Wild horses are always on the move to new feeding grounds. The diet of Central European horses includes 150 to 200 plant species. The horses eat leaves, fruits, buds, bark and roots.
We can no longer offer our horses this diversity and variety. The most common supply today, species-poor grass pasture and hay from grass fields, is unnatural and therefore cannot be species-appropriate. This one-sided diet impoverishes the intestinal flora. We know from numerous investigations and observations of horses kept close to nature, such as the Dülmener horses in the Merfelder Bruch or nature conservation projects in which horses are used to care for the landscape, that horses not only eat grass and herbs, but also graze on trees, hedges and dwarf shrubs. Horses have long intestines, and their digestion is designed to extract energy from crude fiber. The supply of energy-rich grass, plus the oversupply of grain, without any special performance requirements, create imbalances, change the intestinal environment and put a strain on the metabolism. This one-sided and high-energy diet disturbs the balance and reduces the diversity of bacteria in the intestine. Restoring such a disturbed balance requires species-rich feed mixtures with many nutrient components and plant active ingredients.
The diverse intestinal flora and the variety of food components should be balanced, they are mutually dependent. It also follows from this that no single food or plant substance, but also no germ can and must not achieve a damaging dominance. The food is broken down in the microbiome of the intestine, the intestinal bacteria form vital enzymes, vitamins and amino acids.
70% of immune activity takes place in the gut. Therefore, the supply of herbs is not only a special nutrition for the horse, it serves in particular to maintain or regenerate the desired intestinal flora and stimulates the metabolism.
