Feed Like the Pros: Best Nutrition for a Horse’s Gut Microbiome
How are elite equestrians feeding their horses to maintain a healthy digestive tract? The answer is on the labels. In this blog series, “Feed Like the Pros,” we reveal expert advice on equine nutrition, including ingredients that support stomach, foregut, and hindgut health.
Keep reading to learn the best nutrition for a horse’s gut biome, so you can feed like the ProElite® pros.
What Affects a Horse’s Gut Microbiome
First, what is a horse’s “gut microbiome”? In simplest terms, a biome is a community of organisms at the same location and a microbiome is a community microorganism that live in the mouth, on the skin, or in digestive tract. The gut microbiome plays a key role in everything from digestion to immune function, behavior, and performance. A horse’s gut microbiome can be affected by a number of factors including breed, age, exercise, stress, traveling, metabolic status, disease, or diet. Even the most prestigious trainers and vets in the world can’t control all of these factors, but with a quality, balanced diet, you can undoubtedly support the microbiome and everything it affects.
Diet Recommendations for a Healthy Gut
“To get the best output, you need the best nutritional input.” So before deciding the best feed and supplements for gut health, here are some general diet recommendations.
- High Quality Hay: First, look at your primary source of forage. A good feeding program starts with good hay, and then layers in feed and supplements to balance the diet and make up protein, vitamins, and minerals. that are insufficient in a forage-only diet.
- Controlled Starch and Sugar: Second, controlled starch and sugar is a must! This doesn’t always mean low starch and sugar because we know some performance horses or horses with high activity levels can benefit from diets with higher Nonstructural Carbohydrates (NSC) to meet energy requirements. If your horse requires low starch and sugar, ProElite® Starch Wise is a great go-to feed to manage carbohydrates effectively. Regardless of your horse’s NSC needs, your feed should have guaranteed maximum sugar and starch levels on the tag.
- Easily Digestible Fiber: In addition to low starch, sufficient fiber is another key in maintaining gut health because highly digestible fiber allows the horse to efficiently extract nutrients and avoid stressing the digestive system. This is especially important in senior horses and horses with metabolic challenges.
- Biotics: Prebiotics, probiotics, and postbiotics are another must have when looking at ingredients because they help support total tract gut health and healthy gut microbiome. Not all biotics are created equal though, so look for research-proven ingredients like TruEquine postbiotic in ProElite GutBiome or the most highly researched probiotic, Saccharomyces Cerevisiae (live yeast), in ProElite feeds.
Choose the Winning Combo
Because of how important gut health is to performance, elite training programs and equine atheltes trust the ProElite suite of premium products to provide consistent, nutrition-locked formulas. While there are many combinations of feed and supplements that can meet your horse’s gut biome needs, here are some of ProElite feeds most popular:
Feed:
- ProElite® Starch Wise (13% Protein | 21% Fiber | 6% Fat)