Galop 5Knowledge
Contents
- 01WelcomeOverview
- 02How the horse learnsKnowledge
- 03Pied, spotted, additionsKnowledge
- 04The skeletonKnowledge
- 05The musclesKnowledge
- 06DigestionKnowledge
- 07SIRE, microchip and registersKnowledge
- 08Presenting in handOn foot
- 09Lunging and long-reiningOn foot
- 10Loading and stable bandagesOn foot
- 11The riding basicsIn the saddle
- 12TransitionsKnowledge
- 13The leg-yieldIn the saddle
- 14The dressage partIn the saddle
- 15Snaffle bitsKnowledge
- 16The jumping partIn the saddle
- 17The cross-country partIn the saddle
- 18RevisionRevision
The horse’s digestion
The horse is a herbivore built to eat a little at a time, nearly all the time. Every feeding rule you follow on the yard comes from a feature of its digestive tract.
In the exam programme
- Explain what is special about the horse’s digestion.Common module B
The horse lives on plants, but it is not a ruminant: like us, it is monogastric, with a single stomach. Its stomach and small intestine are small; its large intestine, on the other hand, is huge, making up about 60% of the volume of the digestive tract. Left to itself, a horse grazes some fifteen hours a day, a mouthful at a time.
- Stomach: 12 to 18 litres
- Small intestine: 20 to 25 m, 60 to 70 litres
- Small colon
- Rectum
- Caecum: about 1 m, 25 to 35 litres
- Great colon, folded — colon and rectum: 6 to 8 m, 80 to 100 litres
- Oesophagus: a long narrow tube
- Mouth: teeth that keep growing
| Organ | Key facts | What happens there |
|---|---|---|
| Mouth | Teeth that keep growing | The very mobile upper lip gathers; the teeth grind very finely; saliva soaks the food. |
| Oesophagus | A long, narrow tube | It carries food to the stomach without digesting it; it can block in a greedy horse. |
| Stomach | 12 to 18 litres | Protein digestion begins; food stays there for 2 to 8 hours. The cardia, at the entrance, stops the horse from vomiting. |
| Small intestine | 20 to 25 m, 60 to 70 litres | Enzymes digest starch, fats and proteins; the passage is fast, 1 to 2 hours. |
| Caecum | About 1 m, 25 to 35 litres | A blind-ended pouch where micro-organisms ferment the fibre. |
| Colon and rectum | 6 to 8 m, 80 to 100 litres | Fermentation carries on; water is reabsorbed. Food spends 24 to 48 hours in the large intestine. |
What makes it special
- A small stomach: it copes badly with big meals.
- No vomiting: what goes down must go through. A feeding mistake cannot be undone.
- No gall bladder: bile flows all the time, a sign of a gut made to receive food without a break.
- A fast small intestine: fed in too large a quantity at once, concentrates rush through it, and the poorly digested starch goes on to ferment in the large intestine.
- Fibre digested by fermentation: in the caecum and colon, countless micro-organisms break down cellulose. This gut flora adapts to each ration and copes badly with sudden changes.
- A folded colon of varying width, which makes impaction colic more likely; a long, mobile small intestine, which can twist.
What it changes on the yard
- Forage first: hay or grass is the basis of the ration and keeps the horse busy for much of the day.
- Several small feeds of concentrates rather than one big one.
- Hay before hard feed: the traditional order “water, hay, grain” still makes perfect sense.
- Any change of feed is made gradually, over at least a week.
- Clean water at all times, and an eye on the droppings: how many there are and what they look like tell you how digestion is going.
Safety
Colic, pain in the belly, is the most feared result of a feeding mistake. You will study the horse’s illnesses in Galop 6; remember now that a restless horse looking round at its flanks is an emergency: tell someone in charge at once.
A word from the instructor
Your horse has a stomach the size of a bucket and a large intestine the size of a bath. Fill the bath first — it’s the one with a taste for hay.