I’ve listened to some podcasts and read some articles where they say “no oats…feed processed feeds” and of course, they are by PhD equine nutritionists but they work for feed companies (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but still…).
I’ve read “oats are really bad for horses with ulcers due to hindgut acidosis” and “oats are really good for horses with ulcers because they are digested so quickly and only the hulls are getting through, so they don’t cause hindgut acidosis”. Then I read that the ingredient in oats that is useful for healing/preventing hindgut ulcers is beta-glucan which is most readily in the unprocessed oat or special “oat flour” that has been processed specifically for retention of the beta-glucan. I also read hypothesis that feeding whole oats might be particularly useful for cribbing/ulcery horses due to the long nature of the chewing which produces more saliva for buffering gastric contents.
I’ve seen a number of resources saying they are heating, and a number of resources saying they are actually not, and their horses became more stable on oats.
I’ve seen “oats balance well with alfalfa” but when I put oats and alfalfa in FeedXL, the alfalfa lowers the phosphorus so much and the only way I can get it up is to add massive amounts of oats.
If I put oats in FeedXL with a vitamin, like we used to do, and grass hay things balance out perfectly.
So - why am I asking? I like feeding my horses whole foods, not because I’m a woo woo sort of person, but rather, I like knowing what goes into their feed, and I don’t like not knowing anything beyond the nutrients on the feed tag. That bothers me, as specific fats or other grains (like corn) that I perhaps don’t want added could be added for a particular horse without my knowledge (particularly in fixed-nutrition formulas like Purina).
Whole oats here are $18/bag. My vitamin supplements run me less than $1/day. Even my hardest keeper could be fed on oats w/vitamins for $3/day whereas on Purina strategy he costs more than $5/day in feed alone, not to count hay costs (which are the same regardless of feed).
So it seems rational that if oats are not the devil, oats are ideal from both a cost perspective and a “I like to tweak things” perspective, at least for me at this juncture. But - because the articles are so confusing, I feel like I need some actual perspective from some of our knowledgeable folks about nutrition here.
I recently went on this journey for the same reasons, and ultimately gave up trying to figure out oats. No advice, but will follow intently to see what others say.
I recently switched from commercial feed to alfalfa pellets, hull free oats and a vit/mineral supplement (I use Vermont Blend Pro.)
No complaints. A few weird, persistent things in my horses have cleared up. They eat it great. The total NSC is about the same to less than what I was feeding before.
I am not saving any $$, because the Vermont Blend Pro and the hull free oats aren’t inexpensive. But I do think my horses are healthier.
Here’s my take on it after self educating on basic horse nutrition.
It depends.
Most horses do not need a grain but they do benefit from getting a broad spectrum vitamin and mineral source. That could be feeding 5 lbs of a fortified feed (typically a processed feed), or I lb of a ration balancer, or an ounce of vitamin/mineral supplement in a beet pulp/ hay cube mash. This last has been my choice for availability and cost and lower calories in my particular market in Canada.
We tend to use the words grain and feed interchangeably but I am here using grain to refer to a feed that is actual grains such as oats, barley or corn, not an extruded pellet with things like beet pulp and soy hull.
Grains offer concentrated carbohydrates and calories. They do not offer much of the useful v/m. They are useful for horses with high workloads or high metabolisms, such as young TB racehorses.
Grains are actively dangerous for horses with metabolic disorders or a tendency to become obese.
A good comparison is that top human athletes, especially in endurance sports, can pack away big carb meals and even drink pure glucose from a straw while racing bicycles. But the average sedentary middle aged person would get fat doing that and a diabetic would die.
Oat flour is indeed an ingredient in one of the treatments for hind gut ulcers. But oats as a feed can also have negative effects on digestion. If you feed too much oats at one feeding, the horse cannot extract all the carb/sugars from the oats in the small intestine. That means some sugars enter the large intestine and disrupt the gut flora, because the large intestine is built to ferment fiber. This can cause diarrhea or a laminitis attack. This can happen with any feed that is too high in Non Structural Carbohydrates for that particular horse (some horses cannot even tolerate spring grass, and need to live on extremely low sugar hay, while other horses thrive on grass).
That said, out of all the true grain options, oats is said to be the lowest in NSC, and the best traditional grain for hardworking horses. Corn and barley are palatable but not best choices.
As far as being natural. It’s true horses will eat the seed heads of grass and wild grains, though typically they chomp them off in boot stage (flower stage). Typically horses don’t have much access to grass that’s headed out, dried down, but hasn’t yet lost its seeds. That’s a very narrow time window for any given grass or grain species. And if you think about it, scrounging even a pound of actual grain/grass seed a day is unlikely.
So if your horses need the calories because they are not keeping weight on, oats is one resource along with alfalfa or better quality hay and/or vegetable oil or a cool cal alfalfa meal/soy oil pellet.
If your horses do not need the extra calories then you can feed a VMS in a beet pulp mash. Beet pulp is not found in nature but it’s a very useful feed that is only slightly higher calorie than hay and which ferments like a forage in the hindgut.
Thanks scribbler - that’s kind of where I was, but there are some inconveniences with beet pulp (such as a need to soak) which I don’t mind when I’m the one at home feeding, but can cause issues when I travel and need someone else to fill in for me.
My horses love to filter out supplements, and a quick shot of water to a cup or less of oats (for the easier keepers) sticks those supplements and reduces choke potential way better than hoping that the feeder uses adequate amounts and timeframes for soaking BP or Alf pellets (both of which I love). Negligible starches, super cheap to feed, and I don’t have to worry about not feeding enough to get the nutrition (my vitamin is a 1 oz scoop of powder with some additional powder like vit E on top).
For my harder keeper the debate is relevant because he is my cribbing horse. Horse was treated for ulcers and it didn’t do squat for his cribbing, but I still worry. Hay quality is the best that I can get, but that’s variable on year. Supplemental alfalfa is given but that just isn’t enough. So oats would be nice to boost the extra calories that he seems to need to maintain condition.
I don’t think a couple cups of oats, under a pound, is going to matter to most horses one way or the other. I do like how a small amount of beet pulp expands like crazy into a huge meal and effectively dilutes the flavor of the supplements, but actually my horses seem to like the Chewable Vitamin flavor of my MadBarn Omniety premix and will lick it off the floor if it spills
I am not a fan of processed feeds in any higher quantity that “snack”. They are mostly agricultural byproducts, much of the “nutrition” comes from inorganic additives, the ingredients change frequently and are not guaranteed and due to the way they are classified and handled they can have high levels of residual drying agents left on them when you feed. I stick to legumes, oil, vit/min supplement and if needed oats or chopped feeds. I know people who’ve been doing this for decades longer than me and their horses stay very sound well into the 20s and often 30s and are typically in good weight and rarely have hormonal or insulin problems. Or lose all their teeth as they age.
I am lucky enough to currently board at a place that manages their pastures for horses: meaning they do not fertilize them into neon-green dairy cow rocket fuel grass, they have a healthy mix of grass species with beneficial forbs and that they rotate and do minimal to zero mowing and not when the horses are on the grass.
When I kept my horses on my own land I got tired of paying grain prices for the 10% of the mixed feed that was molasses.
I switched to local oats (I live in the South, not the country for growing good oats) then my local feed dealer told me he could get Western oats. FINALLY I got to feed oats to my horses that resembled the feed book descriptions of GOOD oats, plump, shiny hulls, little dust, and my horses dove in with great gusto eating every single oat.
I bought books on horse feeding and made up my horses’ rations, mixing the Western oats (the majority of the ration) with alfalfa pellets for a little bit more protein, and corn or cracked corn added for the cold times of winter. I used fescue hay because that was what was mostly available down here in NC, and trace mineral salt. My horses did fine.
Good oats and hay as the basis and it is good to have some grazing too.
My horses were in good flesh, they were alert and ready to go when I rode them, I could ride them for hours when I had the time, their coats were shiny, and my horses looked forward to their meals a lot more than they did when I fed them the sweet feed. I did not feed any ration balancers or vitamins, or any other supplements except for trace mineral salt.
If I ever have another horse on my land I will probably start with good, clean Western oats, then work out their ration from there.
In defense of byproducts, the typical ingredients like soy hulls or meal, beet pulp, brewers middlings, alfalfa meal, etc have higher fiber, lower NSC, and in some cases higher proteins than any true grains. However some horses are reactive to soy.
I would be more worried about a feed with a lot of corn, and I would always look at the NSC. I’ve seen some scary high NSC in “maintenance feeds.” I clicker train with one such local extruded feed because the size is good for handfeeding and it’s crunchy and palatable but I’d never feed it as a basic ration.
In any feed or grain product, you are only going to get the complete v/m profile through the addition of ingredients. Either I feed my Omniety in a beet pulp mash or I buy a processed feed that has the equivalent copper, zinc, vitamin E magnesium etc baked in. Same/same.
Around here I have indeed seen beautiful green monocrop fields for dairy hay, but they are typically unfenced and nothing, cows or horses, gets turned out to pasture there. Our local horse pastures tend to be abandoned mixed grass farmland, where you can walk about picking flowerheads to ID and find Timothy, Orchard grass, Brome, Redtop, bluegrass and then invasive Reed Canary Grass in wet hollows. And lots of red and white clover. And always Himalayan blackberries along a fence line.
Btw as a teen I fed my little horse a gallon of sweet feed every day and galloped everywhere hours a day or up mountains and she was super sound. As an adult I don’t have the saddle time and both maresy and I are on low sugar diets.
I’m a nothing wrong with oats if fed in moderation person. I started using them instead of processed feed due to a horse with allergies - I know it’s oats, with pellets you don’t always know. Most of mine just get a cup for flavouring in their beet pulp, flax and loose mineral, if I need to put weight on I tend to go to high test hay first than increase the oats if needed. I do find even picky horses love them and it is nice to buy a “local” product that hasn’t been shipped all over the continent.
I don’t know if there is a bad or ugly side to feeding oats?
I’ve known many knowledgeable horse owners/ some trainers who have fed oats exclusively for many years with no issues. I worked at a dressage barn( horses boarded too) where all the horses were fed oats & / or safechoice.
Horses looked and preformed great. Give it a trial and find out.
I’m old. Back in the day, when I was young, I only fed oats and hay and my horses looked so much better on that than the commercial stuff I fed later. Sleek, dappled, never any gastro issues. If I could go back, I’d stick with oats. I couldn’t feed oats now because “minis” lol. They be portly on hay.
I had a 12.2 hand POA, he just got a small fistful (of my small hand) of oats in the heat. In the winter he got maybe 3 small fistfuls of oats.
My super food efficient Paso Fino mare (14 hands) she got a full fistful of oats in the summer. In the winter she did get a little bit more than the POA.
This was mostly so I had something to put the trace mineral salt on.
We fed oats and hay (mixed alfalfa and grass, since that’s what grew in our fields) in winter, oats and pasture in summer. My horses always looked great. I got a fancy vitamin mix later and felt so sophisticated for adding it to my oats - I was a teen who spent my pennies on a vitamin from Pennwoods.
I’d add some cracked corn for weight on the ones that needed it - had a grinder at home to shell it off the cob, and that field corn came out of our fields as well. And oil for the old or infirmed.
But times do change, and research evolves so I want to be sure I’m serving my boys well, and not just being old and crotchety (no matter how old and crotchety I feel!).
I feed enough hay that most of mine are fine without grain - right now it’s just the one that I have that is difficult, and he gets 6 lbs of strategy per day split over 2 feedings, so I’m imagining to get the same effect I might need a touch more oats but not by much. He has great teeth, he is just a harder keeper.
For many years, I fed a mix of oats, alfalfa pellets and rice bran with a vitamin and mineral mix to my horse who was sensitive to soy. He was a relatively easy keeper and did great on it. My current boy needs “more” to keep in condition and looking good without turning into a nitwit, so we’ve gone back to feeding Strategy, with some added rice bran, and he looks and feels great on that. I’d like to feed him something like Ultium, but he gets hives from flax, and that’s in more or less everything except Strategy nowadays.
So yes, horses for courses (or courses for horses!)
Both of the barns I boarded at growing up and in my young adulthood fed oats. The first barn fed oats (out of the towering silo) in the spring/summer and sweet feed (yikes) in the fall/winter. The second barn had a crimper and bought whole oats in bulk, crimped them, bagged them, and sold them…and fed them to the horses. In fact, that standard feed for halter horses (stock type, AQHA, etc) was always oats and alfalfa. They stayed chonky and shiny on that diet. My horses at the boarding barns did fine as long as there was alfalfa with the oats. Once the second barn changed to coastal hay with straight crimped oats, that wasn’t enough and I had to start adding supplements to bring the bloom back.
As I’ve grown up and as equine nutrition has progressed, I’ve left oats behind and with my current horse I leave anything containing oats behind because he becomes a different animal when he eats feed containing oats (learned this the first time that I told the feed store to just give me a bag of TC Complete since they were out of TC Sr. Ha! I liked that my pokey doofus had some energy all of a sudden, but when he started spooking at grass, I decided maybe he wasn’t an oats kinda horse. Years later he was boarded with someone who changed his feed without asking me…from a ration balancer to a high-octane, packed with oats, textured feed. Good lord! He went bananas, developed ulcers/diarrhea, and it took a lot of work to straighten him back out again.
I’m not saying oats were the only culprit, but they were definitely a big factor.
There’s a reason they feed them to racehorses. And if I was eventing or foxhunting or doing endurance or anything that required a lot of energy from my horse…sure. I might try oats again. Because I think that’s their main benefit…providing energy.
But for calories, I prefer forage and fat since they don’t tend to give my horse more energy than he knows what to do with, lol.
I feed whole, triple-cleaned “race horse” oats with Life Data’s ration balancer designed to be fed with oats and forage. I fed a similar diet 20 years ago, then fed processed safe choice grain for years, then returned to oats a few years ago. The horses look great! One in particular has never looked or behaved better; I had suspected that one or more ingredients, perhaps soy, in the safe choice grain he was on did not suit him, and the evidence appears to bear that out.
I also have no problem with oats in moderation and with other things to balance the diet. I think that a small amount of oats is tolerated and digested well. I have not bothered with mixing my own feeds with whole or crimped oats, but I have fed some commercial feeds containing oats in varying amounts for horses with certain energy needs.
When you buy a bag of whole oats you do not know what is in the bag. Different varieties from different soils in different climates with different fertilizing and weed control produce different fiber protein and mineral content. My biggest hesitation with feeding whole oats is that their nutritional value is affected by the horse that is consuming them. Both dental issues and bolting feed will leave you with whole oats in manure which the birds love to pick out. Truthfully, despite us humans’ addiction to numbers, most horses can live on many diets. I knew a guy who worked at a commercial bakery and his horses ate past sell by bread and poor pasture grass. They weren’t high level performance horses but they looked fine. And they loved their bread! When you have high performance horses that get picky about their feed, oats are a good choice because of their high palatability. I fed rolled oats to one horse back in the with steeplechase event days because that was all he would deign to eat when he was fit. Nutrition numbers don’t mean much when the horse won’t consume the feed. If you want to give your horses a few extra calories and a little treat, oats are fine. You have been wise to consider the source when reading articles, and I am a great believer that knowledge is power, but don’t over think it.
