A Horse: The Digestive Process Of A Horse

The Digestive Process of a Horse

In the science realm, horses are classified as animals in the opisthokont category of the unikont clade. Horses are mammals. They are non-ruminant herbivores or hind-gut fermenters; this means that “Their main and often exclusive source of food is plants” (Huntington).

This species has evolved through time to graze small amounts of roughages frequently through the day, typically 15-20 hours. Domestication has changed these eating behaviors to curve to the schedules of the caretakers. Normally, people tend to feed large amounts of grain one or two times a day. If people do not own a pasture in which the horses are able to graze, the animals are expected to eat hefty amounts of grass and/or alfalfa hay as well. This makes it much more difficult for horses to maintain their health because it undermines their capabilities for proper digestion. It has been found, that this problem may be resolved by feeding small amounts of feed often in order to assimilate the natural grazing habits of the species. Horses “…have relatively small stomachs, which hold only about as much as a 5-quart ice-cream pail” (Reynolds). The stomach is physically capable of holding more substance than this, but the stomach starts to empty as soon as it is two-thirds full. It performs this task as a safety precaution because they are unable to regurgitate food. Therefore, if they overeat or consume something poisonous, vomiting is not a possibility.

The digestive system can be thought of in two separate sections; the first being more similar to that of a human, and the second resembling the rumen of a cow more precisely. Their small stomach has the potential to store two to four gallons of substance for the average horse that wei...

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...er passing through. If oil is added to the horses’ diet, it has proved to slow the flow of feed through the small intestine; thus giving the digestive enzymes more time to process starches, proteins, and fats. In turn, this increases the total amount of nutrients made into usable forms for the horses and maximizing the digestive efficiency for the small intestine.

Horses do not have a gall bladder. Because of this, it is hard for them to digest and utilize high fat diets. They can handle about 20% fats in their diet, but it takes them about three to four weeks to adjust to this change if the owner has not been previously consistent in this aspect of their diet. Normally rations in a typical horse’s diet have only about three to four percent of fat. Also as a result of their lack of gall bladder, bile is constantly flowing into the small intestine from the liver.