Why Feeding Hay before Grain isn’t a Good Option for Horses

Many horse owners believe that it is important to always feed hay to horses before grain. This belief–although widespread—is inaccurate.

This belief came about because it was thought that feeding hay before grain would slow the horse’s rate of eating, keeping a horse from guzzle down its grain. Further, horse owners were under the impression that feeding hay before grain would overload the large intestine with starch.

Not only are these misconceptions false, they often cause problems for horses. Horses are bright animals and quickly realize that grain is followed by hay. This causes them to reject hay and end up quickly gobbling grain as soon as it is offered to them. The result is an increased risk of choke and colic.

Research also has proven that feeding hay to the horse before grain does nothing to slow the digestion of grain. In fact, hay consumed within about two hours of grain actually causes the opposite effect. Grain is flushed through the digestive tract at a higher rate. This has to do with the fact that horses are more likely to drink water with hay. Further, when hay is digested, a large shift in fluid takes place in the digestive tract of a horse. Therefore, this fluid shift, coupled with increased water intake, causes the digestive tract to flush grain through. It is important to note that this flushing takes place before, during or even shortly after feeding a horse grain.

When you feed a horse hay prior to grain, it causes no benefits over feeding the two at the same time, or even offering grain first. Grain being flushed through the digest tract means less starch is digested in the small intestine. Rather, it passes into the large intestine where problems can occur.

So what is a horse owner to do? Experts advise that in order to make sure enough starch is digested in the small intestine, a horse should not have hay for one hour before grain or two hours after.

Unfortunately, many horse owners do not have the time to feed hay and grain over a period of three hours or more. It is therefore important to take into consideration the starch content of your grain. If you are not feeding your horse more than about .5 percent of their body weight at each feeding, you needn’t worry about feeding hay and grain at the same.

If you are feeding larger amounts of grain, you might want to consider fiber-based or controlled-starch horse or livestock feed that contains no more than 20 percent starch. If your horse has a history of gas colic or founder, you may want to switch to an even lower starch feed. Otherwise you may be forced to take the extra time to feed the horse hay only after two hours has passed since grain was fed.