In my 33 years as an equine nutritionist, I’ve fielded a wide variety of questions about what horses can and should eat. My answers, of course, are grounded in science and research. However, when the editors of EQUUS contacted me to ask about the practice of feeding meat to horses, I drew information not only from those fields of inquiry but another adjacent one: history—specifically, historical research I conducted at a very special place: the National Sporting Library & Museum (NSLM) in Middleburg, Virginia.

Nestled in the foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, the NSLM preserves books, documents and art that chronicle and celebrate traditional “country pursuits.” In addition to activities like shooting and fly-fishing, these pursuits include many equestrian sports, such as steeplechasing, foxhunting and polo. The library itself contains about 20,000 books and periodicals, including thousands on general horsemanship and horse care. The NSLM isn’t a lending library, but visitors can view most of books on site. Then there is a Rare Books Room, a trove of original texts dating between the 1500s and 1800s.

I’m fortunate that the NSLM is only a half-hour from my home, and I’ve completed three John H. Daniels Fellowships there so far. During each, I went to the library every day for four months, researching the history of horse feeds, supplements and laminitis treatments. In the hundreds of hours that I spent in the Rare Books Room, I unearthed fascinating information and often had to reconcile my modern experiences with ancient texts.

Secrets of the Rare Books Room

I took copious notes on the subjects I was investigating or simply found interesting. One topic in the latter group was the forms of protein that were sometimes added to equine feed buckets through the ages. In fact, a surprising amount of information on the practice of feeding meat to horses is available. And much of it challenges modern sensibilities about equine health and nutrition. For starters, a casual reader of books about horse care published in England during the 16th through 18th centuries could easily have the mistaken impression that horses of those eras were fed meat daily.

“Hard meat”

For example, in The True Method of Dieting (1721) William Gibson tells us, “Those horses which are newly come from grass, ought also to be prepared, by letting them stand so long upon hard meat, until their bodies are perfectly accustom’d and familiarized to it.” The truth is that the word “meat” (sometimes spelled “meate”) had a different meaning in those days. The Oxford English Dictionary defines meat as “food, as nourishment for people and fodder for animals; esp. solid food, as opposed to drink.”

That is not to say that meat or fish were not fed to horses in some countries. In John Stewart’s 1845 book, Stable Economy: A Treatise on the Management of Horses in Relation to Stabling, Grooming, Feeding, Watering, and Working, the author’s long list of feed stuffs for horses includes “flesh” (possibly using the term “flesh” to distinguish it from “meat”).

“Flesh”

Under flesh, Stewart starts by stating the “structure of the horse does not seem adapted to the assimilation of animal food. But some seem to have no dislike to it. And it is well to know that it may, to a certain extent, supply the place of corn.” The author offers stories of horses “greedily” consuming blood, and preferring meat (mutton, beef, veal, poultry and bacon) over grains.

Indeed, Stewart goes on to describe an experiment he conducted with a stallion known to be a flesh-eater. The author placed meat (roast beef and raw bacon) in one manger and oats in another. Then he led the horse up to them and allowed him to choose. The stallion immediately devoured the meat and only after eating the last morsel turned his attention to the oat-filled manger. Stewart also reports that same horse was able to finish off a leg of mutton in a matter of minutes and “roasted meat was his favourite dish.”

“Raw as well as boiled”

What’s more, Stewart relates that the “wealthy people of Mejdid frequently give flesh to their horses, raw as well as boiled, together with the offal of the table.” He describes a man in Hamah, Syria, who said “he had often given his horses washed meat after a journey to make them endure it with greater facility.”

Not surprisingly, the rigors of war pushed the boundaries of acceptable fare for horses. The historical record shows that during military campaigns when forage and grain were sparse, calvary horses were sometimes fed meat. One such example is found in an officer’s manual from the British War Office written by the Royal Army Veterinary Corps (Anon, 1908). The manual describes how meat was integrated into the diets of warhorses during the siege of Metz (a battle fought during the Franco-Prussian War) by cutting it into small pieces and rolling it in bran.

Stewart also relates that “In the East Indies, meat boiled to rags, to which is added some type of grains and butter, is made into balls and forced down the horse’s throats. Also, sheeps’ heads, during a campaign, are boiled for horses in that country”.

Delving further into the literature, feeding animal products to horses appears to be much more common in the Middle East and India. In 1911, Lieutenant-Colonel D. C. Phillott translated an Indian veterinary journal called Faras-Nama-E Rangin or The Book of the Horse. He tells us that “Indian country breeds will eat and thrive on food that would probably kill English horses.”

Locusts, fish, and dates

Phillott writes that locusts, fish and dates were fed to cattle and horses in the Persian Gulf. He also notes that meat was a protein source for horses in Central Asia.

Unusual remedies

This veterinary manual describes many fascinating remedies. In addition to frequent mentions of turmeric, ginger and a little elephant dung, a few remedies prescribed animal parts.

From The Book of the Horse: “To make an old horse young again, get a bullock’s head [a goat head and eyes] and roast it in hot ashes. Separate all the flesh from the bone and squash and mix with the brains in a big pot of water (degcha) till of the consistency of thin porridge (harira). Boil, with a good store of water, over a slow fire. As the fat and grease rises skim it off and put it aside in a pot… Feed like this for five consecutive days, and the good effects will last a whole year. Feed for longer than this, and the results will delight you.”

For “hard dung … stuck in the twist of the intestines [impaction colic],” the manual recommends ten quarts of thick soup made from “the heads and shanks of four goats or so.”

There was also a protocol for horses that survived tetanus. “Procure a fowl, remove its beak and shanks, and pound the whole carcasse, guts and all, to a soft mass in a mortar. Then add [four pounds of kidney beans, boiled and mashed], 4 ounces of pepper-corns, and a quart of sharab [native wine or brandy]. Give this quantity every evening for forty days.”

Reading this I had many thoughts. One was that I am glad that I was not a horse in the Indian cavalry!

A pony that didn’t know how to graze

Not only has meat been fed to horses throughout history, but fish as well. In his 1889 manual The Family Horse: its Stabling, Care and Feeding: A practical manual for horse-keepers, George Martin mentions horses in Iceland and on the Shetland Islands subsisting on dried fish during the winter.

In fact, Martin reports that he “once saw a diminutive pony, which had recently arrived from one of the smallest and bleakest of the Shetland Islands. Its food had consisted almost entirely of dried fish… It was interesting to observe the puzzled expression of the shaggy little beast, as it watched its new companions nipping the grass.”

A pony that doesn’t know how to graze may be hard to imagine today. Yet horsekeepers of yore probably would find it odd that our modern equine feed rations don’t incorporate animal proteins, seafood or other foodstuffs.

Perhaps the greatest lesson is that—in any era—people feed horses in the best way they know how and, by and large, horses do just fine.

To read about a modern day horse owner’s experiment with century-old feed mixtures, click here.