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If your horse is an easy keeper, sometimes it can seem like they get fat off of air.
Some equine breeds are known for being more metabolically efficient than others. They require less digestible energy (calories) to maintain an ideal body condition than other horses. This means they can easily become overweight.
Research shows that up to 40% of horses and ponies are overweight. [21] This can have long-term negative consequences for equine health and well-being, leading to inflammation, metabolic dysfunction, and a higher risk of laminitis.
But there are a number of effective strategies that you can use to help your easy keeper lose weight and maintain a healthy body condition. These strategies include forage selection, pasture management, soaking hay, and choosing low-calorie vitamin and mineral supplements.
This article will discuss how to best feed your easy keeper and how to track their body condition score over time. If you would like personalized recommendations for feeding your horse, submit their diet online for a free consultation from our equine nutritionists.
What is an Easy Keeper?
An easy keeper – also known colloquially as a good doer or thrifty horse – is a horse or pony that does not require many calories to remain in optimum body condition.
These horses are often hardy, native or cob-type breeds that thrive in sparse landscapes.
Easy keepers are prone to putting weight on when allowed to graze freely on rich grass pasture. They require little-to-no concentrate feeds in their diets.
These horses can have several differences compared to hard keepers that allow them to gain and maintain weight more easily, including: [22][23]
- More efficient digestion and absorption
- Differences in gut microbiome
- Build fat reserves easily and are resistant to body fat loss
The Problem of Modern Management
In domestic management settings, easy keepers are at risk of becoming overweight and developing associated health problems.
Availability of rich grass pasture, high-quality hay and calorie-dense concentrate feeds means that energy intake is often higher than it needs to be.
Furthermore, the provision of shelter, use of blankets, and limited turnout can lead to significantly lower energy expenditure than their feral counterparts.
Higher energy intake and lower energy expenditure can quickly lead to weight gain, if not managed properly.
Obesity-Related Issues
If your easy keeper is allowed to put weight on, they are at greater risk of developing many obesity-related conditions including: [8][11][18]
- Osteoarthritis
- Colic
- Poor performance
- Cardiovascular issues
Obesity is a growing problem for domestic horses. It is estimated that up to 54% of the U.K. horse population is obese, with similar findings across Europe and America. [18][21]
Equine Metabolic Syndrome, hyperinsulinemia and laminitis are more common in obese horses. This is because horses with EMS have insulin resistance which facilitates obesity, not because obesity causes EMS directly.
Why You Shouldn’t Restrict Feed
One way to address weight gain in easy keepers is to restrict feed intake by rationing feed or reducing the frequency of meals.
Restricting your horse’s access to feed might seem like a good way to decrease calorie consumption, but this can lead to more problems than it solves, including stereotypic behaviours and gastric ulcers.
Horses are trickle feeders that evolved to graze continuously for up to 16 hours per day. [1]
Your horse’s feeding program needs to satisfy its natural desire to forage throughout the day. Otherwise, your horse might start eating other items in their environment, including bedding, fences, barn boards, and soil.
How to Feed an Easy Keeper
What should you feed your easy keeper to prevent them from gaining weight?
We know that easy keepers have a slower metabolism and require fewer calories than hard keepers to maintain their body weight.
But they still have the same requirements for protein, vitamins, and minerals as other horses within their workload and weight class. [5]
Thus, your easy keeper’s diet needs to satisfy the three following constraints:
- The diet needs to provide the appropriate calorie level.
- The diet needs to provide sufficient protein, vitamins, and minerals.
- The diet needs to satisfy your horse’s desire to forage throughout the day.
A nutritionist can help you design a balanced feeding program that optimizes for these constraints. Below are all of the considerations that a nutritionist looks at when balancing a diet.
1) Assessing your Horse’s Dietary Needs
First, we need to determine a target calorie level for your horse’s feeding plan. This starts by assessing the weight and body condition score of your horse.
Before making any dietary changes, we want to know whether your horse is at the optimum weight, needs to lose weight, or needs to gain weight.
Body condition scoring (BCS) is a method of assessing your horse’s weight and fat composition. BCS evaluates fat deposition on the neck, body, and hindquarters using the nine-point Henneke scale.
The 0-9 scale grades horses as: [2]
- Emaciated
- Very underweight
- Underweight
- Slightly underweight
- Ideal
- Slightly overweight
- Overweight
- Obese
- Very obese
Easy keepers should be maintained at a BCS of 4-5 for optimal health. Tracking BCS over time will help you observe and respond quickly to changes in your horse’s metabolic health.
Fat is evaluated both by visual assessment and palpation. Fat will typically feel softer and spongier to the touch than muscle, except over the rump and back where the skin is tight and thick.
A hard neck crest is a potentially dangerous fat deposit and could indicate insulin resistance or equine metabolic syndrome.
You should also weigh your horse to determine whether they are at a healthy weight. Use a weighbridge (scale) for an accurate measurement.
Weigh tapes do not provide an accurate weight but are a useful tool for monitoring whether your horse is gaining or losing weight. [3]
2) Determine your Horse’s Workload
We also need to consider what level of work your horse is involved in. Horses with a higher workload will have higher calorie needs, but will also need to meet higher requirements for protein, vitamins and minerals. [4]
Workloads are classified by the NRC using the following four categories:[5]
Maintenance: Consists of stall rest, field rest or horses that are retired from work.
Light work: Involves slow hacking, trail riding, or some light schooling. These horses are exercised 1-3 hours per week.
Moderate work: Involves hacking, trail riding or ranch work every day for up to 3-5 hours per week. Also includes school horses, show horses and polo.
Heavy work: Consists of hard training and competitions for 4-5 hours per week including significant time spent in trot, canter or gallop. This includes heavy ranch work, race training, low to medium level eventing, barrel racing and dressage horses.
Very heavy work: This includes racehorses, endurance horses and elite 3-day eventing. Consists of at least 6-12 hours per week of slow work and 1-2 hours of speed work.
Your horse’s level may change throughout the year, depending on various factors such as lameness, breeding, and competition seasons. Your horse’s diet needs to be adjusted as their workload changes.
3) Determining Individual Requirements
Your easy keeper’s dietary needs will also depend on their physiological status and any special health considerations.
For example, pregnant or lactating mares and breeding stallions will have different nutrient requirements than mature horses at maintenance. Growing horses also have different requirements to support development and bone formation.
Horses with dental issues will need forages that are easily digestible and do not require a lot of chewing. Horses with gut issues may need additional digestive support.
The information based in this article is primarily intended for mature adult horses, but our nutritionists are available to assist if you have a horse with individual needs.
4) Selecting Forage for the Easy Keeper
Once you have identified your horse’s dietary requirements, forage selection is the next step in building their feeding plan.
Forage should make up 80-100% of an easy keepers diet, depending on workload and body weight. Fibre-rich forages – such as grass, hay, haylage, silage, straw, and chaff – are broken down by microbes within the gut to produce volatile fatty acids (VFAs).
Volatile fatty acids provide slow-release energy for the horse and do not significantly spike blood su