Can Horses Eat Oats?

I’m always looking for ways to change up my horse’s diet.

They’re creatures of habit, I know, and I still provide them with the necessary staples to keep them happy, but I still think it’s fun and interesting to get them trying new things as much as possible.

One thing I like to provide when I can is cereal grains, since they’re always readily available, really healthy and seem to be very popular whenever I feed them to my horses.

Oats were one I’d never tried before, though, and I always like to do my research first, so I decided to look into it.

So, can horses eat oats?

Yes, horses love oats. Oats are considered one of the safest and most popular cereal grains to feed to horses, and have more bulk per nutrient content compared to other cereal grains. Moderation is always key, though, and cereal grains should only represent a small part of their diet.

The short answer to the question is yes, then, but there is always room for caveats.

Ultimately, the most important thing in your horse’s diet is variety on top of their ordinary grass, hay and forage.

If you keep that in mind, they’ll always be happy.

Let’s look into it a bit more.

Are oats good for horses?

Oats are a great source of nutrition for horses.

They’re packed with all sorts of beneficial nutrients, and your horse will love them, too.

Oats provide a lot of fuel in the form of starch.

Horses need a lot of energy to power their large bodies, so oats are great for that.

They’re uniquely energising.

Oats are also rich in protein, oil, and amino acids, which help your horse maintain healthy muscles and joints.

Again, a horse has a lot of weight to carry when moving around, so having strong joints is really important for them on the whole.

Indeed, oats have traditionally been one of the main ways that horse trainers feed their horses.

Some are reluctant to switch to commercial feeds, since oats are more or less nutritionally complete for a horse.

Most importantly, oats are very high in fiber, which is really the essential part of a horse’s diet.

While many do feed their horses on an all-oats diet, for my money, hay is the better option.

It provides greater fiber content, but it can come down to personal preference. See which your horse prefers!

Can horses eat Quaker oats?

Oats that are fed to horses are usually fed whole, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that you cannot feed Quaker oats to horses.

These are the kinds of oats that most of us are familiar with in our day to day lives: porridge oats!

I know that I from time to time feed them some Quaker oats if I can’t get anything else that day.

Quaker oats are fine, the only major difference being that they are not encased in the fibrous hull or sheath which oats typically are.

This does mean that the kind of oats we would eat have a much lower fiber content, so you do lose a lot of the essential nutrients; that said, there’s nothing unsafe about it.

For long term, though, you should buy formulated horse oats, or at least whole oats.

Can horses eat oats for humans?

The same mostly applies to any oats designed for people to eat.

They’re deshelled, taken out of their hulls, meaning they’re not quite as nutrient rich as they could be.

That doesn’t mean they aren’t safe, though, as a general rule.

Just make sure they are whole oats, and that there isn’t a great deal of additives or chemicals designed for human consumption.

Furthermore, you should try to get in the habit of purchasing specific horse oats, as I said, rather than buying human oats.

As far as quantity goes, you’ll definitely make a financial saving in the long run.

How much oats should a horse eat daily?

This is largely a matter of debate.

To get my own view out of the way,

I think horses are better off on a diet of grass, hay, and forage, with other treats alongside that to change up their diets and keep it balanced and interesting.

Oats would represent a treat in this diet, then, perhaps once or twice a week on top of their regular feed.

That said, many horse trainers do feed their horses on an exclusive oat diet, so it is not entirely without merit to do so. Oats are pretty much nutritionally complete, except that plant matter like grass or hay does contain larger amounts of fiber.

If you are sticking to a grain diet, then somewhere from 2 to 2.5 pounds per day for every 100 pounds of your horse’s weight.

Things like age and health will also factor in, but this is a good rule of thumb.

Oats are a really great option to feed to your horses, then, and they’re full of all sorts of great nutrients and vitamins.

Oats, compared with other cereal grains, are unique in that they could make up a larger part of their diet, but for my money you should still rely more heavily on grass and hay.

Oats are bit more nutritionally complex, and this can cause problems, but overall, oats are a fantastic option for almost any horse.