In summer it can certainly become a challenge to keep cool. Other than purchasing portable misting fans or hiring a loin cloth-clad individual to fan your horses with palm leaves, what other strategies can be used to keep horses cool in warm weather? Small tweaks to your horse’s diet can reduce his internal combustion.

Some horse feeds produce more heat than others while being digested. For example, cereal hays and chaff produce much more heat during fermentation in a horse’s hindgut than barley, oats, or corn being digested in the small intestine.

In addition, protein digestion produces as much as six times more heat than starches (like corn and barley). Fat, on the other hand, produces very little heat because enzymes break fat down in the small intestine (rather than being fermented in the hindgut, like hay).