Some horses and ponies are greedy guzzlers — barely pausing for breath as they tuck into a bucket feed and polish off every little scrap. Unfortunately, eating too quickly isn’t good for them, and it can cause them problems.
The biggest concern when your horse is eating too fast and bolts down their feed is that they will ingest too much at once and choke when the food causes a blockage in their oesophagus. This can be distressing and may require veterinary intervention, so it’s important to try to slow down their eating as part of a good diet.
How to slow down a horse’s eating
Add water
First off, always make sure you dampen your horse’s bucket feed, as dry food is likely to swell up when it mixes with saliva, which can lead to blockage.
Added to this, always make sure any feed that needs soaking is prepared according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
Add chaff
Adding a chaff to your horse’s bucket feed will slow their eating by encouraging them to chew, as well as upping the fibre content.
The longer a horse spends chewing, the more saliva they will produce. This not only aids the passage of food, but also helps to buffer stomach acid and maintain a healthy digestive system.
Give smaller meals
Splitting your horse’s daily hard feed into several smaller meals will help to avoid a large amount of feed being available to them at any one time.
Each meal can then be sub-divided into several buckets and placed around the stable.
Split food up
Alternatively, putting an obstacle, such as a large, flat stone in your horse’s feed bucket (make sure it’s big enough that your horse definitely won’t put it in his or her mouth), or sprinkling the feed along a trough — rather than feeding from a deep bucket — will mean they can’t take large, greedy mouthfuls.
