Horse feeding plan: how much, how often, and the numbers worth knowing

By Sebastien Kister

Last reviewed 19 September 2026

Feeding advice is mostly handed down rather than looked up, and the handed-down version is confident about things the research is not. This page sticks to what the published veterinary consensus statements actually say — with the numbers, and with the places where the usual advice runs ahead of the evidence.

Almost every published number is per kilogram of bodyweight

This is the practical reason to weigh feed rather than count scoops. The recommendations below are all expressed as grams or percentages per kilogram of the horse's bodyweight, so none of them can be applied to "half a scoop" without knowing two things: what the horse weighs, and what the scoop holds.

The published figures are metric, and this page keeps them that way: the percentages are unit-free, and the rest are grams per kilogram, which is the form the sources state them in. If you weigh in pounds, the conversion is 2.2 lb to the kilogram — the 500 kg horse used as the example throughout is about 1,100 lb, and a 1,000 lb horse is about 450 kg.

A scoop is a volume, and feeds differ in density — the same scoop can hold noticeably different weights of two different products, and a heaped one differs from a level one. Weigh the scoop of each feed once, on a kitchen scale, and write the number on the bin. That single measurement turns every recommendation on this page from a slogan into something you can check.

Starch: the two numbers with a figure attached

The ECEIM consensus statement on equine gastric ulcer syndrome gives an unusually concrete dietary recommendation:

The diet should not exceed 2 g/kg bodyweight of starch intake per day or more than 1 g/kg bodyweight of starch per meal.

For a 500 kg horse — about 1,100 lb — that is 1 kg of starch a day, and 500 g in any one meal. The same statement reports that exceeding 2 g/kg bodyweight per day is associated with roughly a two-fold increase in the likelihood of squamous gastric disease of grade 2/5 or worse.

Note what is being limited: starch, not feed. A kilogram of a 20% starch mix contains 200 g of starch; a kilogram of a 40% cereal-based feed contains twice that. The starch content is on the bag or available from the manufacturer, and without it the limit cannot be applied. This is also why splitting the same daily quantity across more meals is not a cosmetic change — the per-meal figure is a separate limit from the daily one.

Where the evidence is weaker than the advice

"Feed more forage and the ulcers will sort themselves out" is the most repeated claim in this subject. The consensus statement does not support it as stated. It records that free access to fibrous feed is widely considered to reduce the risk of gastric ulceration "although strong evidence supporting this belief is also lacking", and that in a study comparing a high-fiber diet against an iso-energetic low-fiber one, both the number and the severity of squamous lesions were greater in the high-fiber group. On turnout, it calls the evidence conflicting.

None of that makes forage unimportant — it remains the basis of the ration, and straw fed as the only forage is associated with an increased likelihood of squamous disease. What it means is narrower and more useful: forage alone is not a treatment, and a horse with suspected ulcers needs a vet and a scope, not a bigger hay net and another six weeks.

A page that tells you only the comfortable half of the literature is not worth trusting on the rest of it.

The easy keeper: the numbers for weight loss

For obesity and insulin dysregulation, the ECEIM consensus statement on equine metabolic syndrome recommends a mixed-species grass hay-based diet at 1.25–1.5% of actual bodyweight as dry matter intake, equivalent to 1.4–1.7% as fed. It is candid that there is debate about the optimal degree of restriction, "owing to concerns about not meeting minimum roughage requirements" — which is precisely why this is a number to apply with a vet rather than alone.

Two findings from the same statement are worth knowing before you plan the routine:

• Soaking works, but it is not precise. Soaking hay for 7–16 hours at ambient temperature reduces water-soluble carbohydrates by 24–43% and is associated with more than double the loss of body mass compared with the equivalent dry hay. The spread is wide because hay varies — soaking lowers the sugar, it does not standardize it.
• Restricting turnout hours often does not restrict intake. Horses compensate by eating faster: over 0.9% of bodyweight as dry matter has been recorded in just three hours at pasture. Grazing muzzles cut intake to 77–83% of unmuzzled grazing, while keeping the horse foraging and moving.

Cereal-based feeds, fruit and vegetable treats are excluded from these diets for the same reason: their non-structural carbohydrate content.

Body condition score: the number that says whether it worked

Everything above is an input — what goes in the bucket, how much of it, how often. Condition score is the output: a hands-on estimate of fat cover at set points on the horse, and the only thing that answers the question the ration was chosen to answer. Is this working?

It exists because the eye is unreliable, and not vaguely so. The ECEIM metabolic syndrome statement records that a tendency for owners of obese horses to underestimate their horse's condition has been identified by several studies, and sets an uncomfortable explanation beside the usual ones: equine obesity is now prevalent enough that it "can lead to habituation and acceptance of the status as apparently normal". The yard you keep your horse on has calibrated your eye, and not necessarily well.

Two scales, and the number means nothing without knowing which

• 1 to 9 — Henneke et al., 1983. 1 is emaciated, 9 is extremely fat. This is the scale most published research works in, the ECEIM metabolic syndrome statement included, and it was originally developed on Quarter Horse broodmares.
• 0 to 5 — Carroll and Huntington, 1988. 0 is emaciated, 5 is extremely fat, and scores of 2 and 3 describe moderate and good condition. This is the scale in general use in the UK and much of Europe.

So a condition score of 3 is a thin horse on one scale and a good one on the other. A score written down without its scale is not information: record it as 3/5 or 3/9, never as 3. It is exactly the sort of detail that survives one conversation and is gone by the next.

The neck is scored separately

Fat over the crest of the neck gets a number of its own, because it does not track the rest of the horse and it does not mean the same thing. The cresty neck score runs from 0 (no crest) to 5 (a large crest that drops to one side), with 3 or more taken to indicate one. Carter et al., who described it, reported it "useful in the assessment of neck crest adiposity" and possessing "physiological relevance, as demonstrated by associations with blood variables" — the neck measurements it tracks were the ones that correlated with insulin. This is why it is scored apart: the ECEIM statement defines obesity to include regionally excessive fat, and reports regional adiposity on that cresty-neck definition in 33% of horses surveyed in southwest England. A horse can carry an unremarkable overall score and still have a crest worth mentioning to a vet.

Where scoring is weaker than it sounds

The same statement is candid about the limits of the tool it recommends, and each of these changes what you may conclude from a number:

• It flattens out at the top. The relationship between total body fat and condition score is nonlinear "when BCS is greater than 7/9" — past that, the score stops tracking the fat, and body mass is the better measure.
• It can fail to move while the diet is working. The statement reports "variable reported changes in BCS after 6-12 weeks of energy restriction". A score that has not shifted in two months is not by itself evidence of failure.
• The first week is largely not fat. Larger losses are expected in the first week of restriction "because of reduced gut fill" once intake drops.
• It can stall after twelve weeks. Beyond that the same restriction may stop having the same effect, because resting metabolic rate adapts downward. A plateau is a reason to go back to the vet, not to quietly cut further.

Which is why the answer is both numbers, and neither by eye. For body mass the statement calls a weighbridge ideal, naming weight tapes and the apps that combine belly, girth and rump measurements as useful alternatives; the score is what tells you where that mass sits. Estimating the weight by looking is the one method the literature is unambiguous about, and it is not a good one.

Write it down, because you are not the one feeding

Every number above is defeated by the same thing: the ration in someone's head. The person who mixes the feed on a Saturday is often not the person who decided it, the "one scoop" that was agreed in March drifts by August, and a change made for a good reason on Tuesday is invisible to whoever is there on Wednesday.

Write the ration down where everyone who feeds can read it — feed, amount, when, and which days, because the grain that stops on the weekend is exactly the detail that gets lost. Keep the starch figure for each product beside it, so the per-meal limit can actually be checked rather than estimated.

Sources

• Sykes et al. — European College of Equine Internal Medicine Consensus Statement: Equine Gastric Ulcer Syndrome in Adult Horses, Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine 29(5):1288 (starch per meal and per day, forage and turnout evidence, straw)
• Durham et al. — ECEIM consensus statement on equine metabolic syndrome, Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine 33(2):335 (restricted intake rates, hay soaking, grazing muzzles, NSC, owner underestimation, the limits of condition scoring)
• Henneke et al. — Relationship between condition score, physical measurements and body fat percentage in mares, Equine Veterinary Journal 15(4):371 (the 1 to 9 condition score)
• Carroll and Huntington — Body condition scoring and weight estimation of horses, Equine Veterinary Journal 20(1):41 (the 0 to 5 condition score)
• Carter et al. — Apparent adiposity assessed by standardised scoring systems and morphometric measurements in horses and ponies, The Veterinary Journal 179(2):204 (the cresty neck score)
• National Research Council — Nutrient Requirements of Horses, 6th revised edition (the reference work underlying most published rations)

Cited by DOI rather than by publisher link on purpose: both consensus statements have already moved publisher since publication, and the DOIs survived the move. Consensus statements are revised; check for a newer edition before relying on one.

Also available in English (United Kingdom) · Español (España, México) · Deutsch (Deutschland, Österreich, Schweiz) · Français (France, Belgique, Suisse) · Italiano (Svizzera) · Italiano (Italia) · Nederlands (Vlaanderen, Netherlands) — one question answered thirteen ways, two of them Belgian and not agreeing with each other, and only Italy's document picks a scale and a target number. Germany counts in hours and Austria in feeds a day; England, Switzerland, Spain, Mexico and France all stop at sufficiency without a figure. Wallonia is the outlier in both directions: the most precise numbers of the set — 16 hours of access, no more than 4 without food — sitting in an advisory opinion that binds nobody, while the code that does bind says only that the feed must suit the animal.

Next: what belongs in a horse's health record — and who should be able to see it.