Horse Weight Loss: Environmental Factors

Horses are like humans in the sense that environment may affect appetite. An uncomfortable or unhappy horse may prefer to indulge in a stable vice such as cribbing, weaving, or stall-walking, thereby wasting valuable calories. The result is detrimental to the horse’s ability to maintain weight. The ideal solution is to find out what the horse does not like about the environment.

Herd dynamics may account for poor condition. Horses low in the pecking order will be granted only limited access to feed by horses higher in the social hierarchy. Timid horses will waste away rather than fight for a chance at the food if it is hoarded by the more dominant horses in a group.

In group-feeding situations, piles of hay should be separated with generous space. If grain is also fed to the group, the grain buckets or feeders should also be spaced accordingly. Providing one or two extra servings of hay or grain to the group may be beneficial because less dominant horses will have more options from which to choose should they be intimidated by another horse.

Chronic pain is often overlooked as a cause of weight loss in horses. The body’s response to pain is the release of adrenaline (epinephrine), which puts the body in a state of catabolism. Catabolism causes the breakdown of body energy stores that ultimately results in chronic weight loss. Physical discomfort can also dampen the appetite of the horse.

Numerous causes can account for a horse’s inability to maintain weight aside from not consuming sufficient calories. Quick and easy solutions cure some problems, but for other problems there may be no solution but to deal with the animal as it is.

Read more from Advances in Equine Nutrition III.