“Nature holds the knowledge of providing health, healing elements, longevity, and vitality in the purist of forms. The quality of pure nutrient encriched food and herbs are unmatched by every standard and cannot be identically duplicated by man made supplements.” Lisa St.John

Horses, like all animals were designed and equipped to live in nature. Horses are herbivores, which means: “Grass eating”

Horses were designed to sustain life off plant life. Nature provides an abundance of plant life for which animals can thrive on.

Chlorophyll is the “blood” of plants and performs a series of chemical reactions that converts sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into oxygen. Without it all life would cease to exist. Eating from natures’ garden also brings life into the body.

Nutrition is the provision, to cells and organisms, material necessary (in the form of food) to support life. Before we can decide what the correct foods are required to provide health and life we need to consider the being for which we speak of. Horses are grazing animals they graze on plant life. We first need to consider this and really understand the meaning of grazing.

Grazing according to Webster “ to eat small portions of food throughout the day. To feed on herbage“

Horses have very small stomachs they can hold only an 8-15 liter capacity. It is ideally designed for small regular amounts of food. Horses graze for up to 16-20 hours daily under natural conditions for which nature has designed them. Horses consume large volumes of forage and to obtain the bulk of their energy intake from the breakdown of fiber and roughage into available energy.

Food passes through the stomach quite rapidly, often in about 15 minutes, and then progresses through the small intestine quite rapidly as well. It is common for food to arrive at the large intestine (the site of most fermentation and digestion of fiber and roughage) in as little as 1.5 – 2 hours. This leaves little time for nutrients to be absorbed from both the stomach and small intestine, and any alteration to the passage of food through the gut by altering the natural diet can significantly reduce gut function and efficiency.

 The real problem for horses arrives when they have their eating and chewing time restricted (by stabling horses and restricting feed times to one or two large meals daily), and then by further stressing digestive function by undergoing regular hard exercise (often on an empty stomach).

You can rightly ask why that should make a difference. The answer is quite simple:

 Horses salivate only when they are chewing and eating. Under normal circumstances horses will produce up to 30 liters a day of saliva because they graze and chew fibrous material so much. Saliva is an acid buffer. It contains high levels of bicarbonate and other alkaline buffers to neutralize the acid in the stomach, as well as to lubricate the food. 

Horses constantly produce stomach acid, even if the horse is not eating.

 So a normal grazing horse will chew and graze for up to 16-20 hours daily, almost constantly producing saliva to neutralize the stomach acid which is constantly being produced. 

 Normal meals, high in fiber, tend to absorb much of the stomach acid produced (remember that stomach acid is there to begin to assist in the digestion while the fibrous materials in the meal immediately after the food is chewed, broken up, and swallowed).

 Normal meals high in fiber also tend to stay in the stomach for longer periods than watery, or non-fibrous foods (including grains and mashes). The actual emptying time of the stomach is governed by the size of the meal – so a large meal will empty faster than a small meal. Similarly, a predominantly grain or concentrate meal will empty rapidly. 

If the stomach empties quickly, there are long periods when acid is being produced, yet there is no food in the stomach, especially when horses have restricted feeding times because they are stabled and fed to a stable routine once or twice daily.

We confine the horses so they receive very little, if any, grazing opportunity. Under these circumstances the horses can only eat when they are fed under the stable routine. This may be once, twice, or at most three times daily. There are very long periods when the horse will have an empty stomach under these stable conditions – yet they still produces gastric acid, while producing very little saliva.

 On top of this, we usually provide a diet that is low in roughage, because we want to provide lots of energy producing food to cater for the increased demands for energy when horses are training and competing. There is only so much feed volume a horse can eat in a day, and performance horse diets can often be too bulky unless concentrated energy or grain diets are fed.

 These high grain and concentrate low fiber diets commonly fed to performance horses have several real problems: the high grain/concentrate component requires very little chewing time before swallowing, so it is often not well broken up ( how much grain a horse can pass in its feces). If the horse has only a very short time to chew this type of food, it naturally produces very little saliva to neutralize the stomach acids. Worse yet, the grain and concentrate has little fiber in it, so it passes through the stomach quite rapidly.

Grain and concentrate diets allow for very reduced chewing time, thus very little saliva production. They then pass through the stomach rapidly, leaving an empty stomach still producing acid until the next meal is presented. 

This acid in the empty stomach is what causes gastric ulcers. The stomach is designed to have small, regular meals so there is always a little fibrous food inside, as we have previously mentioned.

 Free acid acts as a potent irritant on the mucosal lining of the stomach, rapidly eating away the mucosal surface, and creating ulceration.

 What makes this worse, is then exercising horses (usually on an empty stomach). The increased pressure created in the abdomen when horses are exercising appears to force the acid levels further up onto the unprotected mucosal layer in the stomach, exposing highly sensitive regions of the stomach lining which normally would not be exposed to corrosive acid, to acid activity.

 In summary, not keeping food in the stomach at all times, irregular feeding patterns, hard exercise, and high grain/concentrate diets with low levels of roughage, all compound to allow gastric acid to create ulcers very rapidly. It’s no surprise that up to 90% of thoroughbreds will have some degree of gastric ulcers during preparation.

 Why, then , do pleasure horses not usually have such severe gastric ulcers? Again, the answer is quite simple. Pleasure horses generally have far more access to grazing, and can thus eat more continuously. They are also not generally fed the very high grain and concentrate levels seen in thoroughbred diets, and they generally have more access to roughage in the daily diet. On top of this, pleasure horse work programs are not generally as intensive as for performance horses. They are continuous eaters. When left to their own devices, the horse will eat on a continuous basis, which means they never have an empty stomach and they never completely fill their stomach. Horses in these conditions are normally occupied eating for almost 20 hours daily, and their diet is rich in fiber but low in carbohydrates. Fiber requires adequate chewing, so horses produce copious flows of saliva manufactured during this intensive chewing. Food intake naturally is slow and protracted, so the stomach receives only small portions at a time, yet remains partially filled all of the time.

 Horses have small stomachs. Size varies from 8-15 liters only – adapted for small, continuous meals.
 
Horses secrete gastric acid continuously, even when the stomach is empty, and when fasting.

 Horses only salivate when chewing and eating. Saliva buffers gastric acids. They produce 10-30 liters of saliva daily. Saliva is rich in the acid buffer, bicarbonate. Here, the type of feed used is important – twice as much saliva is produced when horses eat hay or grass compared to grains and other concentrates. Thus high grain/low fiber diets will decrease saliva flow and result in lower gastric acidity – a risk factor for gastric ulcers and digestion issues. High roughage diets tend to stimulate production of bicarbonate-rich saliva which buffers gastric acid.
 Horses’ of all breeds and performance levels can develop gastric ulcers and colic. The prevalence of lesions found is greatly influenced by nutrition management. Horses in pasture have normal stomachs, or very mild erosions. In contrast, horses in stalls or trained intensively have a high prevalence (up to 90%) gastric lesions.

Digestion

Good health depends on adequate digestion. Without sufficient physical and chemical breakdown of foods the nutrients, every cell needs to function properly, would not be available. Poorly digested food is toxic when it sits too long in the system. It can be absorbed and recalculated through the body, stressing the liver and immune system. Our horses have had colic issues since we have domesticated them. Digestion is a natural function of the body. The realization that they are not able to digest properly and hundreds of horses die every year of colic is an indication that drastic nutritional changes need to be made.

Since horses produce very little saliva eating grains the grains become very difficult to break down and digest properly. Large quantities of food passes through the intestines more quickly than smaller amounts of food because of the size of the stomach, leaving undigested grains to pass through at a rapid pace thus resulting many times in a twisted gut, (colic)

Many people wonder if a small amount of grain is healthier. In my humble opinion the answer is NO. If horses are unable to break down and chew properly creating the saliva needed to assist in digestion, why feed it at all?

There is also very little natural nutrients found in grains. Horses need live natural food to eat. Natural live food, such as grasses, fruits, veggies, herbs are the key to health and longevity. Horses bodies have derived over millions of years to consume raw, live vegetation and foliage. When we look at other wild animals, who are free to eat the types of foods nature has intended, we do not see any significant incidence of diseases that are found in our domesticated horses. A good example of this being Zebras which are also Equines. They do not suffer from IR, Cushings, Lamenitis, Founder, EPM, West niles virus, Strangles, Wobblers, or require shoes or teeth floating.

Interestingly enough every piece of raw live food contains exactly the perfect amount of digestive enzymes to break down completely once it enters the body. They are called food enzymes. Nature in it’s never-ending perfection sees that all food whether fruit, vegetable, foliage, or grasses contain nutrients the body needs to digest and maintain a healthy existence. In nature, all mammals live eight to ten times their maturation age. Domesticated animals that eat processed unnatural food and chemically reproduced supplements live 4 times their maturation age.

When horses eat live food, as nature has intended, their entire bio-terrain operates in optimum health. All of the cells, organs, and systems are able to do the jobs they are capable of in perfect balance. A healthy bio-terrain requires proper enzyme capacity, acid-base balance and a healthy digestive tract. This can be achieved through a living food diet. Horses metabolic system will be able to manage all health challenges quite effectively. This is why we rarely see disease in mammals living in nature. It is what we feed the body that will prevent the body from doing what it is capable of.

Processed artificial feeding programs will destroy the bio-terrain. Living foods and natural grazing intake amounts will support a healthy bio-terrain.

A live food diet leads to a longer, more energetic life. The burden of digesting unnatural food drains the energy of the body. This does not happen with natural living foods and small amounts of hay or grasses to graze upon throughout the day, allowing extra energy to focus on cleansing and rebuilding and maintaining health beyond what is familiar in our horses today.

Nature has already perfected what man thinks he can improve on.