72. Rethinking Performance Horse Nutrition: Forage, Grain and the Dual Fuel Tanks

When it comes to fuelling performance, muscle glycogen and grain feeding get most of the attention, but that’s only half of the story.In this episode, Dr Nerida breaks down the dual fuel tank theory of performance horse nutrition: the finite store of muscle glycogen used for speed and high-intensity work, and the continuous supply of energy in the form of volatile fatty acids (VFAs) produced via fibre fermentation in the hindgut.We explore how these two fuel systems work together, how forage is an essential performance fuel, how the VFA acetate contributes directly to working muscle energy, and why overfeeding grain can undermine the hindgut fuel system that helps horses conserve glycogen for when they really need it.If you feed a racehorse, eventer, polo horse, endurance horse or other high-level athlete, this episode offers a different way to think about the way you structure your diets around forage and grain, to maximise muscle glycogen, gut health and performance.This episode is proudly brought to you by EquiGI's microbiom eanalysis, order a test kit at https://www.equigi.com 📲 Download the MyHappy.Horse nutrition app to check your horse’s energy intake and build better, more balanced performance horse diets  https://apps.apple.com/au/app/myhappy-horse/id6633422324 💛 Follow the podcast for more practical, science-based horse nutrition. And we’d love you to share this episode with a fellow performance horse owner or trainer to help them feed for better performance.