Using Blue Grass Forage for Weight Management
Written by:
Dr. Tania Cubitt, PhD – Equine Nutritionist
Dr. Stephen Duren, PhD – Equine Nutritionist
By Performance Horse Nutrition for Blue Mountain Hay
Managing an overweight horse or pony requires reducing calories without compromising forage intake, chewing time, or digestive health. Blue Mountain Hay’s Blue Grass Forage offers a lowcalorie, lowsugar, highfiber option that helps dilute richer hay while keeping horses eating throughout the day. This article from Performance Horse Nutrition explains how Blue Grass Forage supports safe, sustainable weight management for easy keepers, metabolic horses, and those needing controlled calorie intake.
Key Takeaways
- Easy keepers often gain weight on traditional hay and pasture, even in small amounts.
- Weight management should reduce calorie density — not drastically reduce forage volume.
- Blue Grass Forage is naturally low in calories, sugar, and starch, making it ideal for overweight or metabolic horses.
- Replacing part of a horse’s regular hay with Blue Grass Forage helps maintain eating time while lowering total calories.
- Forage analysis is essential for managing NSC levels in insulinresistant or EMS horses.
- Chopped forage, cubes, and pellets can support horses needing more fiber without excess calories.
- Weight loss should be gradual, monitored, and paired with appropriate exercise.
- Successful weight management isn’t about feeding less — it’s about feeding smarter.
Using Blue Grass Forage for Weight Management
For many horse owners, keeping weight on a horse is the challenge. But for the easy keeper, pony, or horse prone to becoming overweight, the challenge is often the opposite.
We need to reduce calories—but we still need to feed a horse like a horse.
One of our primary goals when designing a weight-management program is to reduce calorie intake without unnecessarily reducing forage and feeding time. This is where lower-calorie forage options, such as Blue Mountain Hay's Blue Grass Forage, can be particularly useful.
The Challenge of the Easy Keeper
Some horses simply don't need many calories to maintain their weight. Give them good pasture and high-quality hay, and they can quickly become overweight.
The obvious solution may seem to be: feed less hay.
But there is a problem.
Horses are designed to consume forage throughout much of the day. Forage promotes chewing and saliva production, supports normal gastrointestinal function, provides substrate for the hindgut microbiome, and satisfies the horse's natural desire to eat.
So, when managing an overweight horse, we aren't just trying to answer the question:
"How do we feed fewer calories?"
A better question is:
"How do we reduce calories while still providing adequate forage?"
Lower the Calories, Not Just the Forage
Traditional weight-loss programs often rely heavily on restricting the amount of hay offered. Some restriction may be necessary, but simply feeding smaller and smaller quantities of hay can create other management challenges.
A different approach is to look at the calorie density of the forage itself.
If we can replace some higher-calorie forage with a lower-calorie, higher-fiber option, we may be able to maintain more forage volume while reducing the total calories consumed.
This is the concept behind incorporating Blue Grass Forage into a weight-management program.
What Is Blue Grass Forage?
Blue Mountain Hay's Blue Grass Forage is made from bluegrass straw, providing a high-fiber forage option that is naturally lower in calories and very low in sugar and starch.
Bluegrass straw is not like typical straw used as simply bedding or a by-product. Bluegrass straw is more digestible and can be a useful nutritional tool when incorporated appropriately into an equine ration.
For the easy keeper, this creates an opportunity to dilute a more calorie-dense forage with a lower-calorie fiber source.
For example, rather than dramatically decreasing the amount of forage offered, a portion of the horse's regular hay may be replaced with Blue Grass Forage.
The result is a forage program designed to provide plenty of fiber while decreasing overall dietary energy.
Why Sugar and Starch Matter
Weight management isn't only about calories.
For horses that are overweight, particularly those with insulin dysregulation or Equine Metabolic Syndrome, controlling dietary nonstructural carbohydrates—or NSC—may also be important.
NSC primarily includes sugars and starches that can vary considerably between forages.
You cannot reliably determine the sugar and starch content of forage simply by looking at it. A beautiful green grass hay isn't necessarily low in sugar, just as a more mature-looking forage isn't automatically safe for a horse requiring carbohydrate restriction.
This is why forage analysis is so valuable.
Blue Grass Forage's very low sugar and starch content combined with its lower calorie density can make it a useful component of diets designed for horses where both calorie and carbohydrate intake need to be carefully managed.
More Chewing for the Calories
One of the biggest challenges with an easy keeper is that the horse may consume its restricted hay ration very quickly.
The calories may be appropriate, but the horse can then spend hours with little or nothing to eat.
Using a lower-calorie forage can help us think differently about the ration.
Instead of only asking how many pounds of hay we can remove, we can look at whether some of the traditional hay can be replaced with a forage that delivers fewer calories per pound.
Slow-feed hay nets and multiple feeding locations can further extend eating time and encourage more natural feeding behavior.
The goal is not simply weight loss.
The goal is healthy, sustainable weight management while maintaining adequate forage intake and supporting normal digestive function.
It Should Be Part of a Balanced Diet
Lower-calorie forage is useful, but it doesn't necessarily provide all of the nutrients the horse needs.
When calorie intake is restricted, it becomes especially important to ensure requirements for protein, amino acids, vitamins, and minerals are still being met.
This is where a ration balancer or concentrated vitamin and mineral supplement may be appropriate.
Think of Blue Grass Forage as a tool for managing the fiber and calorie portion of the diet, while the remainder of the ration is designed to fill the nutritional gaps without adding unnecessary calories.
Who Might Benefit?
Blue Grass Forage may be particularly useful for:
- Easy keepers
- Overweight horses
- Horses on restricted-calorie diets
- Horses requiring lower sugar and starch intake
- Horses with limited pasture access
- Horses spending time in dry lots
- Ponies and other breeds that maintain weight very efficiently
- Horses that need more forage volume without a large increase in calories
It can also be blended with other forages rather than used as the horse's sole forage source.
That flexibility allows the feeding program to be adjusted according to the individual horse's body condition, workload, health status, and nutritional requirements.
Don't Crash Diet the Horse
Weight loss in horses should be gradual and monitored.
Severely restricting forage isn't the goal, and horses should not simply be left without food for prolonged periods because they need to lose weight.
Use a weight tape or scale when available, monitor body condition score and regional fat deposits, and weigh forage rather than estimating it by flakes.
As the horse loses weight, the diet should be reevaluated and adjusted.
Exercise, when appropriate for the horse, is another important part of a successful weight-management program.
Feed More Strategically
Managing an easy keeper doesn't have to mean choosing between an overweight horse and a horse standing with an empty hay net.
Sometimes the better solution is to change what is in the hay net.
By incorporating a lower-calorie, low-sugar and low-starch forage such as Blue Mountain Hay's Blue Grass Forage, we can reduce the energy density of the forage program while continuing to prioritize the fiber and feeding behavior that are so important to the horse.
Because successful weight management isn't simply about feeding less.
It's about feeding smarter.
FAQs
Is Blue Grass Forage safe for metabolic horses? Yes — its naturally low sugar and starch content makes it ideal for insulinresistant or EMS horses.
Can Blue Grass Forage replace all of a horse’s hay? It can be blended or used as a partial replacement. Some horses may use it as their primary forage depending on calorie needs.
Does Blue Grass Forage help extend eating time? Yes — its lower calorie density allows horses to eat more forage for fewer calories.
Is Blue Grass Forage the same as bedding straw? No. Bluegrass straw is more digestible and specifically processed as a forage source.
Do I still need a ration balancer? Often yes — lowcalorie forage does not supply all required vitamins, minerals, and amino acids.
_____________________________________________________________________________
