The Dietary Components and Feeding Management as Options to Offset Digestive Disturbances in Horses

Abstract

Equines are faced with digestive disorders derived from abrupt feed changes from mainly forages to high-starch cereal grains. This diet change aimed at meeting the nutritional requirements to optimize the horse's performance causes microbial imbalances in the gut, which results in unintended but inevitable health problems such as colic, diarrhea, gastric ulcer, and laminitis. Several strategies are recommended to control these problems. This review is meant to offer plausible and adoptable solutions to digestive disturbances in equines. High-forage diets seem to be the primary solution. However, there are other options such as feeding horses with alfalfa hay for gut pH modulation and gastric ulcer management, avoidance of the off-feed for long periods within a day especially between 01:00 AM and 09:00 AM, yeast supplementation, feeding equines about 2–3 times a day without increasing the quantity of the daily ration, and dietary fatty acid supplementation such as eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid to increase insulin sensitivity. Protozoa and faunation seem to be a good modulator of gut pH because they help to control the rate of starch degradation without generating methane in horses because acetogenesis is the main hydrogen sink in equines. An appropriate grain mixture of barley–corn or barley–oat avoids gut pH depression. Furthermore, the use of crop by-products such as soybean hull and pectin are good alternative energy sources for equines. Therefore, the use of some sources of fiber in the diet of equines can replace high-starch cereal grains in equine diets because they are capable of providing the required energy to support the energy demands during work.