DL Equine Nutrition

04/06/2026

Happy Friday all,
Lets talk about “What ingredients to avoid for EMS/PPID contained in balancers and supplements” a great Q from follower Gail.

Horses affected by PPID are typically older and may have other health issues including equine metabolic syndrome (EMS). This condition can involve hyperinsulinemia, recurring laminitis, and abnormal fat deposits.

Always consult with an equine nutritionist to ensure your PPID-affected horse is receiving a balanced diet. Ongoing consultation may be required to maintain a healthy body condition. It is not something that is easily managed on your own, research has proven time and again, better outcomes occur when a horse with PPID and or EMS is on a nutrition programme specifically formulated by a nutrition advisor. As optimal nutrition will support the overall health of horses with these conditions.

These horses need a forage-based diet with adequate energy, protein, vitamins and minerals to meet their NRC nutrient requirements.

Overweight horses with PPID need fewer calories to promote weight loss. Underweight horses with this condition may require concentrates and additional nutrients to maintain weight and muscle mass.

Specifically, both your EMS (equine metabolic syndrome) and your PPID-affected horse (particularly if insulin resistant), also need a diet low in ESC (simple sugars) and starch to prevent increased insulin levels and laminitis risk.

📊No. 1 Pasture and hay analysis is CRITICAL! ❕
Without knowing what your pasture is providing you are shooting blind, completely in the dark about your horses’ main source of food. There is no point in concerning your self over other feeds and spending time and loads of $$ on other supplements if you are not feeding low sugar pasture and hay!

You should analyse your pasture and hay to determine its sugar and starch content. It is the simple sugars (ESC extracted through feed analysis) and starch levels – that matter. These are the components that can cause a blood sugar and insulin rise. They need to be kept to under 10% for every meal for the insulin resistant horse.

Mature hays such as timothy or teff are most suitable for PPID horses that are overweight. They typically have less energy and sugar content than any meadow hays.

Soaking hay can reduce sugar content but may also lead to other nutrient losses and may research has shown that it may not reliably lower the sugar + starch value below 10%.

Take out feed that contain grain, this is too much starch and sugar, and also too much energy if your horse is overweight.

If your horse is underweight feed fats – oils, flaxseed and other high energy fibres - lupins, peas, sugar beet pulp, lucerne, soybean hulls etc.

Now it is critical to balance up the vitamins and minerals in the diet. However, you need to read the ingredients labels very carefully.

✔Ingredients I do want to see include = minerals such as selenium, chromium, zinc, copper, calcium and phosphorous. And vitamins E and B1 and D. Omega 3 (marine derived is far more bioavailable in the horse).

❌Ingredients you DONT want to see would be molasses, bran, maize, wheat, sugar, oats, barley, corn, iron (there is enough in your pasture and hay), rice, millrun, pollard.
Take care of anything that has added fats in the form of vegetable oils (rapeseed/ soy/ corn) as with the exception of flax, these oils are unbalanced in omega 3 and 6. The last thing you want to do after all your hard work is add more inflammation to the body.

Both PPID and EMS require ongoing and diligent management; however, with appropriate care, affected horses can maintain a good quality of life.🐴

02/06/2026

Hi team, I have a pasture Q from follower Grant Kate Barrie

I’m betting many of you that have had all the rain this last couple of days that you will quickly see massive change from some old brown to green with new grass growth?🌿☘

If you have this happening in your horses’ paddocks guess what else is happening? Got some unwanted silly horse behaviour starting? Got weight issues or colic?
So what exactly is happening inside your horse?

Well right now the grass has gone from feeling stressed with many parts of the country having little rain to getting a months’ worth on a day!
That means your grass is going to change – FAST!

This is because it goes from little moisture to having a party at the wet conditions and throwing everything it can into growing and turning on all its photosynthesis into making sugars.🍭
The formerly stressed grass holds onto these sugars for dear life and guess who gets to eat them? Yup your lucky normally sane little unicorn.

Next this high sugar hits your horses foregut, the foregut yells ‘ I cant cope” and it it rushes this sugar thru the gut system really really fast compared to the old high fibre low sugar boring slow grass from last week.

This high sugar stuff hits the hind gut super quickly. Plus, your hind gut is also getting fructans (complex sugar) in the hindgut from the grass, double whammy!
In the hind gut the normally stable ph levels drop too quickly and conditions change too fast upsetting the balance. This condition of the microbiome in the gut of the horse then has effects on things like behaviour.🦠

Why? because trough the “gut-brain axis” it appears that the microbes in the gut are in communication with the brain.📣

Think of the hindgut as a playground of microbes on a soft ball team. When it has that long term feed of high fibre the teams playing are all in blue (all steady slow league fibre fermenters. They like fibre and this new grass is over 80% water and contains sugar!)

The high sugar rushes in and the blue team finds it doesn’t have enough players to cope and has to sub on a new team of red players. These guys hit hard and fast and are angry!
(These are the lactic acid bacteria, meant to be in small numbers – now quickly increasing too many).

The whole playground dissolves into a brawl! Ok so I may have gone overboard on the analogy, but you get the jist right?
Too much high sugar makes for one unhappy gut and one upset horse and humans asking where did my lovely pony gallop off to??🐎

So what to do? There is NO magic cure all product that companies are trying to sell you. STOP wasting your hard earned cash $ on all those extra supplements!💰💰

ADD FIBRE!
ADD low sugar feeds!
High fibre feeds= lucerne/ timothy/ teff chaff, low sugar hay, (test it!), sugar beet pulp, soybean hulls, lupin hulls, flaxseed, lupins, peas etc (anything very low sugar).

Please see previous blogs on website for your sugar and NSC terms and values.

Strip graze, or restrict pasture with very slow introduction and access to fresh grass, exercise more.
Restrict he high grain high sugar starch feeds.
Add fats instead of grain for energy.
Add prebiotics and postbiotics to the diet.

Get your diet balanced by an equine nutritionist NOW. An unbalanced diet in all your horses’ vitamins and minerals and other nutrients will exacerbate the problems.
see www.dlequine.co.nz for a correctly balanced diet plan.

01/06/2026

Hey there,
what is on your mind about feeding this week?🙋‍♀️🐴

I have seen a lot of posts about weight gain, grass, hoof issues etc lately..
Tell me what you want information on and I will make a video or post for you!👇👇👇

25/05/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1dAZAC7Fjx/

You ask your horse to move forward, but they plant their feet.

You ask for canter, and they rush, pigroot or pin their ears.

You ask them to stand quietly, but they paw, call out, fidget or pull back.

It can be easy in those moments to say the horse is being naughty, lazy or stubborn. But unwanted behaviour is information. Labelling a horse as naughty, lazy or stubborn can stop us from understanding the cause.

The Pony Club Australia Horse Welfare Policy is clear that using terms like naughty, lazy or stubborn to describe unwanted behaviour demonstrates a lack of understanding.

That does not mean people are trying to do the wrong thing. These words are common in horse communities, and many of us have heard them used for years. But they can lead us down the wrong path.

When we call a horse stubborn, we may stop asking whether the horse is confused, worried, uncomfortable, in pain, tired, overwhelmed, or responding to unclear aids.

The Policy reminds us that horses need clear and consistent aids, and consistent expectations for their behaviour. When aids are unclear, or expectations change from one day to the next, the horse’s world can become confusing and worrying.

Good horsemanship means looking deeper. Before we label the horse, we need to ask:

❓ What is the horse trying to tell us?

❓ What part might our timing, pressure, training, handling or environment be playing?

❓ How can we make the right behaviour easier for the horse to understand?

Understanding the cause helps us support the horse, improve safety, and build better partnerships.

24/05/2026

Another myth busting monday!

A warning from your nutrition advisor here....Ive seen a few scary post about feeding gaining tracton in NZ last week about winter feeding and gaining weight.

Specifically people telling others to cook up barley or bran to feed their horses.

This is actually a dangerous practice that comes with a number of risks!

Bran mashes are traditionally made with wheat bran — the hard outer layer of the wheat grain.
Barley of course a grain itself.
But are they really a good choice for horses? 🤔

The first reason is horses primarily gain weight by eating high quality fibre first!
Fibre fuels the hind gut microbes, and the byproducts of that fermentation feul weight gain.
❌Grain is the last thing on the list of a diet for weight gain from a qualified nutrition advisor!

❌ Horses with conditions such as EMS, insulin resistance, or PPID should not be fed grain, or only very small amounts. Grain is high in starch, which is undesirable for these horses. Too much grain can also exacerbate foregut ulcers, which can also contribute to weight loss.

❌ Another issue is the calcium ratio in bran and barley.
Calcium and phosphorus work together to support healthy bones and muscle function, but they must be present in the correct proportions — ideally at least 1.2 parts calcium to 1 part phosphorus.

Wheat bran, barley and rice bran contain around 10 times more phosphorus than calcium, so suddenly adding bran to the diet can negatively affect this delicate mineral balance.

❌ And probably the MOST important reason...
The hindgut microbes can be easily disrupted by the sudden introduction of a new feed.

All feeds should be introduced gradually over 2–3 weeks so the gut microbes can adapt properly and reduce the risk of digestive issues such as colic 🚑

Throwing a warm bran or barley mash into your horse’s feed on a cold, wet day might make us feel good — but it’s not actually doing the horse any favours.

So what SHOULD you feed to help keep your horse warm and gain weight? 👇👇👇

Unlike humans, horses do not need “hot” food to stay warm.

✔A horse regulates body temperature using its own internal furnace — the hindgut! 🔥

✔ The BEST way to help keep your horse warm and gaining weight is to feed more fibre, such as extra hay, chaff, superfibres such as sugar beet pulp, soy hulls, lupin hulls, and lupins.
Then feed fats and oils. Grain is LAST and must always be properly manufactured such as micronized, to ensure the enzymes dramatically increases the ability of digestive enzymes to break down the starch.

🌞The hindgut microbes ferment fibre, producing heat as a by-product — like adding another log to the fire 💥

Fun fact 🤓
An extra 2.6 kg of hay can raise a horse’s body temperature by approximately 0.5°C for up to four hours!

Often what may look like a cheap way of feeding can in fact come with costly hidden dangers!
Need confidence that you’re feeding your horse correctly?

Visit the website to get an individually tailored nutrition programme for your horse 😊
www.dlequine.co.nz

17/05/2026

Fat is often added to feeds targeting performance horses, hard keepers, growing horses or lactating mares who require additional calories in the diet.

Fats containing essential omegas aid the immune system, which can be of great benefit to horses suffering from respiratory or skin allergies. Hay and pasture typically contain 1 – 3% fat on a dry matter basis. This means that an average 500kg horse consuming 10 kg of forage only gets 100 – 300 grams of fat in their diet per day, and not all of this will be absorbed in the gut.

The conversion of any plant oil is inefficient in the horse gut. It is as little as 4% - 10% 😱

In this case recommend using a marine based oil over a plant based one.🐟

05/05/2026

Had a great Q re pasture at this time of year and its posssible effects from Pixie;

You might want to share this one with your socials.

"I know you can still get sugar flushes this time of year but I've always wondered if it's more sour/acidic this time of year? My old boy always struggled in autumn more than any other time, vets never managed to pin down the reason"

For anyone else who sees this problem with their horses here are a couple of factors to bear in mind;

As I do know some history of your gelding and also what pasture you have in the Waikato, plus what you feed I can answer this with fairly good accuracy.

First we look at the horses gut- critically the hind gut runs on dry matter.
Those hind gut mircrobes ferment dry matter (fibre) and the by products are used as energy to fuel the body, especially for body condition, temerature control and immunity etc.

Your horse requires between 1.5% and 3% of its body weight in kg per day to stay healthy.
Thats per day for a 500kg horse.

As Pixie pointed out, Autumn grass flush means the pasture increases quickly in sugars, but also in energy and it dramatically lowers in fibre content. Now without a pasture anlaysis here, from databases of pasture samples collected we can say with some authority that if you took a sample right now it would be heading towards 85% water and only 15% dry matter (fibre).

A teeny bit of math shows you that if a horse is eating 10kg per day of pasture that is only 15% dry matter than it is only getting 1.5kg of actual dry matter into its body per day.
That is a short fall of @8.5kg of that precious fibre needed to keep the body in optimum condition. 😱

Another way to look at it is ; If the horse only had pasture to eat, and it is 85% water that means a horse needs to eat 66kg a day of that grss in order to get enough dry matter!
This is simply not possible to eat in a day (although some horses will tell you it is:)

Add to that work intensity and age factors (arthritis, pain) even EMS etc and a horse can start to lose condition.
Obvioulsy not all hroses will lose weight, some may take that energy and sugar rise and put on wight, but certianly not all. So feeding more dry matter in hay and chaff and feeds such as beet pulp, soybean hulls and lupin hulls will certianly help in those times when pasture is made up of so much water.💧💧🌿

If you or anyone else wants to knwo more about their pasture and how to feed your hrose without all the confusion, head over to www.dlequine.co.nz to access on line courses = for everything you need to know including how to save money on feeding your horse today! 🦄

03/05/2026

Its Autumn and the grass can cause issues with horses health.🌿🌿☘

What are your concerns?
What are you wondering is a myth vs actually a fact concerning horses and grass?🤷‍♀️

Is it why is it actually an issue?
Is it concerning sugars?
Do all horses need to come off grass?
When should you graze and why?
Do all horses need a mycotoxin binder?
Or is it something else you have seen on fb or heard???

My favourite pastime is clarifying facts, let me know how I can help!👇👇👇

19/04/2026

Do joint supplements actually help horses with osteoarthritis? 🤔

Researchers at Michigan State University have a newly published study on the effect of joint supplements on horses (Harbowy et al., 2026). Article linked in comments.

Researchers at Michigan State University studied 40 horses with chronic lameness (AAEP 2–4) linked to osteoarthritis.

Horses were carefully matched (age, weight, condition, workload) and split into:
• Joint supplement group (Cosequin ASU)
• Placebo group

To reduce bias, both groups were further split and disguised with different colours and scents—so it appeared there were four treatments. Strong design = more reliable results.

📊 Results (6-week study):
• Lameness: No difference between groups, though all horses improved slightly over time
• Forelimb vector sum: Supplement group actually showed more asymmetry
• Pelvic height: No effect
• Stride length: No difference

What does this mean?🤷‍♀️
The oral joint supplement did not improve outcomes in horses with osteoarthritis.

This lines up with previous research—while lab (in vitro) studies looked promising, real-world (in vivo) results haven’t shown clear benefits.

What can you do for your horse instead of a supplement?
✔Balance the diet to ensure nutrient requirements are met!
✔Keep your horse at a healthy weight.
✔Exercise.

see www.dlequine.co.nz for education courses and groups to gain the right information to feed your horse for optimum health!

16/04/2026

As a nutrition advisor with years of study I can honestly tell you that the biggest impact on your horses's behaviour and health will come from feeding more hay!

It is a scientifically proven fact!🧪
PLEASE PLEASE DO YOUR FRIENDS A FAVOUR AND SHARE THIS POST!📣📣

My advice (contrary to social media gorups and companies) is not to feed all those extras, its to feed hay as often as possible.

Stop wasting your hard earned $ on magic cures, buying the 3 products containing magnesium whose claims have reached mythical proportions in NZ thanks to social media marketing!!

Stop and feed hay.

Feed hay in the paddock,
Feed hay before riding,
Feed hay after riding,
Feed hay while your horse waits for the farrier,
Feed hay while your horse waits for the dentist,
Feed hay while your horse waits for the physio,
Feed hay in the float,
Feed hay while you wait for the next round at a competition...

Your horse has evolved with a gut system that needs a constant flow of fibre.
Without this a cascade of health issues occur. From colic, to ulcers to unwanted behaviour.

FACT -
Fibre feeds the hindgut microbes, keeping these microbes happy is the biggest thing you can do to induce calm behaviour! Your grass has lots of water and very little fibre at this time of year. Hay makes a difference.
Not supplements, not magnesium, not tumeric, not charcoal, not raspberry, not tryptophan, not more vitamin B (PS the horses gut microbes can aid in the making of its own Vit B if fed fibre!!!) .etc etc...

Even on unrestricted grass access my horses will eat hay.
Its the handsdown number one nutrition impact on their behaviour and health!🐴

Do your horse a favour - FEED HAY!