04/04/2026
After a divorced I had to sell my farm, and I got a job teaching and training horses at a Hunter barn. That was an experience. The owner had a big showing program for the students that included two big rigs to transport student horses to weekend shows. When the owner was away at shows, I fed on the weekends.
I was told to feed exactly at the correct time for every feeding. The first time I showed up for the morning feeding all the horses were banging and kicking in their stalls. I was about ten minutes late when I got out of my truck and heard the racket.
With my horses I never fed on a strict time schedule. That was mostly because for many years I lived alone on the farm with the horses and everything got done when I could get to it within reason. As a result, my feeding times varied as much as an hour.
My feeling is that horses are grazing animals, always moving to find their next meal. Sometimes it might be hours or even days until a new field of grass can be found. Feeding time in nature is when the herd finds new grass. Because horses have a unique digestive tract with 70 feet of intestines, their food is digested slowly. As their food intake makes its way to manure, feeding that long digestive tract by finding grass means that there is no schedule.
Very tight feeding schedules do not resonate with a horse's natural digestive process. Putting them on a tight schedule can, however, teach them a specific expectation for feeding like the horses at the Hunter barn where I worked.
This is one more way we deny the authenticity of horses by insisting on our human impulses and demands. All the kicking and noises that the horses did at their scheduled feeding time demonstrated how we humans cause horses stress by forcing human ideas and practices on them.
I am not saying don't use a feeding schedule. I am saying don't be obsessive about it because if you are, you will build a very demanding alarm clock in your horses' heads.