Horse Nutrition for Shedding Season

What Triggers Spring Shedding for Horses

• The great hair shed in the spring of your horse’s winter coat happens because a horse’s eyes and brain notice that daylight hours are increasing. Fancy photoreceptor cells in your horse’s eyes notice ultraviolet light, and that message goes to the brain, which triggers shedding. The warmer weather is not a trigger.

• The summer solstice in late June and the winter solstice in late December are when the hours of daylight begin to decrease and increase, respectively. About six weeks after the solstice, your horse should start to shed.

• The summer coat also has a big shed in the fall, but it’s not as noticeable as the hair falling out is short.  

• It takes energy for your horse to lose their coat and replace it with a new model. Providing the best nutrition for your horse can help this process, as your horse’s outside health comes from what you feed the inside. 

Horse Nutrition for Shedding Season

• Four components of a horse’s diet can directly affect shedding. Fats, vitamins, minerals, and proteins fuel the skin and hair coat. Ideally, horses have a forage-based diet, with supplements added as needed.

• I will always recommend an equine nutritionist work with your horse to create the best diet. A horse’s nutritional needs stem from age, breeding, discipline, where their hay is grown, how much and what type of pasture is available, medical problems, weight, metabolic issues, skin issues, and more.  

• It’s also easy to overlap supplements, creating an excess of nutrients. Or, some nutrients are lacking. A custom diet for your horse gets it right and will likely save you money by streamlining supplements.

• A balanced diet improves skin health, creates a shiny coat, and boosts the coat quality. As the skin becomes healthier, shedding of the coat is a smoother process.

Chia seeds and flax are great options for healthy fats.

Fats

• The pot of gold for skin and coat health is sebum. The sebaceous glands of your horse secrete this magic oily substance. Sebum adds shine, helps hair shed, creates waterproofing, and repels stains. Each hair follicle has a sebaceous gland, and diligent grooming helps each hair coated.  

• Fats in the diet support sebum production and, therefore, coat health and shine. New hair is more substantial, and fats help keep moisture in the hair. When the hair shaft is brittle, it takes stains and breaks easily.

• A fantastic source of fats for horses is essential fatty acids. There are Omega-6 and Omega-3 fatty acids, which have an ideal ratio that is still being researched. Horse nutrition experts agree that an approximate Omega-6 to Omega-3 ratio should be in the neighborhood of 1:4. A horse should have more Omega-3’s in their diet, and this estimated ration reflects what a “wild” horse would eat.  

• Omega-3 fatty acids have some anti-inflammatory properties to help allergies, hives, and irritated skin. These powerhouse fats also improve flaky skin and dry hair. 

Sources of Omega fatty acids

• If your horse eats pasture, everyone wins. Fresh grass is a wonderful source of Omega-3s. There are Omega’s in hay and dried forages, but about half as much as pasture. Because pasture access and quality vary with the seasons, some horses need supplementation for part of the year.

• You can supplement with flax, fish oils, chia seeds, and canola oil. Cold-pressed flax lasts months on the shelf and adds a gorgeous glow to the coat.

• Oils like corn, sunflower, and safflower are too high in Omega-6 fatty acids. Yes, these oils will create a lovely coat, but they skew the ratio in your horse’s body.

• For the typical 1,000 lb horse, count on 10-20 grams of Omega-3 fatty acids per day.  

Flax is a great additive to water to entice your horse to drink. 

Vitamins

• Horses need all sorts of vitamins – but for healthy skin and hair, the A’s and B’s are most beneficial for horses. Vitamin E is another important ingredient and is plentiful in grass pastures.

Vitamin A

• This vitamin supports the hair follicles and sebaceous glands. Vitamin A is necessary to grow and maintain healthy skin cells and produce sebum.  

• A horse deficient in Vitamin A will have dry skin and a dull coat. Sometimes, sores and hair loss occur with severe deficiency. However, too much Vitamin A can create similar problems for horses and possible toxicity.

• The precursor to Vitamin A is beta-carotene, which is prevalent in fresh pasture and new hay. But, as hay ages, 10 % of beta-carotene vaporizes per month. Year-old hay will not have any beta-carotene.  

• Horses need 22,000 to 30,000 IU/day of Vitamin A. Supplementation of 20,000 IU/day may be helpful for horses not on pasture.  

Vitamin B 

• B vitamins are a family of nutrients created by your horse’s intestinal bacteria. Wild, right? Let’s talk specifically about the B vitamin biotin.  

• Your horse’s gut microbes will churn out biotin, but often not enough for hoof and hair quality. Biotin helps skin, hair, and hooves grow. The strength and elasticity of proteins improve with biotin. 

• When a horse is appropriately supplemented with biotin, hair, and hooves may grow faster, the coat becomes shinier, and dry skin reduces. Most horses need between 10 and 30 mg daily, but horses struggling with poor hoof and hair quality may need more.  

• For horse shedding season, you may need to supplement with 20 to 25 mg of biotin daily. Don’t expect fast results, as biotin supplements usually need a few months to kick in. 

Does your horse need a Vitamin B supplement like biotin to help shed?

It can be helpful in the long run to supplement with biotin, as long as the complete diet is balanced. The protein biotin can also help hooves over time. Many supplements target hooves and skin at the same time.

`You can add protein to your horse’s diet, too.

Minerals 

• Minerals are equally crucial to a horse’s coat and skin, especially during shedding. Of particular note are the trace minerals copper and zinc.

• Copper and zinc both work with melanin, the pigment for hair color. Hair bleaches and fades when your horse’s diet lacks appropriate copper and zinc. You may notice reddening or yellowing of manes and tails, too.  

• Copper also supports collagen in the skin, which helps the physical structure of the skin. An average horse needs 100 to 120 mg of copper in the diet per day.  

• Zinc supports cell division, which is necessary to make new hair. Most horses need 400 mg per day of zinc for optimal health. 

Amino Acids and Proteins

• Hair and hooves are comprised mainly of the protein keratin. Proteins are a collection of amino acid chains linked by peptide bonds. Ten of the 21 amino acids horses use for protein production are essential. The horse can’t make these ten – your horse needs these essential amino acids in their diet.   

• Horses can get some protein from hay and pasture, and their needs will vary. An ornamental pasture horse’s crude protein intake should be about 8.5% of their food. Working horses need a crude protein level of 12% in their feed. Most bagged feeds will indicate the protein available in a whole serving of that food. 

• If your horse eats only hay, know that stemmy hay from late cuttings or mature plants has lower protein. You may need to supplement with a quality protein additive. The most common ingredient for adding protein to feeds and supplements is soybean meal.  

Read this great article about protein in horse diets here

Supplements and feeds can help provide vitamins and minerals for your horse.

Tips for Using Supplements 

• When your horse’s diet is sorted out, take care of the feeds and supplements. Proper storage in sealed tubs or containers keeps rodents and moisture out. Having a climate-controlled feed room would be nice, but do your best to keep feeds and treats from excessive heat and cold.  

• Depending on the feed, buying one or two bags at a time is sometimes better for maximum freshness. The same may be true for supplements, and most should have storage information and sometimes expiration dates.  

Your elbow grease goes a long way

Help your horse shed in other ways

• Regular grooming is usually the easiest way to help your horse shed. Nothing beats a good curry comb session to release loose hair.

• Or, you could let your horse roll and roll and roll. Providing a tempting patch of sand encourages your horse to use the ground as a curry comb. Sure, you must groom out all the sand then, but oh well, more shedding.

• Let your horse exercise and enjoy lots of turnout; their movement is excellent for mental health and physical health. And sometimes they roll more when out and about. 

Read more about some tools to help your horse shed here

If your horse is this shiny in the winter, chances are you are doing all of the right things! 

Your horse’s internal health affects the hair shedding cycle

• Check your horse’s internal parasite load. Too many internal parasites steal your horse’s nutrition, interfering with shedding and hair-growing capability.  

• Rotational deworming is now understood to be a waste of money and contributes to parasites becoming resistant to dewormers. Instead, have your vet conduct fecal egg counts in the spring and fall. Egg counts determine your horse’s parasite load and guide your vet in deciding what dewormers to use, if any. You can also order fecal egg counts via the mail!  

• Your horse’s eyesight may also influence shedding. If the photoreceptors in a horse’s eye are damaged, they are not reading the changing daylight hours and their haircoat won’t play along.  

• Also, check your horse’s metabolic health. Affordable and accessible tests of your horse’s metabolic status may also reveal pituitary pars intermedia dysfunction (PPID), formerly known as Cushing’s disease, and insulin resistance (IR) equine metabolic syndrome (EMS). 

• Sometimes, hair growth goes wild with metabolic changes, and shedding is slow or non-existent. These tests are also helpful in assessing your horse’s laminitis risk, which coincidentally peaks in spring and fall when grasses are lush and stressed.  

The take-home message is to let your vet help your horse if shedding or growing a new coat is late, abnormal, or not happening. Then curry some more! 

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