But do you listen to this marketing or are you as stubborn as us and always read labels first before drawing your conclusion?

Marketing vs. Reality

There is fierce competition in the horse feed industry, with so many brands, so many types, and also so many customer preferences. You rarely see a standard basic pellet nowadays; there are now various types of pellets, muesli, and slurries available for different types of horses with various conditions. The marketing held for this feed is enormous, sponsored posts and influenced posts fill your timeline. With one even more beautiful photos, reels, testimonials, colors, and slogans than the other. All with claims and statements intended to convince you as a horse owner to buy the feed. Because doesn't your horse have itching? Or has stomach issues or an imbalanced gut flora? So with that specific horse feed, you can solve the problem, right? But is that so, is that the reality, or is it just the marketing pitch? Always turn the bag over first, check the back first!

Check the Ingredients!

In horse feed, what is at the front of the ingredient list is what is present the most, and what is towards the end is present the least (this is different with supplements!). So if there are a lot of grain (by-product) products at the front, then you know that the feed can never be low in starch. You can also quickly see from the ingredients whether many types of sugars (molasses, glucose, etc.) have been added, if there are herbs, or many by-products. Based on the ingredient list, you can already dismiss many types of horse feed for your horse because it does not suit your horse. A horse sensitive to grains does not want grains in its feed. For horses with a sensitive stomach, you preferably do not want grains or hard, short pieces of alfalfa. For insulin resistance, laminitis, and summer eczema, you do not choose a product that has added sugar or contains starch-rich (grain) products.

Check the ingredient list first, as it is much more important than the slogans on the front of the bag!

Check the Analysis!

Once you have checked the ingredients and are reasonably satisfied, move on to the analysis table. Here you can see how much energy the product contains, how much protein and fat are in it, but what is particularly important: the sugar and starch percentage.

And yes, the starch is also important! Because in a horse's intestines, starch is seen as sugar and treated that way. So do not just look at the sugar content, but add the starch content as well. Because that total is actually the total sugar content of the feed. And do not be alarmed, many "standard" pellets contain more than 40% sugar/starch! And if you have a sport horse competing internationally, running a 120km endurance race, or training intensively for a minimum of 2 hours, then it will use the sugar. But most horses in the Netherlands, trained for an hour a day at a basic level, absolutely do not need these large amounts of sugar/starch.

Always check the analysis, as it says a lot about the quality of the feed!

Choose your horse feed based on facts, not on marketing!

• If a horse feed brand claims that a muesli ensures stable digestive function, but the feed contains more than 30% starch, then that brand is lying. Because that amount of starch actually disrupts the gut flora and thus the digestive function.
• If a feed is claimed to be for summer eczema but it is full of grains and has molasses added, then you know that it is not intended to be used against itching; instead, it causes itching.
• If a feed is claimed to be for horses with a sensitive stomach and it contains, among other things, calcium carbonate that disturbs the stomach pH, and it still contains many grains, it may cause a sensitive stomach due to the overall digestive disruption.

Always look first at the back of the bag, read the ingredients, read the analysis, and based on that, you as a horse owner can make the decision if a feed is suitable for your horse. Take as a basis:

• Sugar below 6%
• Starch below 15%

And actually, we would prefer the starch percentage to be even lower! So it is not normal for a product to contain more than 25% sugar/starch! Or for the feed to consist of only by-products or mainly grains. So look critically at the feed you give your horse!

Exception: The starch may be higher if the product contains oats because oats are the least bad grain and can have positive effects on the horse. It is also a myth that a horse becomes "hot" from this unless you feed them kilos of oats like the old-day horses working hard in the fields.