All You Need to Know About Your Horse’s Digestive Tract

Regardless of their individual differences, all horses have one thing in common: their digestive tract. Everything your horse eats is processed through his digestive tract, which begins in the esophagus and ends in the colon. Horses are herbivores and designed to ingest a constant supply of plant material. Therefore, what you feed your horse, or allow him to eat, as well as his intake of water, is important to his growth, energy, and overall health.

A horse’s esophagus is 50-60 inches long. After your horse has chewed and broken his food into smaller pieces, it goes through the esophagus and into the upper or foregut, which includes the stomach and the small intestine. From the foregut, the food enters the hindgut, which consists of the cecum and the colon.

Horses have relatively small stomachs (about the size of a 5-quart ice cream bucket) and therefore do best when they are free to move about and graze on plant material (quality grass or hay) for 15 or more hours each day, rather than be fed larger quantities of food in one or two meals a day. This helps prevent overeating, as well as colic and founder.

Horses cannot vomit, so nature provided a natural mechanism for emptying the stomach when it’s about two-thirds full to prevent the stomach from rupturing.

Upon leaving the stomach the food enters the small intestine, which is best described as a 70-foot-long tube-like organ, where digestion continues. After the vitamins, minerals, starch, sugar, and proteins are digested and absorbed into the bloodstream, the remaining food products, consisting primarily of plant fibers, move on to the hindgut. The digestive process in the foregut takes approximately 6 hours; the digestive process in the hindgut occurs over a longer time period, from 18-36 hours.

The hindgut of a horse includes the largest and most complex large intestine of any domestic animal and is made up of the cecum and the colon. It can be described as a large fermentation vat that holds 25-30 gallons of fibrous material that is digested by bacteria in the gut. The hindgut is also your horse’s water reservoir. As fatty acids are produced, they are used by your horse for energy. If your horse is on a total forage (grass and/or hay) diet, 70% of his energy is coming from these fatty acids.

If your horse is used for hard work and has higher energy demands than grass or hay alone can provide, some grain may be needed. But generally horses doing only light work do very well on high-forage rations, without much grain.

In summation, your horse’s digestive tract is a marvelous mechanism and works best when he has plenty of clean fresh water, is fed top quality hay or forage at frequent or regular intervals, and is not overfed.