In places with long cold winters, the horses have to paw through the snow to get at the dried grasses and plants underneath. They will also strip bark off trees for nourishment. In early spring, even well-fed domestic horses are eager for fresh, live food, so they are especially likely to nibble small brush and peel the bark off some kinds of trees. If we wanted to follow nature exactly, we would feed our horses a lot less in winter, and come spring they’d be thin – but then we should also give them a few hundred acres to roam, and a few big predators to take their chances with, and of course not ride them… Domestic horses seem to do fine with a more consistent diet throughout the year. I try to give mine as much freedom as possible to be horses, while still keeping them safe, sound, and healt
