They take small bites not chunks, and they chew their food properly. And if they had napkins, they d use them. When horses eat like pigs, gobbling their food down as fast as they can, slopping it all over the place, it s a sure bet something is wrong. Most often, the thing that is wrong is that the horse isn t being fed like a horse. He isn t getting enough to eat and he isn t getting his food over a long enough period of time.
Horses are big and they are supposed to eat a lot.
But horses are also grazing animals and so they are supposed to eat small amounts almost continually. In fact, a horse s stomach is small for his size, so it should be receiving small amounts of food rather than being stuffed. Throwing a flake of hay over the corral fence twice a day just won t get it. First we need to know how much nutrition our horse needs. It s pretty well agreed a horse doing light work will need at least two per cent of his body weight daily in high nutrition feed in order to maintain his condition.