❄️ Frost and How It Can Affect Your Horse's Grass🌱

Did you know that after a cold, frosty night, the sugar levels in the grass our horses are eating can actually spike? 🥶

This happens because during the day, grass uses sunlight to make sugar through a process called photosynthesis. ☀️ Through the night, it uses the sugar it stored during the day for energy to survive without daylight. By early morning, most of that sugar has normally been used up, and then the whole process starts again when daylight returns.

The problem comes when we have a cold, frosty night followed by a sunny day. ❄️☀️

When it gets very cold, the grass goes into a sort of stasis. It uses the bare minimum amount of energy to survive, which means it doesn’t use up the sugar overnight in the way it normally would.

Then the sun comes back out the following day and the process starts again, with the grass making more sugar while much of the previous day’s sugar is still sitting there.

If we have several frosty nights followed by bright, sunny days, those sugars can keep building day after day until they reach problematic levels. ⚠️

For some horses, that can be enough to trigger laminitis. It can also contribute to inflammation, weight gain, elevated behaviour, excitability and horses suddenly becoming much harder to handle. 🐴

This is what catches so many owners out in the middle of winter. The paddock looks short, frosty and fairly harmless, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the grass is safe.

Feeding more low-sugar hay during these periods can help reduce how much grass your horse eats and lower the risks. 🌾 Break feeding, bringing horses into a dry lot, restricting access to the highest-risk areas or using a track system can also be really useful ways of managing their intake.

I hope this helps to explain why frosty nights can be a worry for us horse owners. 💙

For more of our Winter Wonder horse articles, check out the blog on our website. ❄️