Soaked Feeds: The Lowdown

Soaked feeds have become popular and not just for veterans who need something easy to chew. Here, Clare Barfoot, senior nutritionist at Spillers, discusses the bene ts for all horses and ponies.

- Clare Barfoot

The horse world is no different to any other sector in life when it comes to trends, fashions and popular products. Whether it’s a new rug, a popular brand of saddle or a revolutionary bit, there is always something that’s en vogue!

This also applies to feeding and nutrition and right now there seems to be a revival in soaked feeds. I say revival because it is not a new concept.

It’s difficult to pinpoint when horsemen started to give their equines soaked feeds but the rationale behind it is very sensible. Grass and fresh herbage is the natural diet of horses but they differ in moisture content to many of the feeds we give our horses today.

Grass can be up to 80 per cent water, depending on the pasture and the time of year, which means grazing horses take in a large amount of liquid. This is why horses don’t tend to drink as much in spring.

Hay on the other hand is typically only 15 per cent moisture and prepared feeds even less, so stabled horses usually drink more than eld kept ones.

The first soaked feeds were introduced at the beginning of the last century and would have been largely made up of cereal grains such as oats, wheat and barley, which were sometimes boiled alongside linseed.

These ingredients were soaked for various reasons – some real and some perceived – including to increase digestion or, in the case of linseed, remove toxins.