If you are feeding an old horse with few effective teeth left it is REALLY important not to forget about fibre. Quite often I come across people with old horses that can't hold their weight despite being fed what seems a lot of hard feed. They also frequently have diarrhea.

More than 80% of these horses, if they are otherwise in healthy condition, start to put on weight and their problems with diarrhea cease as soon as a lot more forage is worked into their diet.

If they can no longer chew hay or graze pasture you must find other ways to put fibre in their diet. Using chopped hay (chaff) or chopped haylage is ideal. If your old horse can't eat any hay or pasture at all you should feed a minimum of 1 kg/100 kg of bodyweight per day in chaff. Ideally you should feed 1.5 kg of chaff per 100 kg of bodyweight. If using haylage you will need to feed up to twice this amount to allow for the water content of the haylage.

High energy fibres like sugarbeet pulp can also be used, but be aware that because beet is so easy to digest it provides very little fibre that will remain in the gut, so it will help with energy intake and weight gain but often won't help where gut fill and diarrhea are an issue. So if you wish to feed a fibre like beet, stick to the rule of a minimum of 1 kg of chaff per 100 kg of bodyweight per day and then add the extra fibre on top.

It is also very important to weigh your forage. Chaff is a bulky feed and it is deceiving if you feed on a volume basis. As a rough guide, 8 litres of chaff will weigh 1 kg.

In most cases you will still need to feed some sort of hard feed. An extruded feed is an excellent choice for horses with very few teeth as these feeds can still be easily digested, even if they are not chewed. They can also be soaked to a mash.