Adjusting Diet To Ensure A Sound and Healthy Barefoot Horse

Tom’s Thumb: our new favorite trail accessible from our own back yard.

The path to natural horse care has had several surprises for me. The last 15 weeks has been a fascinating journey: one of the biggest discoveries was how closely connected diet is to soundness. In his Checklist for Success, Dr. Tomas Teskey lists nutrition well above natural hoof care. He suggests the most important element of a healthy horse is feeding a high fiber, low carbohydrate diet.

Our feeding regime has definitely changed since we pulled the shoes on our horses. Rocky and Redford are easy keepers – prone to a healthy layer of fat over the ribs. They both showed some sensitivity to rocks and hard ground, even when they had shoes and pads.


Rocky and Redford heading back down a trail in the McDowell Mountains. You can see the city of Phoenix off to the distance.

They showed similar sensitivity to hard ground when we pulled their shoes, although it seemed to come and go. Over the last month, we have changed the way we feed. We continue to feed good quality Bermuda hay. We have found a supplier whose hay is consistently long in stem and nice and leafy. The horses like it, too. They get enough to keep them busy all day and all night. I would like to feed it out three times a day, but a full time job in the city dictates a twice daily feed schedule. We try to balance it such that they do not leave any hay, but they also do not go so long without food that they become hungry. It seems to work out to about two good sized flakes per feed per horse, twice a day.

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