A horse should eat between 1.5% and 2% of its body weight in forage every day. For a typical 1,000-pound horse, that works out to 15 to 20 pounds of dry hay daily. This is the baseline for an idle, healthy adult horse at maintenance, and it shifts depending on workload, life stage, and body condition.
The Standard Rule: Percentage of Body Weight
The 1.5% to 2% guideline refers to dry matter, which is the weight of the forage minus its moisture content. Since dry hay is roughly 85% to 90% dry matter, the numbers are close enough that most owners can simply weigh their hay and use those figures directly. A 1,200-pound horse needs 18 to 24 pounds of hay per day. A 900-pound horse needs 13.5 to 18 pounds.
Horses that are turned out on good pasture and grazing freely will often consume toward the upper end of that range or beyond, naturally eating 2% to 2.5% of their body weight. This is normal. Horses are trickle feeders designed to eat small amounts almost continuously, and free-choice forage mimics what their digestive systems evolved to handle.
The Absolute Minimum: 1% of Body Weight
No horse should receive less than 1% of its body weight in forage per day. For a 1,000-pound horse, that’s 10 pounds. This floor is typically reserved only for horses in heavy work that are getting a large portion of their calories from grain, or for overweight horses on a supervised weight-loss plan. Dropping below this threshold raises the risk of gastric ulcers, colic, and behavioral problems like wood chewing. A horse’s stomach produces acid around the clock, and without a steady supply of forage to buffer it, that acid damages the stomach lining.
If you’re restricting forage for weight management, staying at or just above that 1% mark and spreading feedings across the day (or using a slow-feeder net) helps keep the gut functioning and the horse comfortable. The goal is to extend eating time, not eliminate it.
Adjustments for Working Horses
Horses in regular work burn more calories, but forage should still form the foundation of their diet. The additional energy comes from concentrates (grain or commercial feeds), not from replacing hay. Horses in moderate exercise typically need about 5 to 8 pounds of concentrate per day on top of free-choice, high-quality forage. Horses in heavy exercise, like racehorses or upper-level eventers, may need 8 to 10 pounds of concentrate daily.
Even at the highest performance levels, the recommendation is to offer free-choice forage whenever possible. Forage keeps the hindgut populated with the microbes that drive fermentation and nutrient absorption. When forage drops too low relative to grain, the microbial balance shifts, gut pH falls, and the risk of digestive upset climbs sharply. A good rule of thumb: forage should never make up less than half the total diet by weight, and for most horses it should be far more than that.
Pregnant and Lactating Mares
Mares in late pregnancy and early lactation have significantly higher energy demands, but the increase should come primarily from better-quality forage and carefully added concentrates rather than simply piling on more hay. Total dry matter intake for a lactating mare can reach 2.5% to 3% of body weight. High-quality grass hay or a grass-alfalfa mix provides the extra calories and calcium these mares need, with concentrate added to fill any remaining gap. The same body-weight percentage approach applies: weigh the forage, calculate the percentage, and adjust from there.
Senior Horses With Dental Problems
Older horses with worn, broken, or missing teeth often can’t chew long-stem hay well enough to swallow and digest it. You’ll see them dropping partially chewed wads of hay (called “quidding”), which is a clear sign they need a forage alternative. Pelleted or cubed hay, soaked in water until soft, is one of the most common replacements. Chopped hay and soaked beet pulp also work well.
Complete feeds, designed to replace both hay and grain in a single product, are another option. When fed at roughly 1.5% of the horse’s body weight per day, these products meet all nutritional requirements without any long-stem forage. The key challenge is splitting that volume into multiple small meals throughout the day, since a senior horse eating only complete feed can finish quickly and then spend hours with an empty stomach.
Why Haylage Requires More Weight
If you feed haylage (fermented, wrapped forage) instead of dry hay, you need to feed significantly more of it by weight. Dry hay runs around 85% to 90% dry matter, while haylage can be as low as 50% to 70% dry matter. The rest is moisture, which has no nutritional value.
To hit the same forage intake, multiply your horse’s body weight in kilograms by 15 to get the grams of dry matter needed, then divide by the haylage’s dry matter percentage. A 500-kilogram horse (about 1,100 pounds) on haylage at 70% dry matter would need roughly 10.7 kilograms, or about 23.5 pounds, of haylage per day just to meet the minimum. Compare that to about 8.3 kilograms (18 pounds) of dry hay for the same horse. If you’re switching from hay to haylage and don’t adjust the weight upward, your horse could be getting far less forage than you think.
Weigh Your Hay, Don’t Guess
Feeding “by the flake” is one of the most common mistakes horse owners make, and it can create a surprising swing in daily intake. Penn State Extension documented flakes from the same bale weighing 3.2 pounds, 4.5 pounds, and 4.6 pounds. Across different batches of hay, the variation is even larger. One cutting might produce 5-pound flakes while another produces 7-pound flakes. If you’re feeding five flakes a day, that’s the difference between 25 pounds and 35 pounds of hay: a 10-pound daily gap that can push a horse toward obesity or leave it underfed.
A hanging luggage scale or a bathroom scale (weigh yourself holding the hay, then subtract your weight) costs very little and takes seconds. Weigh several flakes from each new load of hay to get an average, and recalibrate whenever you switch to a new batch. The same principle applies to grain: a scoop of pelleted feed, a scoop of beet pulp, and a scoop of sweet feed can all look like the same volume but weigh anywhere from 1.4 to 2.5 pounds. Feeding by weight eliminates the guesswork.