Kerry’s Holistic Hoofcare

Kerry’s Holistic Hoofcare I am offering a service for non-invasive Barefoot Trimming and Rehabilitation of all equines. A few years ago I decided to start a new journey.

That journey has taken me from my love and passion of horses to working with them and to help others care for their equine family. My aim is to keep my horses as close to their natural habitat and environment as possible by treating them holistically, including trim cycles, diet, movement, weight management etc.. I completed my training as an Equine Hoof-Care Practitioner with ACEHP in Tasmania, I

also do ongoing training and study with various courses, clinics and workshops. I do hoof trimming and rehabilitation for all horses, ponies and donkeys.

03/04/2026

🔺 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗘𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗴𝘆 𝗣𝘆𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗱

🥣 Everything we feed our horses provides energy which = calories in one way or another. What is oftentimes overlooked is the fact that there are different types of energy that horses can utilise — three to be exact:

1️⃣ Carbohydrates (Structural and Non-Structual)
2️⃣ Fat
3️⃣ Protein

⚖️ In short, not all calories are created equal… and more importantly, not all calories are used equally by the horse. If we really want to feed for condition, performance, and health — we need to think in terms of an energy hierarchy. And with that, I bring to you…

🔺 The Equine Energy Pyramid

🟩 FOUNDATION: Fibre (Structural Carbohydrates)

This is where the majority of your horse’s energy should come from — and where weight gain should start.

Fibre is fermented in the hindgut, producing volatile fatty acids (VFAs) — the horse’s primary and most natural energy source.

Fibrous feeds support gut health (critical for nutrient absorption), provide “slow-release” energy, and increase calorie intake in a way that is safe and species-appropriate.

My favourite fibre-rich feeds include hay (chaff, hay cubes for the dentally-challenged), grass/pasture, lupin hulls, soy hulls, and beet pulp.

💡 Key takeaway:
If a horse isn’t gaining weight, the first question should always be:
“Are they eating enough fibre?”

🟨 MIDDLE: Non-Structural Carbohydrates + Fat

While sugar and starch (non-structural carbohydrates) fall under the same “carbohydrate” banner as fibre does, this particular energy chain provides fast-release energy that can be useful for performance horses or high level athletes. Most importantly, non-structural carbohydrates are less forgiving on gastrointestinal health if overfed, so should be reserved for those whose workloads truly warrant them.

Contrary to a lot of marketing baloney, oats are the safest high non-structural carbohydrate feed to offer (when needed) as the starch is highly digestible in its natural state. Other cereal grains such as corn, barley, and wheat must be heat-treated (boiled, extruded, micronised) prior to feeding in order to alter the structure of the starch and improve digestibility.

Fat is a highly energy-dense form of calories and on a per gram basis, is higher in calories than carbohydrates are. Like fibre, fats are a source of “cool” energy and are less likely to onset hindgut upset when fed sensibly.

Fat can be a great tool for increasing calorie intake without adding too much bulk to a meal. Some of my favourite fat sources include oil (oh hey, PractiFLAX 👋🏼), oilseeds, and copra meal.

💡 Key takeaway:
Once fibre intake is optimised, fat is your next safest and most effective tool for adding calories. Non-structural carbohydrates should only be considered for performance horses or those with an intensive exercise load.

🟥 TOP: Protein

Yes — protein can be used for energy…But it’s the least efficient and most wasteful way to do it. Before protein can be used for fuel, it must be broken down into amino acids and converted into usable energy which actually costs the horse energy to achieve. Additionally, horses cannot store excess protein as fat/energy so anything not utilised is quite literally peed out on the floor.

High protein feeds should be relied upon to “finish” a diet and provide amino acids that support muscle development, tissue repair, and enzyme production rather than being the first resort for weight gain.

My favourite, quality protein sources to supplement an otherwise high fibre, moderate fat diet include lucerne, lupins, and soybean meal.

💡 Key takeaway:
Feeding extra protein to add weight is like using premium building materials as firewood — expensive and inefficient.

👇🏼 When trying to improve condition or increase energy intake:

1️⃣ Fix the foundation first
→ Increase forage intake (quality and quantity)

2️⃣ Then increase calorie density
→ Add fat (e.g. flaxseed oil, copra meal)
→ Carefully use starch if needed

3️⃣ Only adjust protein if required
→ More does not mean better and is not stored for later
→ Actually costs the horse energy to convert if it doesn’t have adequate calories coming from other, easier to digest energy sources

🖐🏼 Five final fun-facts:

1️⃣ Most feed ingredients will have a fibre, sugar, starch, fat, and protein content — you need to understand why they are in the diet to begin with.

2️⃣ Lucerne can be high in both fibre and protein — the protein component is why it shouldn’t make up the majority of a horse’s forage intake.

3️⃣ Copra meal is not considered a source of quality protein because it is low in some essential amino acids. It is moderate in protein at best and better-utilised for its fat properties.

4️⃣ Beet pulp provides roughly the same amount of calories per kilogram as oats do, but in the form of fibre (structural carbohydrates) rather than sugar and starch (non-structural carbohydrates).

5️⃣ You can’t out-supplement a horse that isn’t eating enough fibre.

02/03/2026

🌾 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐓𝐨 𝐃𝐨 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐇𝐚𝐲 𝐈𝐬 𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐓𝐨 𝐒𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞

❗️I have now received several messages and phone calls from clients and followers who are simply stuck on what to do regarding either a) hay becoming harder and harder to source or b) hay becoming extremely expensive to purchase due to the rise in production costs, so I've put together some truths and tips which will hopefully help someone.

🐴 I'd like to preface this by saying that I am a huge advocate for hay being a superior and stand-alone roughage source for horses. It provides so many benefits; from supporting psychological health and calming behaviours, to increasing saliva production via mastication, to minimising the risk of gastric ulcers, sand burdens, and colic - If pasture isn't available or sufficient, hay is undeniably the best forage replacement you can offer your horse.

🌱 So with that out of the way, what should we as owners of horses be doing if they do not have access to sufficient pasture and we cannot source enough hay to offer them as an alternative?

• Look for alternative hay types that may be available. If you cannot source your usual grass hay, it is okay to consider cereal hays like oaten *if* your horse does not have any diagnosed health concerns such as a predisposition to ulcers or hindgut acidosis, laminitis, insulin dysregulation etc. While I am not the biggest fan of cereal hay crops for a lot of horses due to their often high non-structural carbohydrate content, the bottom line is that any hay is better than none at all if there is nothing else to graze on.

• If you can only obtain small quantities of hay, do not put it all out at once and expect your horse to know how to ration it out. It may take up more of your time, but putting out portioned piles or nets of hay so you can manage how much your horse eats is a highly effective way of making it last longer. Implementing slow-feeder style hay nets or grazing pods is another very useful way of managing how quickly a horse can polish off their hay.

• Know how much roughage your horse actually needs per day, weigh your hay, and only feed them what you have to. Easy-keeping horses in particular don't need ad libitum access to hay, so don't feel obliged to keep them eating constantly if you're really struggling to source hay. Horses need 1.5-2% of their body weight in roughage per day, but they will happily eat 3%+ if allowed to do so. If hay is scarce, I would recommend aiming for 1.5-2% of the horse's body weight in hay (7.5-10kg for a 500kg horse), slow-fed over a 24 hour period.

• Horses shouldn't go longer than around 3-5 hours (maximum) without ingesting food, so use this guideline to time how often you should be feeding out hay if you cannot afford to leave it out ad libitum. The risk of gastric ulcers and colic is significantly increased if horses are deprived of food for prolonged periods of time, so please make sure they aren't spending more than a few hours on an empty stomach at any given time, including overnight.

• If clean straw is available, consider replacing up to 50% of your horse’s forage intake with some straw which will offer relief to your hay stores without compromising on gastrointestinal function. Keep in mind that straw is typically higher in indigestible fibre and lower in nutritive value than hay, so it is important to keep an eye on your horse’s fluid balance (hydration), manure consistency, and body condition score as impactions, dehydration, and weight loss are common symptoms of too much indigestible fibre relevant to digestible fibre in the intake.

• Where hay is just simply not available to purchase, you can start looking at some fibre sources that are somewhat "hay replacements." Feeds like chaff, hay cubes, beet pulp, lupin hulls, and soy hulls are suitable hay alternatives if that is what it comes to. It's important to remember that horses are trickle-feeders, and this means that they are physiologically designed to be intaking roughage at a rather slow rate. The stomach capacity of a horse is quite small and makes up only around 10% of the whole digestive system, so feeding 5kg of chaff in the morning and 5kg of chaff in the evening is not an effective way of managing your horse's roughage requirements. Again, it may take up more of your time, but providing a horse with 3-5 bucket meals that contain lots of fibre per day may just help reduce how much hay you need to feed out in a 24-hour period.

🐎 Feeling overwhelmed? Here are the important bits:

1. 1.5-2% of body weight in roughage per day.

2. No longer than 3-5 hours without food.

3. Small and regular meals rather than large and infrequent ones.

4. Substituting up to 50% of your horse’s forage intake with straw may relieve the pressure of hay restraints without compromising on gastrointestinal function.

5. Don't be hard on yourself if you need to implement different hay types or hay replacements to get you and your horses through.

6. ANY food is better than NO food (for most horses).

Please feel welcome to share. ❤️🌾🐴

18/01/2026

Here's a little (read: long and angry) post about what I like to call the spring time shuffle.

Around this time of year, every year, two things happen.

1. We get complaints from a handful of (generally predictable) people whose horses have been trimmed just fine for the last several months suddenly saying their horse was "trimmed too short" this last visit.

And 2. We get a massive influx of enquiries from new clients who are looking for a new farrier because their last farrier "trimmed them too short".

Now, I can understand this logic if you're either new to horses, or this happens on the first visit with a new farrier without warning. However, all the rest of you, need your annual reality check. (I honestly think y'all also need a reality check on realistic "soundness" expectations but I'll save that for another grumpy day).

It is the annual shuffling of clients between all the local farriers' books, because the clients don't want to face the real reason why their horse is shuffling around the paddock.

No farrier wakes up EVERY NOVEMBER and just randomly starts trimming horses shorter than they did the WHOLE REST OF THE YEAR. Generally we have spent the entire preceding year telling you the one same message while you shout "LALALA" back at us with your fingers in your ears.

YOUR HORSE IS TOO FAT!

Post-trimming sensitivity is one of the most obvious warning signs that you will get for subclinical laminitis. When this warning is left unchecked, guess what follows? ACTUAL Laminitis.

We have become so disconnected as a society as to what healthy and appropriate body weight REALLY is. My masters degree research found that most horse owners could accurately identify their horses body condition score on a on a scare of 0-5 where 5 is obese. Some would even jokingly ask me if they could write 6. However when asked about the appropriateness of their horses body weight most of these high scorers felt their horses body weight was just fine.

I see the same thing day in day out as a hoof care practitioner. And the reactions from owners range from flat out denial ("Cobs are meant to look like this, they have big bones" ... Bones don't jiggle Karen!) to just outright offence as though I've personally insulted them or "their horse" or that I am an unkind person for "fat shaming". Your horses feelings aren't hurt. You just don't want to face the truth because it makes you uncomfortable.

It is very sad for our horses that being able to see their ribs from a certain angle has now become more offensive to people than seeing the myriad of health and wellbeing issues humans are creating by letting their horses suffer through chronic obesity and a constant state of low grade laminitis. We need to look back to what nature intended for animals (and ourselves). We have an abundance of carb-rich food in spring following the clear lack of food during winter. Wild / Feral horses would typically lose a lot of body condition during winters. They have minimal grass access and often rely on on fibrous and low-carb mosses, roots, leaves, bark, and their body fat reserves. When animals are consuming less carbohydrates they become more insulin sensitive. When you're insulin sensitive you don't need as much insulin in your system to regulate blood sugar. Then spring comes along and body weight is rapidly packed back on with rich grasses. And with constant and excessive consumption of carbs comes insulin resistance. Which means more and more and more insulin has to get produced to keep blood sugar under control.

In our domestic horses we're so afraid to let our horses slim down in the winter, and keep them in a chronic state of obesity and insulin resistance year round. Because we hard feed them all winter to maintain their "condition" spring hits and they never became insulin sensitive enough to deal with it.

We can also see this insulin resistance in some athletic horses who are fed high carbohydrate diets also - its the horse equivalent of the "skinny-fat" human. The human peak marathon runner who carb loads and gets diabetes and heart disease. Sadly, many of the horses we see with these problems are on "feeding plans" owners have developed themselves using a generic website (often funded by specific feed companies), from vets, or equine nutritionists (who often work for feed companies). You can see the owners well-meaning intent and that's why this breaks my heart. The nutritionists who I respect and recommend are the ones who are the first to tell you that you do not add to your horses diet unless they aren't meeting their metabolic requirements from grass and plain hay first. If I have one more client with a fat, laminitic horse tell me their horse isn't fat and that they paid someone for their feeding plan of processed feeds, I will lose my s**t. I am SO passionate about your horses health, that this makes me angry!

(And don't get me started on the inflammatory responses from most of these refined oils that get added cause for some reason people think shiny = healthy).

And most people (including many professionals) are either ignorant of, or overlook, the roll of insulin on hoof sensitivity. Yet the fact that high levels of insulin lead to inflammation is widely know and accepted. And what IS laminitis? INFLAMMATION OF THE LAMINAE.

Your farrier has nothing to financially gain by telling you stop feeding your dadgum horse! Yet we get ignored to the point we often stop commenting to people. And then people say "Why didn't you warn me!?"

Then we hit the tail end of spring, and bingo, another year, another bunch of shuffling underworked and over fed horses, and another year of farriers suddenly shuffling a bunch of desperate "my-last-farrier-trimmed-my-horse-too-short-I-need-your-help" new clients in and a bunch of grumpy "you-caused-this-problem" ones out.

It is no coincidence that all the species of animals that man controls the diet of are the ones that regularly suffer from metabolic malfunctions. We are so smart that we are incredibly fu***ng dumb sometimes.

I also have a LOT of clients who will ask at each trim if I see any signs of laminitis in the feet. The thing is I can tell you there are low grade warning signs all year but nothing *new* today, and your horse could still go lame tomorrow. The biggest warning signs I constantly see are your horses weight, your feed bucket, and how dry your saddle blanket always is if you bother to exercise your horse at all. But you don't listen to this. You only seem to listen (for a week or three) if I can physically point out blood in the white line.

So, here's my rant for the day. We are getting generally s**tty with overwork by the end of the year and in need of a christmas holiday, and we are disillusioned with all these "unexpected" lamenesses in valley full of improved dairy pasture in the middle of unprecedented spring growth.

It needed to come out.

Someone has to say it.

I don't give a s**t if I've hurt your feelings, because I want to save your horses life.

Xrays of Beaus front feet.
17/10/2025

Xrays of Beaus front feet.

Been a while since I've posted any of my own work. Here are progress xrays of a 21 year old metabolic pony. Beau had a l...
17/10/2025

Been a while since I've posted any of my own work. Here are progress xrays of a 21 year old metabolic pony. Beau had a laminitic episode in January this year ( previous episode was 18 months prior) xrays were taken and we started 2 weekly trims for the first 8 weeks then back to 4 weekly trims. We've had good steady progress by lowering heels and bringing the toes in. Xrays were redone in August.
Top pics are January xrays, bottom pics are August xrays, these pics are the hinds and were the worst affected. As you can see there was little sole depth under where P3 was rotated but we have built quite a good depth, we have a better connection with P3 and laminae growing down and also bone column alignment.
We still have a little way to go but its very promising and Beau is more comfortable.
Its always a challenging with metabolic ponies and horses but with careful management it is possible for a full recovery.

06/09/2025

Explore the concept of self-trimming hoof care inspired by the movement of wild horses in diverse terrains.

Great explanation
30/08/2025

Great explanation

26/08/2025

🌱 𝗔 𝗟𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲 𝗦𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗜𝗻 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽

🐴 Spring is quite literally just around the corner, and with the change of season often comes a change in pasture growth and the nutrient requirements of horses.

🌾 If you have a harder keeper, you’ll probably welcome the warmer temperatures and increased forage quality with open arms as it will likely take some pressure off of the supplementary feeds of hay and concentrates you’re having to provide.

🍬 If you have an easy keeper (I am looking at all of the ponies who resemble marshmallows right now), spring can be one of the most challenging times of year because the increased calories, sugar, and starch in pasture often mean a widened waistline and unfortunately an increased predisposition to metabolic issues and laminitis.

⚖️ An overweight horse is not what you want at the end of winter, as they are likely to gain even more weight if their pasture intake and diet is not managed carefully. Horses are metabolically programmed to drop off in condition during colder months, and increase in condition when the weather warms and pasture nutritive values improve. This is what helps them to regulate their body condition and metabolism over an annual period. Domestication has seen humans over-feed and under-work equines and subsequently increase the occurrence of obesity, metabolic issues, and laminitis as a result.

🗓️ So, with spring not too far away, what measures can you put in place to prevent health issues in our equine friends?

✅ Remember that as pasture availability increases, so does your horse’s digestible energy (calorie), protein, sugar, and starch intake. You may find your horse needs less supplementary feeds to ensure their energy intake isn’t exceeding their energy output.

✅ The vitamins, minerals, and essential amino acids provided by your horse’s forage intake will likely change which may mean you need to make adjustments to any other vitamin, mineral, and amino acid sources in the diet to ensure that toxicities, deficiencies, or imbalances don’t occur. Some of my clients prefer to engage in Review Consultations for their horses based on seasonal changes.

✅ Mycotoxins are likely to have a party when pasture begins actively growing and increasing in sugar. The symptoms of Mycotoxicosis can include reactive behaviour, photosensitivity, greasy heel, mud fever, rain scald, respiratory distress, and poor skin and coat quality among other issues. A toxin binder can make all of the difference in the diet of a horse grazing pasture or hay that has been infected by Mycotoxins.

✅ Actively growing pasture = increased sugar levels. Spring is well-known for producing hot, excitable, crazy, reactive behaviours in horses but there is always a reason why. It is also worth noting that short, stressed, or overgrazed pasture is likely to be higher in sugar than longer, mature pasture is. Please don’t put obese horses and ponies in an overgrazed paddock and assume spring won’t negatively impact them.

✅ Restricted grazing times, track systems, grazing muzzles, and substitutional feeds of lower quality/calorie hay and straw are often necessary for obese or metabolically-challenged horses and ponies. Pasture sugar levels are generally lowest between 3am-10am, although if there has been a frost, the grass will have stored sugar which makes it unsafe for horses who require careful management.

✅ Regularly check your horse’s digital pulse! Heat and a digital pulse in the hooves and lower limbs can be an early warning sign of a pending laminitic episode.

✅ If you are unsure of what you should be feeding your horse, employ the services of someone who is qualified to assist you. The cost of an Equine Nutrition Consultation often pays itself off very quickly and the added bonus is you know you won’t be feeding anything unnecessary, unhealthy, or counter-productive.

🫶🏼 Please share!

16/08/2025

🐴 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗨𝗹𝗰𝗲𝗿 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗠𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘆 𝗖𝗮𝗻 𝗕𝘂𝘆

💸 We as human beings definitely love to overcomplicate the way we feed and manage our horses. While yes, there are certainly instances where some horses do require ulcer preventatives, there are several management tools we can implement that are much cheaper than most medications, treatments, or supplements and yet are continuously overlooked when we suspect our horses may have ulcers.

🌾 𝐀𝐝𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐑𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐚𝐠𝐞 is management tool #1 and is arguably the most important fixture in any horse’s diet regardless of their susceptibility to developing ulcers.

👉🏼 The equine species is physiologically designed to be ingesting and digesting roughage on an almost continuous basis.

👉🏼 Horses only produce saliva (a natural gastric acid buffer) while physically masticating (chewing) their food but will continuously produce gastric acid regardless of whether there is food entering and exiting their stomach.

👉🏼 Long-stemmed roughage acts as a fibrous mat that sits in the bottom portion of the stomach and helps to prevent acid splash from damaging the non-glandular (upper portion) of the stomach.

👉🏼 A horse who is grazing on overgrazed, short, leafy grass shoots with no length or fibrous material may not be receiving enough roughage to prevent gastric ulcers if they are not supplemented with hay.

🐎 𝐇𝐚𝐲 𝐁𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐄𝐱𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐞 is management tool #2 and is one of the absolute best pre-ride ulcer preventions money can buy. It is much more effective than chaff, and lucerne hay is often more effective than grass hay.

👉🏼 In comparison to chaff, hay takes longer to masticate (chew) which results in increased saliva production which is full of bicarbonate (a natural gastric acid buffer).

👉🏼 There is some evidence that suggests the rough cut edges and short lengths of chaff paired with reduced chewing/grinding in the mouth may actually aggravate gastric ulcers if they are present. Hay tends to have more stalk and leaf, softer edges, and longer lengths which requires a little more time in the mouth to grind down prior to swallowing.

👉🏼 Lucerne is an excellent source of bioavailable calcium which acts as a natural buffer against gastric acid and may help to reduce the acidity of the stomach. While any hay type is better than none at all, this is why lucerne is often more effective from an ulcer prevention standpoint.

🌽 𝐍𝐨𝐧-𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐛𝐨𝐡𝐲𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐥 is management tool #3 and a factor that so many people are uncomfortable with because of how easy it is for feed manufacturers to skew, or not disclose at all, sugar and starch values and ingredient profiles.

👉🏼 Unless the horse in question is working intensely, it is unlikely that quick-release energy ingredients such as grain are necessary in the diet.

👉🏼 Where the horse is at risk of gastric ulcers, every attempt should be made to substitute cereal grains for alternative ingredients that have a lower non-structural carbohydrate content. Fun fact: beet pulp provides roughly the same digestible energy (calorie) content that oats do, but in the form of digestible/soluble fibre rather than sugar and starch.

👉🏼 Feeding an ulcer supplement (which are rarely effective anyway unless they have undergone clinical trials, are APVMA approved, and have proven efficacy of ingredients), in my opinion, is pointless and a waste of money if you are going to continue feeding grain-based premixed feeds that are low in fibre and require little chewing because they are pelletised or cubed.

✅ While not a strict list, some of my favourite feed ingredients for all horses, regardless of ulcer susceptibility, include hay (so underrated!), lucerne, lupins, lupin hulls, soy hulls, beet pulp, and copra meal.

02/08/2025

🐴 𝗟𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗰𝗿𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝗶𝗺𝘀 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗟𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘀

🌱 It is almost spring in Australia and therefore almost peak laminitis season. Despite all of the science and meticulously researched information we have available on how to best support an equine recovering from laminitis, there is still so much dangerous advice circulating and I’m a bit fed up about it.

🐴 Myth #1: White chaff and hay is what you should feed a laminitic horse.

🌱 Truth #1: White chaff and hay are derived from cereal crops which almost always have a high sugar and starch content. Please, for the love of god, do not feed a laminitic horse wheaten or oaten chaff/hay.

🐴 Myth #2: Bran is a safe feed for laminitic horses as it’s a good source of fibre.

🌱 Truth #2: Bran can be thrown in the same category as white chaffs and hays given it is derived from cereal grains. It is too high in sugar and starch to be considered safe, regardless of the fibre content. It is also high in phosphorus and requires careful balancing with regard to calcium in the diet.

🐴 Myth #3: When soaking hay, the colour of the water indicates how much sugar is being soaked out.

🌱 Truth #3: The dark colouration you see coming from hay that is soaked in water has nothing to do with the sugar content and instead is the tannins and dirt leaching from the hay. Don’t assume clear post-soaking water means that the hay is low in sugar.

🐴 Myth #4: Grain-free premixed feeds are suitable for laminitic horses.

🌱 Truth #4: In my experience, laminitic horses do better on whole food diets rather than premixed feeds. It’s not only the sugar and starch content that is important, but also the protein and fat content. A grain-free feed that is high in protein and fat is still potentially unsuitable.

🐴 Myth #5: Feeds that are labelled as “grain-free” or “laminitis safe” are exactly that.

🌱 Truth #5: I know of several feeds labelled “laminitis safe” that contain cereal by-products such as oaten or wheaten chaff/hay. There are also plenty of feeds that claim to be grain-free that contain by-products such as bran, pollard, or millrun. The manufacturer’s argument is that the feed is “whole” grain-free. There is no regulatory authority that governs how feeds are marketed.

🐎 Read your feed, guys. There are so many feeds that are marketed poorly or deceptively and simply do not support the recovery of our laminitic equines or the prevention of an episode. Stop taking nutritional advice from people who are not up to speed on the latest information regarding feeding the laminitic equine.

30/07/2025

Awesome information based on actual data from horse studies... What do you use to feed your horses hay?

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