In this replay episode, we are bringing back Dr Nerida’s chat with Professor Brian Nielsen on bone health in horses, because the ideas in this conversation have huge implications for soundness, durability, performance and long-term welfare.

If you have ever been told that long, slow work builds strong bone, or that the safest path is always to wait until horses are skeletally mature before exposing them to speed, this episode may really make you stop and think.

Dr Brian explains how bone actually adapts to exercise, why turnout and even very small amounts of high-speed work matter so much, how confinement can reduce bone mass, and why this is such an important issue for young horses in particular. It is a fascinating conversation that challenges some deeply held beliefs in horse management and racing, while also being incredibly practical.

This was one of the standout episodes from the early days of the podcast, and now that many more of you are listening, it feels like the right time to bring it back.

If you care about raising, training or managing horses for long-term soundness, this episode is well worth your time 🌟

🧪Find the full scientific review here: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/13/5/789

💛 If you’re looking for more practical help with nutrition and managing your horse, have a look at MyHappy.Horse, our app designed to help horse owners make more confident feeding decisions. https://www.myhappy.horse

Is canola oil really as bad as people say… or has it simply been one of the most unfairly demonised ingredients in horse nutrition?

In this episode of the Happy Horse Nutrition Podcast, Dr Nerida is joined by Orla for a fascinating and surprisingly fun deep dive into the real story behind canola oil. They unpack where the wild claims came from, including the viral email that helped fuel decades of fear, and separate old rapeseed oil facts from modern canola oil fiction.

Dr Nerida and Orla talk about erucic acid, GMO confusion, the strange myths linking canola to everything from blindness to mad cow disease, and why scary misinformation can stick so powerfully in people’s minds. They also bring it back to what really matters for horse owners: where canola oil fits in equine diets, how its omega-3 and omega-6 profile compares with other oils, and why it can actually be a very useful and appropriate choice in the right situation.

If you have ever wondered whether canola oil is truly harmful, or whether this is another nutrition myth that has taken on a life of its own, this episode is for you.

Here is the full, crazy backstory canola oil email in case you’d like to read it: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/canola-oil/

If you are tired of guessing and would love a clearer picture of your own horse’s diet, come and see what we do at MyHappy.Horse. Download the app and start feeding with more confidence and a whole lot less worry.

Download MyHappy.Horse (7-day free trial available):  https://apps.apple.com/app/myhappy-horse/id6633422324

Orla is back in the Q&A seat… and she’s come armed 😅 In this episode of the Happy Horse Nutrition Podcast, Orla has curated a stack of listener questions (and kept Dr Nerida completely in the dark), so it’s a fast-paced, practical chat that bounces from industry ethics to real-life feeding decisions you’ll recognise instantly.

We start with a big one: what actually makes someone a “nutritionist” in the horse world, and why that label can be meaningful… or totally meaningless. Nerida unpacks the difference between qualifications, experience, and the uncomfortable reality of “armchair experts” giving confident advice that can cost horses their health.

From there, the conversation gets wonderfully hearty:

• Raw/cracked grains (especially corn): why this can be a hindgut wrecking ball when fed inappropriately, and what “gold standard” feeding looks like when welfare and performance matter.
• Hair analysis: when it might be useful (think toxins/heavy metals), why it often isn’t reliable for everyday nutrition decisions, and why diet analysis beats guessing, every time.
• Metabolic ponies + ulcers: why so many EMS “good doers” end up with serious gastric ulcers, and the management patterns that quietly set them up to fail (hello, long hours without forage).
• Orphan foals: Nerida shares a practical, “doable in the real world” approach to feeding orphan foals, including a simple milk-mixing recipe and how frequency of feeds can make or break a foal’s gut.

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by conflicting advice, marketing masquerading as science, or you just want a clearer path to feeding with confidence—this one’s for you. 🐴💛

Here is the link to the 'How to feed an orphan foal' article from Dr Nerida: https://www.myhappy.horse/blog-posts/rearing-the-orphan-foal

Want to analyse your horse’s diet properly (without the stress)? Download MyHappy.Horse here: https://apps.apple.com/app/myhappy-horse/id6633422324

And if you enjoyed the Q&A chaos with Orla 🤪🧡, we'd be so grateful if you'd leave a quick review on Apple or Spotify, it helps other horse owners find the show 🙏🏼

In this episode of the Happy Horse Nutrition Podcast, Dr Nerida is joined by Joanna Lepiarczyk from Horses Explained for a fascinating and deeply important conversation about horse mental health, equine behaviour, and the role that nutrition and feeding systems play in shaping a horse’s emotional wellbeing.

We explore why behaviour is so often a form of communication, why a quiet compliant horse is not always a happy horse, and how chronic stress can affect a horse far more profoundly than many owners realise. Joanna shares her perspective on horse depression, the emotional cost of restricted forage and limited choice, and why the foundations of a good horse life are surprisingly simple: forage, freedom, and friends.

We also talk about the importance of constant access to something to chew, forage variety, movement, predictability, agency, and why these are not “nice extras” but core building blocks for a horse’s physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing.

This is a thoughtful, compassionate, and at times confronting conversation that will encourage you to look beyond behaviour and think more deeply about how your horse is actually experiencing daily life.

If you care about horse welfare, equine mental and emotional health, feeding management, and giving horses the conditions they need to truly thrive, this is an episode you won’t want to miss. 🐴

🌟 Joanna Lepiarczyk is an equine behaviour expert, classical riding coach, and the author of Understanding Horse Depression, with a focus on equine mental health, horse personality, and helping riders understand horses more deeply.

🧡 You can connect with Joanna at https://www.horsesexplained.com and follow Joanna’s work @horsesexplained

Joanna’s favourite book is ‘Training Showjumpers’ by Anthony Paalman

📲 To find out more about what we do here at MyHappy.Horse you can go to https://www.myhappy.horse or download the app (7-day free trial availabile): https://apps.apple.com/app/myhappy-horse/id6633422324

Grains are one of those ingredients that get demonised in the horse world… or are fed completely on autopilot. And neither is an ideal situation.

In this episode of the Happy Horse Nutrition Podcast, Dr Nerida digs deep into her PhD research and explains why grain itself isn’t bad — it’s more like a power tool. Used well, in the right horse, grains are incredibly useful. Used carelessly (wrong type, wrong form, wrong amount), and grains can rapidly destroy hindgut health… and in severe cases, even cause death.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why the real issue is starch, and why starch must be digested in the small intestine (and not dumped into the hindgut)
• How uncooked/poorly processed grains can drive hindgut acidosis, microbial dysbiosis, leaky gut, inflammation, behaviour changes, colic and laminitis risk
• Why cracking, grinding, and soaking don’t solve the core problem 
• What “cooked grain” actually means and why extrusion tends to win on digestibility
• Where oats fit and why uncooked corn/maize is a hard no!
• Which horses should avoid grain altogether (including insulin dysregulation/PPID/EMS, PSSM/tying up) vs when grain is genuinely helpful (including thoroughbred racehorses, high-performance athletes)

Grans are incredibly useful ingredients IF you know how to safely feed them. This episode helps you understand why grains are often unsafe AND how to make them safe to feed in appropriate situations.

📲 Want to see how your current feeding program stacks up for gut health? Pop your horse’s diet into MyHappy.Horse and check the gut health score (7-day free trial availabile): https://apps.apple.com/app/myhappy-horse/id6633422324

🌾 If this helped, share it with a horsey friend who’s feeding grain “because that’s what we’ve always done” — and hit follow so you don’t miss the next episode. 🐴💛

Track systems (perimeter grazing systems) can look deceptively simple… but when they’re designed well, they deliver things horses are wired for: friends, freedom, and forage… with extra movement built in.

In this episode, Dr Nerida is joined by the wonderful Dr Katherine Goldberg (DVM, LCSW), a veterinarian and clinical social worker,  to unpack what “species-appropriate husbandry” actually means in the real world, and why track systems aren’t just a “weight loss tool” for good doers, but a way we can help horses to live in a way that truly honours their needs. 

Dr Nerida and Dr Katherine talk about the concept of horses being behaviourally starving even when obese, the two welfare rules Katherine won’t budge on, and how meeting these basic needs changes behaviour, safety, gut health, and the horse–human relationship.

You’ll also get practical, immediately usable setup guidance on track width, why varying widths can create natural movement patterns, and how separating resources (water, hay, shelter) encourages that nomadic, forage-and-walk lifestyle horses evolved for. 

Dr Katherine is the most beautiful human, driven by the desire to help us all create better, happier, more species-appropriate lives for our equine friends in which our horse-human relationships and horse goals, whatever they may be, can flourish! If you’d like to get in contact with Dr Katherine, you can find her at [email protected]

And if you would like more information on what we do here at MyHappy.Horse you can find us over at https://www.myhappy.horse

Thanks so much for being here 💖💛

Free faecal water (also called free fecal liquid) is one of those horse problems that looks “not that bad” on paper… but how 'bad' is it? 🐴💦

In this episode of the Happy Horse Nutrition Podcast, Dr Nerida unpacks potential reasons why FFW is suddenly being talked about everywhere, from first hearing it at a conference in Dijon (2016) to seeing it dominate conversations at AAEP Denver (2025). And yes… she asks the uncomfortable question: is this another disease of modern management impacting an ancient gut?

You’ll learn:

• What FFW is 
• Why it’s likely multifactorial (forage changes, fibre variety, grain load & digestibility, sand irritation, ulcers, nitrates…)
• The practical “low-hanging fruit” steps to try first, in a logical order to help resolve FFW
• Why microbiome research can be misleading when it’s only measured at broad levels (and why species-level testing may be the next big breakthrough); and
• When to loop in your vet (sand assessment, ulcer scoping, more advanced options like faecal transplant)

If you’re dealing with FFW, this is your calm, evidence-informed roadmap to helping your horse.

As always, please follow the podcast so more horse owners can find this, and if it helped, share it with a friend (or your whole agistment chat 😉). 💛

💖 Want to see how your current feeding program stacks up for gut health? Pop your horse’s diet into MyHappy.Horse and check the gut health score (7-day free trial availabile): https://apps.apple.com/app/myhappy-horse/id6633422324

🦠 Want to know which species of microbes live in your FFW horse's gut, grab a test kit from Dr Belinda and EquiGI - https://www.equigi.com

What happens when your horses live on mostly straw for 10 days… and one of them decides to protest with full-blown diarrhoea? 😅 In this Q&A-style catch-up, Dr Nerida and Orla unpack a very relatable “whoops” moment and use it to teach one of the most overlooked fundamentals in horse gut health: fibre diversity.

They break down why straw is a very different beast to hay (hello, lignin), why some horses cope while others fall apart, and why “just add a product” isn’t always the smartest first move. From there, the conversation goes behind the scenes of the feed industry, mixed-species feed mills, the very real risk of ionophore contamination, and how to ask the right questions of manufacturers. Then it gets nerdy (in the best way) with least-cost vs set recipes, why crude protein can be misleading, and the lysine + leucine muscle-building “bricklayer and bricks” analogy you’ll love.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• Why restricting forage to one source can trigger loose manure/free faecal water in some horses
• Why gut “fixes in 3 hours” are usually not how physiology works (and when electrolytes can confuse the picture)
• How to read a feed label to spot vague “least-cost” ingredient wording
• Why protein quality matters (especially for young horses, broodmares, and performance horses)

🐴💛 Want help making sense of your horse’s diet? Download MyHappy.Horse on the Apple App Store (link below) and take the guesswork out of balancing protein, lysine, and the bigger nutrition picture. 

And if this episode made you go and check the back of a feed bag… we’d love you to leave us a quick rating and review. It helps other horse owners find science-based feeding help. 🧪❤️

Download MyHappy.Horse here: https://apps.apple.com/app/myhappy-horse/id6633422324

Feeding an Off The Track (OTT) in the first 12 months can be a worry inducing juggle… appetite, behaviour, ulcers and those classic “why won’t you hold weight?” situations. In this episode of the Happy Horse Nutrition Podcast, Dr Nerida shares her practical approach to feeding OTTs in their first year off the track so they can settle, digest fibre properly, and become easier to keep long-term.

Nerida explains why many OTTs arrive with gut health issues. Racing routines and high-energy feeds can increase gastric ulcer occurence and shift the hindgut microbiome away from the good fibre-fermenting microbes. And when the gut isn’t right, it often shows up as a fussy appetite, tricky behaviour, and slow weight gain in OTTs. The episode breaks the first year into two phases: months 1–6 focus on gut rehab with forage first, fibre diversity and balancing vitamins and minerals the focus; then months 6–12 shift to weight and muscle development, with one big caution… weight gain diets change behaviour, sometimes dramatically.

Listen to discover how to feed your OTT in the first 12 months off the track for brilliant results… setting your OTT up for a lifetime of health, happiness, calm behaviour and brilliant performance.

🌟 Follow the Happy Horse Nutrition Podcast so you don’t miss the upcoming episode unpacking Allay’s microbiome data with Dr Belinda Chapman. 

💖 If this helped, a quick rating on Spotify or Apple Podcasts helps other OTT owners find the show. 

📱 Want to check your OTT’s diet is balanced while you adjust feed for behaviour and condition? Try MyHappy.Horse (iOS) with a free 7-day trial:
https://apps.apple.com/app/myhappy-horse/id6633422324

NSC is one of those three-letter acronyms that pops up on feed bags and hay reports… and consistently manages to confuse even the most dedicated horse owners. In this episode of the Happy Horse Nutrition Podcast, Dr Nerida McGilchrist unpacks Non-Structural Carbohydrates (NSC) in a practical, horse-owner-friendly way.

This episode looks at what NSC actually is (starch + water soluble carbohydrates; WSC), how it relates to WSC, whether we should be using WSC or ESC to calculate NSC (see, it gets confusing!), and why that 'fructan piece' matters for both laminitis risk and the hindgut microbiome.

You’ll learn why NSC is everywhere in hay, pasture and feeds, and why it’s levels can fluctuate so dramatically, depending on plant type, time of day, climate, temperature, drought stress, and even soil fertility. 

Nerida shares real-world examples (including from her own horses) to explain what happens when NSC is too high. Problems can include crazy high insulin levels, laminitis, colic, tooth decay and microbial dysbiosis. And she explores why “not enough NSC” can also be a problem in performance horses where energy intake, palatability, and gut function matter.

If you’re feeding a pony with insulin dysregulation, a horse with PPID/Cushing’s, a laminitis-prone horse, or a metabolically healthy high performance athlete, this episode will help you make informed, smarter decisions around NSC.

📱 If you’d like help applying this to your horse, download the MyHappy.Horse app on the Apple App Store and start building a diet you can feel confident about. https://apps.apple.com/au/app/myhappy-horse/id6633422324

💖 And if this episode helped you, please share it with a horsey friend (especially the one currently arguing about pasture sugar on Facebook 😅)