Equine Emergency Aid LLC

06/07/2026

Horses Are Not Grazing Animals… They’re Specialist Browsers

This might be one of the biggest misconceptions in horse management.

We often describe horses as grazing animals, standing with their heads down eating grass all day. While they certainly graze, their natural feeding behaviour is actually far more complex than that.

Wild and feral horses spend huge portions of their day browsing. They don’t just eat grass. They seek out hedgerows, shrubs, leaves, bark, herbs, flowers, seed heads, weeds and even certain tree species. They constantly move across the landscape, selecting different plants to meet different nutritional and behavioural needs.

Think about a horse turned into a field with a healthy hedge line. How often do you see them reaching through the hedge for hawthorn, blackberry, rosehips or fresh leaves rather than standing in the middle eating grass?

That isn’t boredom. It’s natural behaviour.

The irony is that many of our modern horse paddocks bear very little resemblance to the environment horses evolved to live in. Vast areas of single-species grass provide plenty of calories but very little variety.

Much of the UK’s improved pasture has been heavily selected for agricultural productivity, particularly for cattle production. Ryegrass has become a dominant species because it produces high yields and supports milk and meat production extremely efficiently. The problem is that what works brilliantly for a dairy cow doesn’t necessarily work brilliantly for a horse.

Many improved ryegrass pastures contain significantly higher levels of readily available sugars than the diverse meadow systems horses would naturally encounter. Yet we continue to place animals designed to browse a wide variety of plants onto fields dominated by a single, energy-dense grass species.

Then we scratch our heads and wonder why we are seeing increasing numbers of horses struggling with obesity, insulin dysregulation, laminitis and other metabolic disorders.

Of course, metabolic disease is multifactorial. Genetics, exercise, management and overall diet all play a role. But it does raise an interesting question:

Are we feeding horses in a way that matches millions of years of evolution?

Browsing provides:

🌿 Nutritional diversity
🌿 Natural enrichment
🌿 Increased movement
🌿 Mental stimulation
🌿 Opportunities for self-selection of plant material
🌿 Access to a wide range of plant compounds not found in monoculture grass systems

Perhaps the question shouldn’t be “How much grass does my horse need?”

Perhaps it should be “How much variety does my horse need?”

Because when given the choice, many horses don’t behave like lawnmowers.

They behave exactly as nature intended — as specialist browsers.

06/06/2026

Looking Isn’t Enough: Why Proper Body Condition Scoring Requires Hands-On Evaluation

In the horse world, few phrases are used more often—and sometimes more casually—than “that horse is thin.”

But determining whether a horse is actually underweight is not as simple as looking across a fence or viewing a photograph.

The equine industry has long relied on the Henneke Body Condition Scoring (BCS) system, a standardized method used by veterinarians, rescue organizations, animal welfare agencies, and law enforcement. This system was specifically developed to provide an objective evaluation of a horse’s body condition rather than relying on personal opinion.

One of the most important aspects of body condition scoring is that it requires more than visual observation.

Proper scoring involves evaluating specific areas of the horse’s body, including:

• Neck
• Withers
• Shoulder
• Ribs
• Loin
• Tailhead

These areas should be assessed through both visual observation and palpation. In other words, a person evaluating a horse should be putting their hands on the horse to determine fat cover, muscle tone, and underlying structures.

Why does this matter?

Because horses can appear thin for many reasons that have little to do with neglect.

Senior horses frequently lose topline muscle while maintaining an appropriate body condition. Horses recovering from injury may lose muscle mass. Horses with a history of cancer, endocrine disorders, Lyme disease, EPM, chronic respiratory disease, or other medical conditions may have body shapes that differ significantly from healthy young horses.

Likewise, some horses may appear heavier than they truly are due to long hair coats, edema, hay bellies, or body conformation.

A horse can look thin and still have adequate fat cover.

A horse can look healthy and still be underweight.

That is why hands-on assessment matters.

If organizations, inspectors, welfare agencies, sanctuaries, rescues, or volunteers are being asked to evaluate horses and make recommendations that affect their care, placement, or future, training in proper body condition scoring should be considered essential.

Body condition scoring is most valuable when it is objective, consistent, and based on recognized standards rather than first impressions.

Ultimately, good welfare decisions depend on accurate assessments—and accurate assessments require more than simply looking at a horse.

Two of the equines in pics are over 40…

05/12/2026

Such a good starting point for those that are not exposed or understand that sedation and power tools are not the best routine care for dental.

04/24/2026

Beyond Behaviour (Part 1): The Internal Factors Driving Horse Performance

If you’ve been following along with my Collectable Advice series, you may have noticed I disappeared. Not dramatically. More in a “somewhere in Western Australia, covered in dust, horses, and catching up with good friends” kind of way.

So let me make up for it by a longer post with some important ideas.

This is something I believe is one of the most overlooked aspects of horse behaviour and performance.

Three years ago, I bought an Equestic Saddle Clip (see first comment for details). I come from a research background, so I like measuring things. It allows you to test assumptions, experiment and explore observations.🤓

The clip analyses a few aspects of motion but for this post I want to focus on its ability to examine trot symmetry. It can reveal the rhythm, landing force, and push-off between diagonal pairs.

I assumed riders would make horses more asymmetrical.

The data showed the opposite.

Horses consistently became MORE symmetrical when ridden.🤔

That sounds like improvement.

It isn’t always.😎

Around the same time, I came across Tami Elkayam, who helped shift how I see the horse’s body.❤

Horses are not designed to be straight. Asymmetry is normal. The goal is not straightness, but function, adaptability and ambidexterity.

This is where compensation comes in.

Compensation is not a flaw. It is how the horse maintains balance and avoids discomfort.

But when the cause remains, compensation becomes a pattern. Load shifts. Strain builds. Movement becomes less efficient.

What starts as a solution becomes a limitation and can eventually snowball into injury.

The clip showed me something I could not unsee and Tami helped me appreciate and respect it.

How a horse moves when it has choice, and how that changes when we take that choice away when we ride them.

This example is one case. One horse. One snapshot.

The horse did not appear lame. The concerns were behavioural, particularly contact and canter.

On the ground, the horse showed a clear difference between diagonals in the landing phase of trot. Around 19 percent, which is significant. The clip developers recommend any horse with a difference greater than 8% to seek veterinary assessment.

Under saddle, that difference almost disappeared.

The horse has produced a graph that is more symmetrical.

But the horse did not suddenly become sound.

The horse became constrained.

On the ground, the horse organised its body in a way that allowed it to cope by compensating.

Under saddle, that choice narrowed.

The rider introduced load and restriction. The horse reorganised because it had to.

The result was the horse forced to move with greater symmetry.

But not necessarily comfort or function and hence the deterioration of behaviour under saddle.

This is the blind spot.

Most people assess their horse under saddle.

But the moment you sit on a horse, you change the system.

You reduce its ability to compensate.

Movement becomes more organised, often more symmetrical.

But what we are seeing is what the horse can produce under constraint, not how it actually functions.

The bigger the difference between those two states, the more pressure is placed on the system.

And that pressure shows up as behaviour.

Spooky. Sensitive. Rushy. Reluctant. Inconsistent. Resistant. Difficult.

Not attitude.

Coping.😕

This is why it can vary day to day.

Surface, workload, fatigue, gut comfort, and environment all influence what the horse can tolerate.
The window shifts.

The behaviour follows.

Sometimes, without meaning to, we create the problem.

We guide the horse into a posture that is technically desirable, but not yet tolerable. We reduce its ability to compensate and increase the load on areas it has been protecting.

And then we call the response a behaviour problem.

I want to be clear - Good training matters. Clarity matters. Reducing external tension matters. This is a big part of helping horses.

It is what I do.

But it is not the whole picture.

If there is an internal issue, training sits on top of it.

It may help, but many times it is not enough because it may not remove the cause.

This is where we get it wrong.

We focus on what we see and overlook what the horse is experiencing.

Then we mislabel the result.

A horse that is restricted and compensating becomes “naughty” or “difficult” or "sensitive".

It is neither.

It is coping.

So when the supplement, the pole work, or the latest gadget does not fix the problem, pause.

Those tools are not necessarily the issue.

But if the root cause remains, adding more DEMAND will not solve it.

It will often make it WORSE.

Before you add something new, ask:

What is the horse already managing?

Because real change comes from understanding the WHOLE system.

Inside and out.

Because sometimes riding a horse and forcing it to move more symmetrically is magnifying their struggle.

Collectable Advice 198/365. Please hit SHARE or SAVE. Please do not copy and paste.

04/20/2026

If you own a horse you should be able to clean your horse. Otherwise it’s neglect. It is that simple.

02/23/2026

Can you tell what these are???

01/30/2026

So glad he’s good!

01/08/2026

They find a way to

01/04/2026

Best time to worm?

*** TOP WORMING TIP!! ***

As hard frosts hit the UK, those that need worming for encysted redworm will be done in the next week or two, so I thought it was a good time to share one of my top nuggets of worming (de-worming if we want to be correct, but as a “horsey” girl, I’ve always incorrectly said worming!).

Always worm your horse IN THE MORNING! Some horses with high worm burdens/unknown worming histories may colic as the worms start to die off. Some horses may react to a wormer. Some may not eat or drink for hours after being wormed. You need daylight and you need to be able to check your horse, if only at lunchtime and then again in the evening.

As an added tip to potentially avoid an out of hours vet bill, always worm on a week day!

I never advise worming in the evening unless you have cctv and can check your horse several hours later. It just makes sense to worm early morning so that people will always be around for the 12 hours or so after administering a wormer.

My worming posts always attract lots of questions, but this one is only about the ideal time of day to worm, so on this occasion I won’t be answering any questions - I’m having an easy Sunday 😉

For bonus marks, what type of worm is in this poo?

Feel free to share the post, but not to copy and paste as your own.

11/21/2025