Have you ever thought about how important your pony’s diet is for their health and well-being? Well nutrition is a very important part of your pony’s life, a healthy feeding regime and digestive system will help keep them happy, healthy and performing well and after all good nutrition provides the fuel for your pony to live and work.

Lisa Elliott, MSc of Equine Nutrition Solutions helps you to understand your pony’s digestive system and discover the best way to feed to keep them healthy and happy.

Digestive System and Evolution

Your pony has a unique digestive system which has developed over many thousands of years to eat a continuous supply of fibre, like grass or hay. This fibre flows through the digestive system in a constant small trickle.

Watch your pony eating in his paddock and you will see that they take a few small bites of grass, swallow it, then walk a few steps and eat a bit more. This is known as trickle feeding and it’s important that we try and feed horses and ponies as closely to this as we can.

The digestive system starts with the mouth where the pony’s teeth start to break up the feed ready for digestion and chewing produces saliva which is important for good digestive health.  

This is why it is important to have your pony’s teeth get checked regularly because they are the first part of the digestive process and if they are working properly, they will help support both your pony’s digestion and digestive health.

Next the food is swallowed and travels down a long tube called the Oesophagus and into the stomach:

Stomach

• The stomach is very small, with a capacity of around 9-15 litres and just 10% of the digestive tract – the stomach is around the size of a rugby ball!
• Unlike your stomach which can expand with the size of the meal your pony’s stomach can’t, so it’s important not to overfill it. Small is key – large meals can cause problems and upset your pony – so when you are preparing your pony’s feeds, visualise a rugby ball and don’t feed bigger than that
• You pony’s stomach has 2 sections one at the top and called the squamous and the bottom called the glandular. The bottom section holds the acid your pony’s stomach produces and its lining is covered with mucous to stop the acid damaging it.
• The acid starts the breakdown of protein. Did you know protein is one of the main nutrients in the pony’s diet, along with starch, sugar, fats and fibre – but for digestion to start correctly meals need to be kept small.
• Your pony’s stomach should never be left empty, they need to have something in there all the time, feeding little and often to make sure your pony has a constant trickle of food passing through the stomach, is one of the most important things you can do for their health.
• This means stomach acid is constantly in use and doesn’t build up which can lead to digestive problems like ulcers

Small Intestine

Once the food has left the stomach it continues into the small intestine

• Your pony’s small intestine is around 15-22 m in length – just like a folded pipe!
• The Small intestine is very busy – it continues digestion of protein along with fats/oils, starch and sugar BUT it has a LIMITED ability to digest starch
• Feed too much starch and it can mean it’s not digested properly in the Small Intestine and it will go into the hindgut and cause problems – like colic, which can make your pony very poorly. This is another very good reason to keep bucket feeds very small or to avoid feeding high starch meals altogether.

Large Intestine or Hindgut

After it’s been through the small intestine, your pony’s food then passes into the large intestine:

• The large intestine consists of the caecum and large colon, followed by the small colon and then rectum, where your pony’s poo is formed!
• The Caecum is 1.2 m and has a volume of 28-36 litres and the Colon is 3-3.5 metres and has a volume of 86 litres!! – that’s big!!
• The large intestine makes up 60% of your pony’s entire digestive system so is often called the hindgut
• The hindgut is responsible for the digestion of fibre and the large size of the hindgut, shows us just how important fibre is in the pony’s diet – but your pony cannot digest fibre by himself – he needs to rely on billions of microbes and there are more microbial cells in your horses’ hindgut than tissue cells in their whole body!
• Microbes are teeny tiny life forms which have a massive influence on all lives including your own. The microbes that live inside your pony’s hindgut digest fibre through a process called fermentation and this process breaks down the fibre into a form of energy your pony can use for their work.
• The microbes digest the fibre very well and the healthier they are then the healthier your pony will be- so to keep them healthy you need to feed lots and lots of fibre!

Fibre is essential and should always be the most important part of your pony’s diet. Fibre comes in many forms.  Some examples of a type of fibre you would feed your pony are – hay, haylage and grass (often referred to as forage), chaff (chopped straw, grass or alfalfa) straw and sugar beet – these are all types of fibre. Forage like hay and grass should always be the main part of your pony’s diet as they help keep their digestive system healthy and certain types of microbes in the hindgut which help keep the gut lining healthy, thrive on the more complex fibre in forage and this will help optimise your pony’s digestive health even more 😊

After feed has passed all the way through the digestive system and all the good stuff has been absorbed, what is left needs to come out and that comes out as poo! This takes time, on average from bite to poo takes about 36-72 hours depending on the diet – so the poop you clean up when your pony has been in all night, for example, is what they ate 2 or 3 days ago!

Your pony’s poo is like a little window into his digestive system so there’s nothing wrong with looking at it!! A good healthy poo, means a good, healthy digestive system – but do you know what a normal healthy poo should look like?

What is normal poo?

A normal healthy pony poo should be a darkish shade of green but can have a brownish tinge if he’s eating a lot of hay! The poo should be formed into little balls which break or split when they hit the ground – anything different to this could indicate a problem.

If your pony’s poo is like a cow pat or very runny it could mean they have digestive upset

So how can you prevent this happening and keep those poos perfect? well you need to feed your pony like a pony, in line with their digestive system by following good feeding principles:

Good Feeding Principles

Following the feeding principles below and thinking about them regularly will help ensure you always provide the best nutrition to keep your pony happy and optimise digestive health.

Allow plenty of Water

Water is one of the most important nutrients your pony can have so make sure he always has access to clean fresh water. Adding around a tablespoon of salt per day to your pony’s feed should help get him to drink.

Feed Fibre First!

Your pony’s diet should be based on fibre in the form of forage such as grass, hay or haylage adding in a balancer to provide essential vitamins and minerals, and protein, which is normally enough for ponies at maintenance up to light and even medium work. Forage should be fed on ad-lib or constant basis to keep your pony’s gut healthy.

Feed according to work and condition

Only add in extra feed if hay and grass isn’t giving the pony enough nutrients for their work and they begin to lose weight. This is normally an indication your pony needs more energy or ‘calories’ to support work and condition and there are different ways of giving them this

Be aware of Energy Types

Starch and sugar, oils, and fibre provide energy for work, but the type of energy they provide is different:

Starch provides fast release energy – think of when you eat sweets – how do you feel? Do you get a rush of energy? This is because sweets contain sugar and the energy from sugar is realised quickly resulting in a rapid sugar rush. Well for your pony, it’s no different, starch from cereals is quickly changed into sugar and the energy is released quickly and this is what can cause excitable behaviour. There is also some sugar in grass and hay which is why spring grass which contains higher levels of sugar can sometimes make your pony fizzy!!

Oil and fibre are opposite to starch and sugar – they are both digested slowly and are good for stamina for when your pony does longer periods of slower work, and they help keep your pony calm while helping to support work and condition.

Feed little and often, keeping starch to a minimum

If your pony needs extra feed and has this as a meal then its best to feed it little and often to keep the digestive system healthy, so try and give your pony about 3-4 smaller feeds per day instead of 1-2 larger ones.  

Keep starch to a low level or avoid it all together focusing on extra fibre and oil to provide what your pony needs. Coligone fibre Cubes and LamiGONE are both scientifically deigned to provide your pony with no cereal, minimal starch and maximum fibre feed with the added boost of Coligone to provide maximum support for your pony’s tummy.

If your pony is fed too much starch, firstly, it could cause digestive upset – this will make your pony very uncomfortable and could lead to colic. Secondly, your pony might get excitable, the sweet thing again, lots of sweets will cause a big sugar rush and the same will happen to your pony if he has too much starch!

Make any changes gradually

Remember the microbes in your horses’ hindgut? All happily digesting their fibre keeping the pony healthy.  Well, they are very sensitive to change- any sudden change to the pony’s diet causes the microbes to change and this can spell trouble for your pony. In fact, sudden change is the number 1 reason for colic so doing it gradually is so important – this applies to any change, from grass to hay, hay to haylage, mix to cubes, even summer grazing to winter grazing – the change should be made a tiny bit at a time over 2-3 weeks by slowly reducing the old feed and increasing the new one.

DON’T overfeed your pony!

Always feed by weight not volume and try to weigh your feeds rather than just guessing it with a scoop to make sure they are getting the right amount. If you over feed your pony, just like we do if we over-eat, they get fat and that isn’t healthy and can cause laminitis which leads to pain in your pony’s feet.

Overfeeding is one of the main causes of weight gain and laminitis, and this happens because we can often underestimate what kind of work the pony is doing – so for example, thinking the pony is doing medium work and feeding for that when they are only doing light work.

Understanding Levels of Work

• Light work – applies to most horses and ponies, hacking, schooling 3-4 times a week in mainly walk and trot, and ponies that compete in low level competition in any discipline, including dressage, show jumping over small courses and endurance/pleasures rides up to 30km.
• Medium work- defined as regular competition and associated preparation work which has moved up a gear – includes more demanding schooling, regular jumping and competing at affiliated level most weekends
• Hard work – very few horses fall into this category!! We are talking about top level competition, so 4 and 5 star eventers, advanced dressage, top level show jumping and racing along with horses who are hunting hard 2 or 3 times a week.

So, although your pony may be puffing at the end of a ride or schooling session and it may seem like he’s working hard and he probably has been in that moment, in the bigger picture he’s probably only doing light work, so you need to feed him for that. If you feed your pony too much, he will become overweight and if he’s overweight, he’s at a much greater risk of laminitis.

You can keep a close eye on whether you are feeding correctly by using a weight tape regularly and using a body condition scoring chart to monitor charges in your pony’s condition. You should be looking to ensure you pony is around 3 on a 0-5 BCS for optimum condition throughout the year.

Feed correctly around exercise

Whatever level of work your pony is in you may have been told not to feed before exercise – but this doesn’t apply to all feed

It’s beneficial for your pony to have some Coligone Treats; hay or chaff just before his exercise. If you do want to give a bucket feed before work, then a small one fed about 1 to 2 hours before is fine. The best time to feed your pony is after the exercise to replace what may have been used. You can do this after exercise when they have fully recovered, and their breathing is back to normal but keep those meals small! Water should be always offered immediately, and hay or grass are also fine straight after exercise.   

Supporting Optimum Pony Nutrition with Coligone

Because we understand how important the right nutrition is to your pony’s health and happiness, we have created Magical Pegasus Dust to support optimum digestive health in your pony, whatever they do.

Magical Pegasus Dust encapsulates the benefits of highly digestible fibres, alongside the power of Coligone, which supports digestive health and normal acid levels throughout the whole digestive tract from stomach to hindgut and beyond, alongside a range of vitamins and minerals to support a heathy hooves, skin and coat, with a magical shine.

The Coligone within Magical Pegasus Dust also contains scFOS and MOS prebiotics and probiotics, alongside yea-sacc, all of which help boost and support the hindgut microbiome, prevent digestive upset by supporting happy and healthy microbes and help you pony to get the most from their fibre.  Magical Pegasus Dust can be fed to all types of horses and ponies. Including those with laminitis and gastric ulcers, to provide beneficial nutrition for optimum health and performance, and support Happy, Healthy Pegasus Ponies all year round.