My Opinions

Our idea of “performance” is shaped almost entirely by our own experience—and our own comfort zone.
Look at modern long-distance hiking guides and you’ll see recommended daily distances of 10–15 miles. Sounds reasonable. Sensible. Civilized.
 

Now fast-forward backwards for a moment.
In a report about the first mountain guides in Switzerland, Reinhard Messner noted that around 1870 a normal daily hiking distance was about 40 miles. Not in ultralight trail runners, mind you—but in heavy, iron-clad boots, carrying roughly 60 pounds of rope. Perspective is a wonderful (and slightly uncomfortable) thing.
 

Our horses, meanwhile, have not changed much at all.
A robust horse is still perfectly capable of walking 20 miles at night while grazing, and then covering another 30 miles during the day—nearly 50 miles total.
The average rider, however, feels heroically accomplished after 20 miles in the saddle.

This difference becomes important when we talk about feeding.

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We usually calculate feed based on what a horse needs to maintain basic bodily functions—about 1–2% of its healthy body weight. Then we add extra for “work.”
But here’s the catch: what we feel is hard work and what the horse experiences as hard work are not the same thing.

For the horse, “working hard” does not mean 15 miles of relaxed trail riding on flat ground.
Real effort usually starts at 20–30 miles, depending on terrain, footing, elevation, and conditions and the weight it has to carry.
That’s why there is no reason to double your horse’s rations unless it has actually done 20 miles or more in demanding terrain.

When people talk about “performance feed,” they often mean fancy labels: fragrant, oat-free, designer blends. These products are excellent at increasing profits for the manufacturer.
They are usually unnecessary, often counterproductive, and in the worst cases, outright harmful.

The best performance feed for horses is still the simplest one: oats or barley.
They provide an excellent combination of amino acids and proteins that the horse’s body can actually use.

Let’s look at the math.

If an 800-pound horse covers 30 miles in a day, it needs roughly 12 pounds of hay to replace the calories it has burned.
That’s about 150% of normal maintenance requirements.

To eat 12 pounds of hay, the horse needs around 480 minutes—that’s 8 hours of chewing.
To give the horse more time to rest, we can substitute, for example, 2 pounds of oats, which saves about 4 pounds of hay, and roughly 1⅓ hours of eating time.
With 4 pounds of oats, the time saved is closer to 2½ hours.

There is, of course, a trade-off.

Oats and barley are converted into sugar relatively quickly, meaning their energy is released fast and fades sooner.
Hay, on the other hand, provides long-lasting energy.
Think of it as the difference between a chocolate bar and a proper serving of carbs, oil, or fat.

That’s why I let the horses graze or eat hay first, and then give the oats on top of the hay or directly on the ground.
The idea is simple: the horse eats hay or grass together with the oats, slowing things down and keeping the system stable.

Make sure your horse gets the chance to graze every 2–4 hours for 20–30 minutes, so its stomach always has something to work on.
At night, we fence the horses into an area of about 120 × 120 feet for up to three horses.
If grazing is poor, we simply double that space.

Our mustangs here in the U.S. have no trouble maintaining their weight this way for over three months on the trail. 

The only supplement we regularly give on long trail rides—especially when the horses have been sweating heavily—is salt or mineral feed.
We dissolve it in water and pour it over the hay.

And no, it does not need to come from the Himalayas.