13/07/2026
Just a thought — we probably shouldn’t expect horses to spend 16 hours every day in one single feeding posture. 💭
In free-ranging horses living in a natural environment, feeding involves continual changes in:
• neck angle
• limb position
• body orientation
• roaming
• reaching
• turning
• grazing on slopes and varied terrain
We often fixate on the groundwork/ridden work, however do we really give enough attention to how our horse eats for the rest of their day?
The way in which our horse eats adds to their daily “postural load”, it influences how their tissues are recruited, and it really does deserve as much attention as their exercise.
So, haynets?
A study comparing horses eating from the ground, hay racks and elevated hay nets found that higher feeding positions consistently altered head and neck posture. Horses fed from elevated systems spent significantly more time with their neck held above wither height and showed greater head twisting while grasping forage (Hernadez Garbati, 2025).
Looking at the morphology, neck posture was affected by feeding position… but crucially, the mandibular angle was significantly wider when horses were fed on the ground.
In a study by Zebish et al. (2014), hyperflexion of the neck in ridden horses led to changes in the width of the mandibular angle as a welfare stress factor. It was associated with an increase in neck circumference and in the thickness of the jaw muscle, with a consequent compression of the larynx, thus reducing air exchange and producing higher flow resistance. From this, research has extrapolated the data and drawn attention to the fact that high haynets could affect the jaw joint over time, in addition to the functionality of the horses breathing, back and neck posture (Hernandez Garbati, 2025). Even though a lower hay net promoted a better back posture than a high haynet, it was not sufficient to maintain a neck posture and mandibular angle similar to that obtained from horses fed from the floor.
However — we do need to look beyond the haynets, and consider varying feeding postures to mimic their natural environment as much as possible.
