04/13/2026
Quick anatomy lesson that could change how you feed your horse:
Horses don't have a gallbladder.
In species that do ā humans, dogs, cats ā the gallbladder stores bile and releases it in concentrated bursts to emulsify dietary fat. Big meal with a lot of fat? Big release of bile.
Horses secrete bile continuously from the liver in small, steady amounts. There's no storage. No burst capacity. Just a slow, constant trickle.
So when we dump a cup of oil on a horse's feed, we're asking a system designed for slow, steady fat processing to handle a concentrated amount it was never built for.
The horse's evolutionary fat source? Seeds and the lipids naturally present in forages. Small amounts, consumed gradually over hours of grazing.
This is why I recommend whole food fat sources ā h**p hearts, chia seeds, stabilized ground flax ā over isolated oils. You're working with the biology instead of against it.
The horse already told us how it wants to eat. We just have to listen.
