A Different Starting Point: Rediscovering The Foundations Of Equine Nutrition
- Stephanie Carter, LVT, FNTP
- 4 hours ago
- 7 min read
Something happens when a horse begins to struggle. We reach for solutions. A supplement to fix the feet. A medication to soothe the gut. A management change to address behavior.
Sometimes these interventions help. Often times they don't, and we find ourselves adding more products, adjusting more variables, watching the same patterns repeat. The horse improves briefly, then plateaus. Or worsens. And we're left wondering what we missed.
What if we overlooked the question itself?
Conventional medicine and nutrition ask what we can add to fix a problem. Functional medicine and nutrition ask what the body is trying to communicate. This distinction might seem subtle, but it changes everything. One approach treats symptoms as problems to be solved. The other treats them as messages to be understood.
The Body Speaks
Every symptom your horse displays represents the body's attempt to adapt, compensate, or signal distress. The dull coat isn't a cosmetic failure. It's the body prioritizing survival over appearance when resources run short. The recurring abscess isn't bad luck. It's often the body attempting to eliminate what it cannot process through its natural detoxification pathways. The anxiety under saddle isn't simply a training issue. It may reflect a nervous system responding to internal inflammation the horse cannot articulate.
When we suppress these signals without understanding their origin, we silence the messenger while the message goes unheard. The symptom may quiet temporarily, but the underlying dysfunction persists, often emerging later in a different form or an alternate organ system.
This is where functional nutrition begins. Again, not with what to add, but with what to understand.
Foundations That Build
The body operates as an interconnected system, not a collection of separate parts.
What happens during digestion affects blood sugar regulation.
What happens with blood sugar affects hormones.
What happens with hormones affects immunity.
What happens with immunity affects inflammation.
What happens with inflammation affects every tissue, organ, and cell.
I work with six foundational systems that must function properly before anything else can truly heal. Blood sugar regulation comes first because glucose and insulin affect every cell in the body. When this system is dysregulated, energy production falters, inflammation increases, and the cascade begins.
Fatty acid balance matters because cell membranes require the right fats to function, hormones require the right fats to form, and inflammatory tone depends on the ratio between omega-6 and omega-3.
Digestion follows as a close second because nothing matters if nutrients cannot be broken down and absorbed. A horse can consume the best feed in the world, but if the digestive system is compromised, those nutrients pass through without benefit.
Mineral balance operates not in isolation but in relationships. Zinc competes with copper. Calcium must balance with phosphorus.
Iron interferes with the absorption of other critical trace minerals when present in excess. Correcting one deficiency without attending to these relationships creates new imbalances elsewhere.
Hydration extends beyond water consumption to encompass electrolyte balance and cellular fluid dynamics. And detoxification, the body's housekeeping system, determines whether metabolic waste products clear efficiently or accumulate to create additional burden.
These systems do not operate independently. They cascade into one another, each affecting and affected by the others.
This is why addressing a symptom in one system often fails when the root dysfunction lies in another.
What Goes In Matters
The quality of what we feed extends far beyond the guaranteed analysis printed on a feed tag. Those numbers tell us percentages of protein, fat, and fiber, but they reveal nothing about the source, form, or the processing those nutrients took to arrive in the bag.
Consider how ingredients are grown. Forage from mineral-depleted soil cannot provide minerals the soil never contained. Crops raised with synthetic fertilizers may show adequate protein on paper while lacking the trace elements and phytonutrients that come from healthy, living soil. Hay sprayed with pesticides or herbicides carries residues that burden the liver and disrupt the gut microbiome.
Consider how ingredients are processed. Heat destroys enzymes and denatures proteins. Fine grinding changes fermentation rates in the hindgut. Synthetic vitamins are manufactured in laboratories and are not recognized or utilized by the body the way nutrients in their natural form or bound in whole foods are.
Preservatives extend shelf life, but may compromise gut bacteria.
The ingredient list matters more than the analysis. A feed can meet every guideline of the National Research Council (NRC) on paper and still fail to nourish if those recommendations are met through byproducts, fillers, and synthetic additives rather than real, nutrient-dense foods.
The Individual Horse
Even when we get the quality right, we face another reality. Walk down any barn aisle and the evidence presents itself.
The easy keeper who maintains weight on air while her stablemate needs double rations. The Thoroughbred who thrives on feeds that trigger muscle-related episodes in the Quarter Horse next door. The senior flourishing on alfalfa beside another who develops hives on the same hay.
Every horse in your barn is a unique biochemical individual. Their genetics, age, workload, stress levels, gut microbiome, geographic location, metabolic efficiency, and health history — all of it shapes what they need nutritionally.
Yet the feed industry operates largely on the assumption that one formula can meet the needs of every horse, everywhere. “Complete” feeds and “ration balancers” are formulated to meet the minimum requirements established by the National Research Council. Those NRC values represent population averages, the amount of a given nutrient that prevents deficiency in most horses, most of the time.
But your horse is not a population average. Your horse is an individual. The NRC guidelines tell us what prevents diseases of deficiency. They do not tell us what supports optimal function, vibrant health, or the capacity to thrive rather than merely survive.
Honoring the Design
Fifty-five million years of evolution shaped the horse into a continuous grazer with a digestive system exquisitely adapted to fibrous plant material. The hundred-foot digestive tract with its massive hindgut fermentation chamber developed to convert structural carbohydrates into volatile fatty acids. These fatty acids, produced by microbial fermentation of fiber, can meet roughly seventy percent of a horse's energy needs when fed appropriately.
The system requires continuous input. Horses produce saliva only when chewing, and that saliva buffers stomach acid. Unlike humans or dogs, horses secrete gastric acid continuously whether or not food is present. The architecture requires near-constant access to forage. When we feed two meals a day with hours of emptiness between, we work against the design.
Modern commercial feeding has drifted far from this template. Processed grains, industrial byproducts, synthetic additives, and convenient meal-based schedules have replaced the diverse, continuous fiber intake the system evolved to process. We have asked the equine digestive tract to adapt in decades to conditions it never encountered across millions of years. The rising rates of ulcers, colic, metabolic dysfunction, and inflammatory conditions suggest the adaptation is not going well.
Species-appropriate nutrition means aligning what we feed with what the body was designed to process. It means forage first, always.
Real foods over manufactured products, and nutrient density through quality rather than quantity. It does not mean returning horses to feral conditions. It means understanding the template and honoring it within the constraints of modern management.
A Shift in Perspective
None of this requires rejecting veterinary medicine or dismissing the value of appropriate intervention. Horses need veterinary care.
They need diagnostics, treatment, and medical management when indicated. What functional nutrition offers is a complementary foundation, a way of supporting the body's inherent capacity for balance and repair while working alongside, rather than instead of, conventional care. Most importantly, it works as prevention.
The shift is philosophical before it becomes practical. It asks us to see the horse as a complete organism rather than a collection of separate problems. To look for root causes rather than symptoms. It asks us to consider quality alongside quantity, form alongside amount, source alongside concentration.
Most importantly, it asks us to recognize that no single factor impacts health more than nutrition, and no single factor stands alone. Diet matters profoundly, but so do movement patterns, social dynamics, stress levels, environmental exposures, and the reality that horses are sentient beings who experience their lives emotionally as well as physically. All of these factors influence each other. True health emerges from addressing the whole.
Looking Forward
Each of these foundations deserves deeper exploration than a single article allows. My upcoming book, Equine Functional Nutrition: Understanding Root Cause to Restore Vitality, examines these interconnected systems and offers a practical framework for designing nutrition programs that honor the individual horse. It releases on February 17, 2026, the first day of the Year of the Fire Horse, a symbol of freedom, vitality, and unstoppable energy. My hope is that it helps restore exactly that to the horses who need it most.
Because the horses in our care deserve more than minimum requirements. They deserve nutrition that supports them to thrive.
About The Author
Stephanie Carter, LVT, FNTP is a veterinary technician and Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner specializing in equine functional nutrition. With a foundation in human functional nutrition, Stephanie applies an innovative, evidence-based approach to animal nutrition that sets her apart in the field. Her commitment to species-appropriate, nutrient-dense real foods has helped restore health in horses facing complex challenges including ulcers, Cushing's disease, Lyme disease, insulin resistance, laminitis, EPM, PSSM1 and PSSM2, squamous cell carcinoma, and metabolic disorders.
Stephanie's twenty-three-year career in the veterinary medical field has deepened her understanding of the intricate relationship between nutrition and health. Now serving clients worldwide through Indigo Ancestral Health, she brings both clinical expertise and genuine compassion to every case.
What drives Stephanie is a profound love for the animals in her care. Every nutritional protocol she designs stems from this fundamental truth. The horse comes first, always. This philosophy transforms her work from a service into a calling, creating partnerships with clients who share her belief that optimal health is every animal's birthright.
Her first book, Managing Muscle Mayhem, focuses on genetic muscle disorders including PSSM1 and PSSM2/MIM variants and has helped horse owners worldwide navigate these complex conditions.
For more information, visit StephanieCarterNTP.com or find her on facebook and instagram.
This article is from the January issue of Equine Business Magazine
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