Poseidon Equine Nutrition Library

The Horse's Gut
That 30m tract of gut does so much more than digest food. It is responsible for your horse’s health and well-being!

It keeps bad things out and good things in by having an intact gut wall protected by a mucosal lining, and when this defence mechanism isn’t working toxins, pathogens and harmful substances can enter through the gut wall and create havoc.

This can lead to life threatening illnesses, poor performance, pain, behaviour change, weight-loss and whole gut inflammation (ouch).

By Dr Erin Roddy A lot of horse owners wonder (but might not want to ask)… Why does my foal eat its Mum’s poo? It might not appeal to us very much,...

In this video we sit down with our newest equine nutritionist in New Zealand, Nikita Stowers. We talk all things equine gut health, specifically for horse owners in NZ!

Take a look out the window…what’s your horse chewing on right now? Hay? Chaff? Some apparently random stick or bit of bark? Or that boundary fence post that’s slowly starting to fall apart? Hey, well at least it’s all fibre… and, importantly, it’s all different types of fibre.

During stressful events like weaning, the microbiome (eg. bacteria, fungi etc.) in the gut changes and this may have negative consequences on health. 

Part of the challenge with recognising gut health as a problem for your horse is that symptoms of poor gut health in horses can be very subtle, even when issues are severe, and horses may show different signs for the same issue.

Taking a look at the change in grass with the change in seasons, and what effect this can have on your horses behaviour.