Happy Horse Nutrition

First. Second. Third. Fifth. Sixth. IN THE MELBOURNE CUP!On 3 November 2026, Ciaron Maher Racing made history, becoming the first stable in 166 years to train the Melbourne Cup trifecta, with an extraordinary FIVE of the first SIX horses across the finish line.How on earth do you achieve something like that? And what is Ciaron Maher Racing doing differently?There are many answers to that question, but one thing they do very differently is how they feed their horses.And that's something Dr Nerida knows quite a bit about, because she's the equine nutritionist responsible for developing and continually refining the stable's feeding programmes!Following this incredible Melbourne Cup result, we're bringing back one of our most loved Happy Horse Nutrition conversations, with Katrina Anderson, Head of Sport Science, and Joshua Kadlec-Cavanagh, Head of Data and Performance at CMR.Together with Dr Nerida, they take us behind the scenes of a stable willing to challenge some of the most ingrained traditions in Australian Thoroughbred racing, particularly the belief that racehorses need large amounts of grain to perform at their best.From feeding lucerne before exercise and providing continuous access to hay, to reducing grain intake, improving starch digestibility and monitoring faecal pH, they explore how a completely different approach to racehorse nutrition is changing the health and performance of these incredible equine athletes.They also dig into the changes observed in hindgut microbiome populations, gastric ulcers, tying-up, hoof soreness and behaviour, including the heart-warming story of Saint George, whose troublesome feet improved and he got on with winning a bunch of races following a change to his diet.And there's data! Lots of data!Since this interview was originally recorded, Dr Nerida and Katrina have presented findings from the stable at the International Congress on Equine Exercise Physiology in Tokyo (ICEEP 2026), showing substantial improvements in faecal pH following dietary changes, alongside fascinating relationships between grain intake, gut health and racing performance. Nerida shares some of those findings in a new introduction to this episode.Of course, nutrition is only one piece of the complex puzzle that goes into producing a Melbourne Cup winner, let alone a trifecta!But this is a brilliant example of how feeding horses in a way that honours their evolution and digestive physiology, supports their gut health and improves their welfare can absolutely goes hand in hand with extraordinary performance.And that is a story well worth sharing again.Learn more about Dr Nerida's approach to equine nutrition at MyHappy.Horse and at https://equilize.com.au🏇🏻 And to really look in detail at your racehorse’s diet, download the MyHappy.Horse nutrition app: https://apps.apple.com/au/app/myhappy-horse/id6633422324

Can lunging your horse actually be harder work than riding? Does speed strengthen bones or damage them? And could restricting calories make an already good-doing horse even thriftier?Coming to you from Tokyo, Japan, Dr Nerida is joined by equine exercise physiologist Dr Brian Nielsen and researcher Renee Harbowy to unpack some of the fascinating science presented at the 12th International Conference on Equine Exercise Physiology (ICEEP).After five days, around 80 research presentations and some very full brains, the three sit down to share the research that caught their attention, challenged their thinking, and might just change the way we feed, train and manage our horses.They explore new research on lunging and exercise intensity, the complicated relationship between speed, bone strength and injury risk, why training young horses isn't necessarily a bad thing, and how mitochondria respond to calorie restriction — with some interesting implications for managing overweight horses.Of course, there's plenty of horse nutrition too, including the relationship between grain feeding, hindgut health and racing performance, with a look at some fascinating data presented from Ciaron Maher Racing.It's a slightly different episode, with plenty of science, a few laughs and a behind-the-scenes look at what happens when you put a couple of hundred equine researchers in a room together for a week.And perhaps most importantly, it's a reminder that good horse management rarely comes down to just one thing, and that behind the science is a whole community of researchers working incredibly hard to make life better for our horses.Learn more about the 2026 International Conference on Equine Exercise Physiology (ICEEP), Tokyo, Japan:https://iceep2026.org/ 📲 Download the MyHappy.Horse nutrition app to check your horse’s diet is properly balanced ⁠https://apps.apple.com/au/app/myhappy-horse/id6633422324⁠💖 And if you found this episode helpful, please follow the Happy Horse Nutrition Podcast and  share it with a horse owning friend 🙏🏼

Orla is back for another Happy Horse Nutrition Q&A, although this one very quickly becomes a reverse Q&A, a Pony Camp debrief and a collection of slightly random, but useful, horse nutrition observations.We talk about a stomach with a pH of 1.2, why water matters more for gastric health than we sometimes give it credit for, and how Dr Nerida, yes the PhD equine nutritionist, managed to give her own horse colic!Nerida and Orla also revisit straw for horses with EMS and weight issues, why the right low-energy forage is essential for feeding hay 24/7, and why it is so essential to feed a properly balanced diet when using straw.Then they head back down the ryegrass rabbit hole with a fascinating real-world case of a horse showing extreme behavioural changes on ryegrass pasture, and what happened when his owner added a targeted mycotoxin binder.Plus horse drinking habits, Pony Camp survival, and apparently… kangaroos can get staggers too.As always, there’s science, horse geekery, plenty of side tracks and lots of laughs plus hopefully a few things that make you look at the way your own horse eats, drinks and behaves just a little differently.📲 To check your horse’s diet and KNOW you are feeding right, download the MyHappy.Horse app ⁠https://apps.apple.com/au/app/myhappy-horse/id6633422324⁠💛 We’d love if you would leave us a rating, follow the show and share this episode with a friend, it truly helps us get this information in front of more horse owners.🩺 And if you’d like to get in touch with Orla, [email protected]

Ever looked at the feeding recommendations on a bag of horse feed or a bucket of supplements and wondered who decides how much you should feed? And do you really need to follow them?In this episode of the Happy Horse Nutrition Podcast, Dr Nerida takes you behind the scenes of horse feed and supplement formulation, drawing on more than 25 years of experience developing products and writing the feeding recommendations that appear on their labels.You will learn why some feeds recommend feeding large amounts while others recommend very little, how those feeding rates are calculated, and why feeding less than the recommended amount could leave your horse short of essential vitamins and minerals.We also explore what happens when you combine fortified feeds with vitamin and mineral supplements, why a 30 g supplement isn't necessarily better or worse than a 150 g supplement, and why feeding half the recommended dose of a gut health or hoof supplement might mean you're wasting your money.Plus, what should you do if your horse gets fat on the recommended feeding rate, or needs more feed than the manufacturer suggests?And Nerida mentions several times that the best way to know exactly what your horse is getting from its diet, is to run an diet analysis thorugh MyHappy.Horse, the equine nutrition app designed to help you feed with confidence and accuracy!You can check out MyHappy.Horse here 🩵https://apps.apple.com/au/app/myhappy-horse/id6633422324

Knowing better is one thing. Actually changing what we do is something else entirely. In Part 2 of this conversation, Dr Nerida and veterinarian and social worker Dr Katherine Goldberg go deeper into the very human reasons horse management practices can be so hard to change.They use one of the simplest horse welfare changes as the perfect case study: feeding hay before you ride. Why does something so easy, with such clear benefits for our horses around gastric health, comfort and behaviour, still meet resistance? Then Nerida and Katherine jump back on after Pony Camp for a real-world update and put the psychology into practice, looking at decisional balance, why being the only person doing something differently can feel hard, and why sometimes the best way to create change is simply to keep modelling the better way, loudly and positively. Connect with Dr Katherine Goldberg Dr Katherine works with horse owners through Horses First Stewardship, helping people navigate horse care, feeding, track systems and those tricky situations where you know something needs to change, but you’re not quite sure what to do next. Website: ⁠https://www.horsesfirststewardship.com⁠   Email: ⁠[email protected] 

Why is it that we can be told something is better for our horse... and still find it incredibly hard to change what we do?In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, Dr Nerida is joined again by Dr Katherine Goldberg, veterinarian and social worker, to turn the microscope away from the horse for a moment and onto the humans making the decisions.Because improving horse welfare and horse nutrition isn’t always as simple as giving people better information. Human behaviour is messy. We have habits, beliefs, identities, fears, practical limitations and social pressures, and sometimes the benefits of staying exactly where we are feel bigger than the benefits of changing, even when the science is telling us otherwise. Dr Katherine walks us through the psychology of behaviour change, including readiness for change, decisional balance and why some people simply aren’t ready to hear a new message yet. And then there’s information overload: the vet says one thing, the trainer says another, Facebook says something else again, and suddenly doing nothing feels easier than working out who to believe.If you’ve ever wondered why you or the horse people around you resist change, why better information isn’t always enough, or why knowing better doesn’t automatically mean doing better, this episode is for you.Part 2 continues next week.Connect with Dr Katherine GoldbergDr Katherine works with horse owners through Horses First Stewardship, helping people navigate horse care, feeding, track systems and those tricky situations where you know something needs to change, but you’re not quite sure what to do next. Website: https://www.horsesfirststewardship.com  Email: [email protected]

Bentley had been a healthy horse for years, until an injury, prolonged antibiotic treatment and a cascade of gut problems changed everything. Persistent colic, abdominal pain, diarrhoea, gastric ulcers and gas eventually led us to look more closely at his hindgut microbiome.In this episode, Dr Nerida shares Bentley’s roller-coaster ride case study, from microbiome testing and low microbial diversity, through increasing dietary fibre diversity and two faecal microbiota transplants (FMT), to the gradual return of a comfortable, happy horse. We also look at free faecal water, faecal pH, vitamin B2, fibre-fermenting bacteria and what Bentley’s before-and-after microbiome results might tell us about equine dysbiosis, gut health and colic risk. It’s a brilliant example of just how complex the horse hindgut is, and how much we still have to learn about rebuilding a disrupted microbiome. Have a listen and be sure to hang on for the highs and the lows of Bentley’s story ❤️Big thanks to Bentley's beautiful owner Saskia for allowing us to their incredible story! 🙏🏼🥰

When it comes to fuelling performance, muscle glycogen and grain feeding get most of the attention, but that’s only half of the story.In this episode, Dr Nerida breaks down the dual fuel tank theory of performance horse nutrition: the finite store of muscle glycogen used for speed and high-intensity work, and the continuous supply of energy in the form of volatile fatty acids (VFAs) produced via fibre fermentation in the hindgut.We explore how these two fuel systems work together, how forage is an essential performance fuel, how the VFA acetate contributes directly to working muscle energy, and why overfeeding grain can undermine the hindgut fuel system that helps horses conserve glycogen for when they really need it.If you feed a racehorse, eventer, polo horse, endurance horse or other high-level athlete, this episode offers a different way to think about the way you structure your diets around forage and grain, to maximise muscle glycogen, gut health and performance.This episode is proudly brought to you by EquiGI's microbiom analysis, order a test kit at https://www.equigi.com 📲 Download the MyHappy.Horse nutrition app to check your horse’s energy intake and build better, more balanced performance horse diets  https://apps.apple.com/au/app/myhappy-horse/id6633422324 💛 Follow the podcast for more practical, science-based horse nutrition. And we’d love you to share this episode with a fellow performance horse owner or trainer to help them feed for better performance.

Has your horse suddenly become anxious, spooky, reactive or unpredictable... despite being normally calm and sensible?In this episode, Dr Nerida explores how perennial ryegrass mycotoxins can affect horse behaviour, coordination and performance. Learn about lolitrem B and ergovaline, the toxins associated with ryegrass staggers, tremors, hypersensitivity, exaggerated startle responses, heat intolerance and dramatic behavioural changes.We also look at when perennial ryegrass pasture and hay pose the greatest risk, how quickly horses may improve once exposure stops, and whether mycotoxin binders can actually help.If your horse seems to have had a sudden “personality transplant”, their pasture or hay may be worth a closer look and this episode is definitely worth a listen!Testing pasture or hay for perennial ryegrass toxinsAustralia: Southern Scientific Services, Hamilton VIC – pasture toxin testing including lolitrem B and ergovaline. Phone 0408 363 061. Contact the laboratory before collecting/sending samples for current sampling instructions.USA: Oregon State University Endophyte Service Laboratory – quantitative testing for lolitrem B and ergovaline in pasture, hay and feed. https://emt.oregonstate.edu/endophyte-lab  📲 For help balancing your horse's diet, download the MyHappy.Horse App https://apps.apple.com/au/app/myhappy-horse/id6633422324  💖 If you found this episode helpful, please follow the Happy Horse Nutrition Podcast and  share it with a horse owning friend who is struggling with their horse's behaviour.🌟 And we'd love you to leave us a rating and review, it helps us help more horse owners to find practical, science-based nutrition advice.

How high can the starch content of clover really get? Can lupins be too high in protein? And does adding lots of different fibre sources actually help your horse’s hindgut microbiome?In this Q&A episode, Dr Nerida and Orla unpack a mix of practical horse nutrition questions, including clover and insulin dysregulation, faba beans and resistant starch, high-protein diets, gastric ulcers, and why even a skinny horse can still be metabolically at risk.They also explore one of the biggest emerging areas in equine nutrition: forage diversity and the gut microbiome and how much ingredient variety may be enough to make a meaningful difference to the microbiome.Plenty of practical feeding advice, a few fun rabbit holes on human and ruminant nutrition, and one genuinely scary clover statistic! 📲 To check your horse’s diet and KNOW you are feeding right, download the MyHappy.Horse app ⁠https://apps.apple.com/au/app/myhappy-horse/id6633422324⁠💛 We’d love if you would leave us a rating, follow the show and share this episode with a friend, it truly helps us get this information in front of more horse owners.🩺 And if you’d like to get in touch with Orla, [email protected]