EquiDiaryHorse feeding plan (UK): what the Defra code asks for, and the number it will not give
Last reviewed 19 September 2026
England has a welfare code that a court will read against you, and on the question owners most want answered — how long a horse may go without forage — it declines to give a figure. That refusal is the interesting part, and it is not the only thing the code does differently from the advice you will read elsewhere.
This is a summary of a published code and of peer-reviewed guidance, not veterinary advice. Every horse's ration depends on its bodyweight, workload, dentition, metabolic status and the forage in front of it. A vet or a qualified equine nutritionist decides what applies to yours — particularly for a laminitic, insulin-dysregulated, ulcer-prone or underweight horse.
What the document is, and what it does to you
The Code of Practice for the Welfare of Horses, Ponies, Donkeys and Their Hybrids was presented to Parliament under section 15 of the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and published by Defra in December 2017. It exists to give practical content to the duties in section 9 of the Act. Its own statement of force is worth reading slowly:
Breach of a provision of the Code is not an offence in itself, but if proceedings are brought against you for a welfare offence the Court will look at whether or not you have complied with the Code in deciding whether you have committed an offence.
So it is not law, and it is not advice either. It is the document against which your management is measured if it ever comes to that — which makes the paragraphs below rather more consequential than a magazine feature on feeding.
One boundary matters and is easy to miss: this is England's code. Wales and Scotland publish their own. Where this page says "the code", it means the Defra one.
On forage, the code gives no number — and that is a choice
Paragraph 2.2 is the whole of what the code asks on the question:
Horses should have almost constant access to forage (e.g. grass, hay, haylage) during their non-exercise hours. If a horse is stabled for long periods, forage should be provided at regular intervals to try to mimic the natural grazing pattern of horses.
"Almost constant." "Regular intervals." No hours, no count, nothing to check a yard against. Set that beside how the German-speaking countries handle the identical question and a pattern appears, because the four of them occupy the four corners of one small grid:
| Names a figure | Declines to | |
|---|---|---|
| Binding law | Austria — at least three roughage feeds a day | Switzerland — sufficient roughage, Art. 60 TSchV |
| Code a court weighs | Germany — at least twelve hours a day | England — almost constant access |
England takes the German legal instrument and the Swiss substantive position. Whether that is humility about a figure the evidence does not support, or a reluctance to write something enforceable, the code does not say.
There is one grazing figure in the document, and it is worth knowing precisely because it is so often quoted as though it were a rule. Horses "would spend 16-20 hours a day grazing and browsing for forage" in a natural state — and that sentence appears in the chapter on behavioural needs, as the reason horses have a strong need to chew, not in the diet chapter as a standard of care.
The numbers it does give
The code is not shy of figures elsewhere. These are the feeding-related ones, and none of them appears in the German, Austrian or Swiss instruments:
- Hard feed over at least two meals. Paragraph 2.6: "If a daily concentrate ration is required it should be spread over at least two meals a day." It also warns against concentrate meals or large portions of forage immediately before or after strenuous exercise — while noting that a small handful of forage before exercise may help reduce the risk of stomach ulcers.
- Grazing area. Roughly 0.5–1.0 hectares (1.25–2.5 acres) per horse of suitable quality, where no supplementary feeding is provided; 0.2–0.4 hectares as a minimum per donkey. Less may do where the horse is principally stabled and the field is for occasional turnout.
- Water. 25–50 litres a day for an average adult horse, or around 5–10 litres per 100 kg of bodyweight, rising in hot weather and after exercise.
- Feeding a group. Ideally one feeding site per horse plus one extra, with two horses' lengths between sites. Fewer may work in a settled group with little bullying.
- Forage on the floor. Feeding forage at floor level is good for respiratory health, "provided the underlying ground is kept reasonably clean" — note that the same code asks that haynets, if used, be tied at head height so a horse cannot get a foot through an empty one.
Condition scoring: the code prints 0 to 5
Paragraph 2.9 asks that "the weight and condition of every horse should be monitored regularly" and that feeding "be adjusted to maintain an optimum body condition score" — then points at a chart it prints itself. That chart has six bands:
- 0 Emaciated · 1 Poor · 2 Moderate · 3 Good · 4 Fat · 5 Obese
This matters beyond the UK, because most published research does not use it. The consensus statements that supply the actual dietary numbers work in the Henneke 1 to 9 scale, where 1 is emaciated and 9 is extremely fat. A condition score of 3 therefore describes a horse in good condition on the chart your vet may be looking at, and a thin horse in the literature they are quoting. Write the scale down beside the number, every time — 3/5, not 3.
If you want a demonstration that this is a real trap rather than a pedantic one, turn the page. The donkey chart in the same code runs 1 to 5 — Poor, Moderate, Ideal, Fat, Obese — with no zero, and with 3 labelled ideal where the horse chart's 3 is good. Two scales, one government document, facing pages, disagreeing about what 3 means.
Donkeys are in the same code, and the feeding advice is not the same
England regulates donkeys through this document too, and the diet chapter breaks off twice to say that what applies to horses does not apply to them:
- Donkeys "should have constant access to feed quality straw with restricted access to grass, hay or haylage dependent on individual circumstances" — a straw-based ration, not a hay-based one.
- "Grazing muzzles are not recommended for donkeys." Flatly. For horses a muzzle is mainstream — the research measures how much it reduces intake — and the code excludes donkeys from it in one sentence.
- Obesity in a donkey can cause hyperlipaemia, which the code describes as a significant metabolic disorder that can be fatal, so it asks for extra care that donkeys do not become overweight.
A donkey kept on the hay and the muzzle that keep the yard's good-doers in order is being managed against the code, not by it.
What the code does not tell you
It names the conditions without quantifying the diet. Laminitis gets its own passage in the feeding chapter — obesity and over-eating "remain major factors" — and the code notes that long-term excess weight may lead to hormonal disease "such as Equine Metabolic Syndrome". It then sends you to your vet, which is correct and unhelpful in equal measure.
The figures behind those sentences are in the veterinary consensus statements: how much starch a horse may have in one meal, what proportion of bodyweight an overweight horse should be fed, how much soaking actually removes, and how much of the grazing a muzzle really prevents. Rather than restate them here, they are set out with their sources on the main feeding guide, including the places the evidence is weaker than the advice usually given. Note the scale when you get there: that page works in the 1 to 9.
Write it down, because you are not the one feeding
Every paragraph above is defeated by the same thing — the ration in somebody's head. The person making up feeds on a Saturday is often not the person who decided them, the scoop agreed in March has drifted by August, and a change made for a good reason on Tuesday is invisible to whoever is on the yard on Wednesday.
Write the ration where everyone who feeds can read it: feed, amount, when, and which days, because the hard feed that stops at the weekend is exactly the detail that gets lost. Put the condition score beside it with its scale, and the date you took it. The code asks you to monitor weight and condition regularly; a number nobody wrote down is not monitoring.
A plan everyone who feeds can read
EquiDiary keeps the feeding plan on the horse itself: what it gets, how much, when, and which days. Everyone the horse is shared with reads the same plan — in the feed room, offline, where there is no signal — and only the owner can change it. Change it and the app offers to log the change in the journal, so what the horse was being fed last month is still answerable when it matters. Going away? A share link carries the plan to whoever is doing the feeds, no account needed.
Sources
- Defra — Code of Practice for the Welfare of Horses, Ponies, Donkeys and Their Hybrids, presented to Parliament under section 15 of the Animal Welfare Act 2006, December 2017 (legal effect, forage, hard feed, grazing area, water, group feeding, both condition scoring charts, donkeys)
- Animal Welfare Act 2006, section 9 — the duty to ensure welfare that the code gives content to
- 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, forage and turnout evidence)
- 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, the limits of condition scoring)
- Carroll and Huntington — Body condition scoring and weight estimation of horses, Equine Veterinary Journal 20(1):41 (the 0 to 5 scale the code prints)
- 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 scale the research uses)
Codes of practice are revised, and this one is England's — Wales and Scotland publish their own. Check for a current edition before relying on any of it.
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See also: worming schedules — and why interval worming was abandoned.