Yellow: with caution
Rarely, dry and never moldy. Bread is not poisonous to horses. But it consists primarily of wheat flour and therefore starch, writes horse nutritionist Shannon Pratt-Phillips on TheHorse.com. There is nothing that hay and mineral feed cannot do better for your horse's nutrition.
Why the traffic light is yellow
The starch in bread is broken down into glucose in the small intestine. According to Pratt-Phillips, some horses experience a short rush of sugar, while in others it can contribute to insulin resistance. What the small intestine cannot manage moves further into the large intestine and ferments there. This creates a lot of acid and gas, in the worst case with colic or laminitis as a result.
How much starch a horse can digest per meal is not exactly clear. Experts Georg and Harris recommend feeding no more than 2g of starch per kilogram of body weight per meal. Bread goes on top if your horse is already fed concentrated feed.
What you should pay attention to
- Never moldy bread: Moldy bread can be fatal for horses, warns the Swiss observer. If in doubt, it belongs in the trash, not in the feeding trough.
- Small quantity: The observer mentions a maximum of 100 g per day for dried bread as an exception.
- No bread if you have EMS, obesity and laminitis: The observer advises against it completely for overweight horses, horses with equine metabolic syndrome and horses at risk of deer.
- Not a substitute for concentrated feed: According to Pratt-Phillips, bread is not balanced; it lacks, among other things, protein, calcium, zinc and vitamins A, D and E.
- Pay attention to ingredients: According to Pratt-Phillips, poppy seeds or chocolate in pastries can lead to positive doping tests in competition horses. It's best to just use plain bread without filling.
What to do if your horse has eaten bread?
A dry edge of bread is not an emergency. It becomes critical if your horse has eaten a large amount, such as a whole bag of stale bread, or if the bread was moldy. Then call the vet's office, tell them approximately how much it was, and watch your horse closely. If it seems restless or has a stomach ache, don't wait.
If you see signs of colic or laminitis, call your veterinarian or emergency veterinary service immediately.
Read more
- Are horses allowed to eat sugar cubes?
- Can horses eat oats?
- What can horses eat? The overview
- Horse weight calculator: How heavy is your horse?
- Buying a horse: the checklist
Quellen, abgerufen am 05.11.2026: TheHorse.com, Bread for My Horses? (Shannon Pratt-Phillips, PhD); IVIS, AAEP Annual Convention 2007, How to Minimize Gastrointestinal Disease Associated With Carbohydrate Nutrition in Horses (R. J. Geor, P. A. Harris); Beobachter, Pferde: Ist hartes Brot ungesund? (Esther Geisser)
