Q: An apple a day? What’s healthy for a horse?

A: If for humans the maxim is five portions of fruit or vegetables per day, then the equivalent for the a typical horse (that weighs about 7 times as much as we do) must be approaching 40! Fortunately, horses eat grass, which is equivalent to the majority of these portions, but stabled horses probably appreciate succulent extras, none more so than the Olympic horses, for whom vast quantities of succulents (including bananas) were shipped to Athens for the 2004 summer Olympics.

Horses enjoy a wide variety of fruit and vegetables: carrots and apples are the most common, but bananas are also popular, as are soft fruit such as berries, grapes, pears, plums, and apricots, as well as vegetables such as swedes and turnips.

Fruits and vegetables are essentially a wet version of a nutritious sweet, as they are full of both water and sugar. Freshly served, they are about 90 percent water, with any nutrition coming from the 10 percent dry matter. Although theses are predominately sugar, the fruits also contain vitamins and natural plant antioxidants, albeit at relatively tiny amounts.

These days, their value lies mostly in their succulence, but in earlier times, carrots in particular were a staple part of the diets of heavy horses. Rates of 28-30lbs per day were not uncommon and can still be fed today by some heavy horse keepers.

So are they worth inclusion in your horse’s diets? Almost certainly the answer is yes, if only to make sure the horse enjoys his food by adding some tasty variety. This is especially true if the horse is a fussy eater or has gone off his food for some reason. Unless you are feeding many pounds of them, however, don’t rely on them to provide significant nutrient additions to the diet.

A Few Tips:
• Remember to cut carrots longwise and not crossways, thereby avoiding the risk of choke.

• A few pieces per day really won’t make much nutritional difference. You need to feed about 100 carrots or apples per day to get the nutritional equivalent of an average “scoop” of plain oats. The 30lbs. fed to a heavy horse (approx. 200 carrots), is nutritionally equivalent in some ways to about 5lbs. of oats.

• Bananas are energy rich (again not much benefit if you only feed one or two per day), and contain high levels of potassium.

Ruth Bishop, top nutritionist for the gold-medal winning British Equestrian Team, is also the technical director of SPILLERS horse feeds in England. For more information about SPILLERS and SPILLERS/Seminole products, email editor@ecmagazine.net.