13/06/2026
Why can’t so many horses eat grass anymore?
This comes up a lot.
I had a great comment on my last post saying, “Thirty years ago, horses were out on grass all the time and they were fine.”
And I do think it’s a fair question. But I don’t think the answer is one simple thing. Part of it is that the grass has changed.
A lot of horse paddocks now are small, overgrazed, fertilised, sprayed, compacted, and resown or populated by survival of the fittest, with grasses that can survive heavy grazing. That does not mean they are ideal for horses.
Improved pasture, ryegrass, clover, fertilised paddocks and stressed grass can be very different to rougher, mixed, lower-input pasture.
A horse grazing a varied paddock with native grasses, herbs, weeds, shrubs, roughage and room to move is not living the same life as a horse standing in a small green square of high-production stressed grass.
We also have less biodiversity.
When paddocks become monocultures, we lose the variety that supports the whole system. The soil changes. The insects change. The gut input changes. The plants available to the horse become narrower and often richer.
Gut health, soil health and biodiversity are connected. If we simplify the environment too much, we should not be shocked when the animals living in that environment start showing health problems.
Then there is management.
Many horses now live on smaller properties with less movement, alone, more confinement, richer grass, more hard feed, more rugging, more stress, and more weight gain. A lot of equines who are easy keepers are being managed in environments that are simply too rich and “comfortable” for them.
And then there is the other part: we are also better at recognising the signs now.
Years ago, a lot of horses were probably called “a bit footy,” “arthritic,” “lazy,” “old,” “pottery,” “sore after a trim,” or “not great on hard ground.”
Now we are more likely to recognise those signs as possible low-grade or subclinical laminitis, insulin dysregulation, PPID, or metabolic stress.
So I think the answer is, the grass, the paddocks, and the way we keep horses changed. The amount of movement and the soil and plant diversity changed. And our understanding of early metabolic and laminitic signs improved.
Grass is not evil for every horse.
But for some horses, especially metabolic horses, grass can be the trigger that keeps the disease process going.
And if that horse is already showing signs of laminitis, stretched white line, footiness, thin soles, abnormal growth, strong pulses or chronic hoof capsule changes, then “just a little grass” is not a useful management plan.
We have to manage the horse in front of us, in the environment we have now.
