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What BETA 2025 taught us about fibre, forage and nutrition.

  • siancc2021
  • Oct 8
  • 5 min read

Updated: Oct 22


At the end of September, I had the privilege of attending BETA International 2025. I was pleasantly surprised by the networking and collaboration opportunities I discovered. While many attendees were representing feed and supplement brands, several honest and open conversations emerged around the limitations of modern equine nutrition.


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Nearly everyone I spoke to, including nutritionists and feed advisors, agreed on a few key points:

  • Horses need forage high in fibre, typically from turnout, hay or haylage.

  • Bucket feeds and supplements should be used to balance and top up, not replace, forage.

  • Most horses need less sugar and starch and more vitamins and minerals.

  • Even performance horses should get additional energy and protein from high-fibre, not high starch sources.


Dr. Katie Williams: Forage, Energy, and the Performance Paradox

Dr. Katie Williams (Dengie Nutritionist) delivered two thought-provoking presentations.


In the first, she shared data showing that the energy intake of horses on grass often exceeded their needs, even when in light work, except during winter. With milder, wetter winters allowing more grass growth, she cautioned that winter grazing may soon supply too much energy as well. She explained that horses consuming the recommended 1.5–2.5% of their body weight in hay or other dry matter frequently exceed energy requirements, yet fall short in trace minerals such as copper, zinc, selenium, and vitamin E. This statement was based on data modelled using the PC Horse analysis software (https://pchorse.se/en/). 


To manage weight without restricting chew time, she suggested incorporating straw to dilute energy density, though this can also reduce nutrient intake according to further analysis with PC Horse. Her conclusion: even good doers benefit from a balancer containing copper, zinc, selenium, protein, lysine, iodine, and vitamins A and E.



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Her second presentation focused on performance horses and poor doers. Drawing on Hodgson et al. (2014) and Connysson et al. (2021), she discussed how leakage of muscle enzymes can indicate delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) or myopathies such as recurrent exertional rhabdomyolysis. Notably, studies show that Standardbred trotters fed forage-only diets had lower muscle enzyme activity post-exercise compared with those on high-starch diets.


She also cited Martin (2023), who found that high-fibre diets maintained muscle development without compromise, and that horses fed high-starch diets exhaled more CO₂, suggesting reduced metabolic efficiency. Her takeaway: both good doers and performance horses benefit from fibre-based diets with balanced trace minerals and adequate protein, particularly from alfalfa. It’s worth noting that Dengie’s flagship forage for supporting horses in work and poor doers is alfalfa, which naturally informs their recommendations, but the broader point about high-quality fibre and protein still holds true.


Natural Forage: Beyond the Bag

What Dr. Williams said rang true for me, except for the suggestion that the nutrients missing in the data must come from a bagged feed. Nature already offers many of them if horses have access to healthy, diverse, fresh forage. The table below highlights a few examples of plants that provide the nutrients missing in the data. It is not an exhaustive list.

Nutrient

Natural Sources in the UK

Zinc

Ribwort plantain, Sainfoin, salad burnet, dandelion

Copper

Sainfoin, salad burnet, dandelion

Selenium

Ribwort plantain, red clover, Sainfoin, Birdsfoot trefoil, Alfalfa

Vitamin E

Sainfoin, red clover, and most fresh green material

Vitamin A

Wild carrot, red clover

Protein & Lysine

Red clover, Sainfoin, Vetchlings, Birdsfoot Trefoil

Iodine

Seaweeds (Kelp, Bladderwrack) and coastal plants (Sea beet, Sea plantain, Sea purslane, Samphire)

Plants can only provide what’s present in the soil. In the UK, selenium and copper are often low, and iodine is deficient inland. Vitamin E degrades in dried forage, so horses need access to fresh green material.

To optimise your pasture naturally:

  • Test your soil to understand deficiencies.

  • Overseed with wildflowers and legumes to restore trace elements.

  • Encourage trees and hedges (willow, hazel, birch, hawthorn, blackthorn, dog rose, rowan) for deep-rooted nutrient cycling that grasses and wildflowers can’t achieve.

  • Support fungi–plant and fungi-tree partnerships (Smith & Read, 2008; Lucas et al., 2008; Rua et al., 2015) to help mobilise bound minerals such as selenium, nitrogen, copper, and zinc.

  • Avoid excessive harrowing, nitrogen fertilisers, and fungicides.

  • Maintain organic matter and mixed swards.

A biodiverse pasture not only improves horse health but also builds climate resilience so that pasture can keep providing forage in less predictable seasons and weather conditions.

 

While these ecological improvements take time and financial investment, they can reduce our reliance on manufactured feeds, hay and haylage. This can reduce our carbon footprint and use of plastic bags in feeding horses, making feeding horses much more environmentally sustainable.


Local Nature Recovery Schemes (LNRS) can help finance pasture optimisation initiatives that improve biodiversity and charities like the Woodland Trust give away trees and hedges to those willing to plant them.


Rebecca Watson: Gut Microbiomes and the Mind–Body Connection

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The other standout talk came from Rebecca Watson, CTO at PlusVital, who explored the equine gut microbiome and its link to health, immunity, and behaviour.


She presented data showing that racehorses with more diverse microbiomes had fewer respiratory and orthopaedic issues and were more likely to succeed in training (Proudman, 2024). Her insights echoed much of what’s emerging across human and equine science. Gut health underpins nearly every aspect of performance and behaviour.


Of particular interest to me was the connection between microbiome diversity and early weaning. As I’ve previously discussed in “Grasses, Ryegrass and Laminitis”, foals weaned too early may miss out on critical microbial and behavioural learning from their dams.


Watson cited evidence that foals not weaned until around 50 weeks developed richer microbiomes (Long, 2024; Weese, 2011). A foal’s gut flora develops through the dam’s birth canal, milk, skin and coat, but also through environmental and forage diversity.


Stress, medications such as NSAIDs, antimicrobials, antacids, and likely dewormers, can all reduce microbial diversity. Watson advocated for a careful balance: treat horses when needed, but support gut recovery after stress or medical interventions with probiotics, prebiotics, and yeast supplements. She noted that while feeding live cultures alongside antibiotics is ineffective, yeast-based supplements can be used concurrently.


Our discussion afterwards touched on the soil–horse connection: healthier soil microbiomes likely support healthier horses, since they interact with soil directly through grazing and rolling. We also spoke about lesser-known forage sources such as fungi and mushrooms, and how they may contribute to both nutrient cycling and microbial diversity.


In Summary

Even though much of the research presented came through a commercial lens, the underlying message was clear:

  • Horses thrive on diverse, fibre-rich forage.

  • Soil health underpins plant and horse health.

  • We must rethink how we feed, wean, and manage horses

What I heard reaffirmed to me that the answers to many equine health challenges are rooted not in a bucket, although buckets can help, but in living soil, biodiversity, and the natural foraging behaviours horses evolved for.


References

Full references for studies I have cited directly are listed below. Research mentioned by Dr. Katie Williams and Rebecca Watson are referenced in-text as cited during their presentations.

 
 
 

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