Understanding Horse Forage Analysis Reports
Learn what your hay, haylage or grass analysis report means — and how to use it to feed your horse with more confidence.
Forage analysis helps you understand the energy, protein, sugar, starch and mineral levels in the forage your horse eats every day.
Forage-led nutrition, guided by laboratory analysis.
Would you like to better understand a nutritional and mineral analysis report for horse grass, hay or haylage? Testing the forage your horse eats is one of the most useful ways to understand the foundation of the diet.
Forage analysis can help you decide whether hay is suitable for laminitis-prone horses, ponies and donkeys. It can also show whether the balance of minerals, quality of protein and levels of sugar and starch are appropriate for your horse.
Why Forage Analysis Matters
- It shows what your horse is already getting from hay, haylage or grass.
- It helps you identify mineral excesses, deficiencies and imbalances.
- It helps you manage sugar and starch for laminitis-prone horses.
- It allows supplements to be chosen more accurately.
- It helps you feed according to your horse’s workload, weight and health needs.
Feeding your horse like a horse means building the diet around fibre and forage. Some horses do well on ad-lib grass, hay or haylage and naturally regulate their intake. Others gain weight easily and need a more controlled approach.
By analysing the forage your horse eats, you can make better decisions about how much to feed and which nutrients need to be added. This is the basis of a truly forage-focused diet.
Key Terms on a Horse Forage Analysis Report
Moisture
The percentage of water in the forage sample. Wetter forage contains less dry matter per kilogram.
Dry Matter
Everything in the forage except water, including fibre, protein, fat, minerals and carbohydrates.
As Sampled
Results shown with the water included. This is also called as-fed or as-received.
Dry Matter Basis
Results shown with water removed. This allows different forages to be compared more accurately.
Why Dry Matter Matters
Hay usually has a higher dry matter content than haylage. haylage often contains more water, so a horse may need to eat a greater fresh weight of haylage to receive the same amount of actual nutrients.
For example, 10kg of hay at 90% dry matter provides 9kg of dry matter. A wetter forage at 50% dry matter would need to be fed at 18kg to provide the same 9kg of dry matter.
Forageplus Tip
Always compare forage results on the same basis. Dry matter basis is usually the best way to compare hay, haylage and grass because it removes the dilution effect of water.
What a Nutritional Forage Analysis Tells You
Digestible Energy
Digestible Energy, often shown as DE, estimates the energy available to the horse from the forage. It is useful for managing good doers, poor doers, horses in work and horses needing careful weight control.
Good doers may need forage weighed and restricted carefully to encourage safe weight loss. Poor doers may need a higher energy forage or a bucket feed designed to complement the calories supplied by the forage.
Crude Protein
Crude Protein, or CP, is an estimate of total protein based on nitrogen content. It does not tell you the full amino acid profile or the quality of the protein.
Protein is needed for muscle, skin, hair, hoof, immune function, enzymes, growth, repair and reproduction. Horses with poor topline, weak hoof quality, poor coat condition or slow recovery may need the quality and quantity of protein in the diet reviewed.
Lysine
Lysine is an essential amino acid. It is especially important for growth, muscle development, repair and general health. Grass, hay and haylage may not always supply enough lysine, so it is often considered when balancing a forage-led diet.
ADF and NDF
Acid Detergent Fibre and Neutral Detergent Fibre are measures of the fibre fractions in forage. They help indicate how mature, fibrous and digestible the forage is.
Higher ADF and NDF values often mean the forage is more stemmy, more mature and less energy-dense. This may be useful for good doers, but it can be a problem for horses that struggle to maintain weight.
Quick Guide to Fibre
- Higher fibre: often more suitable for good doers needing lower calorie forage.
- Lower fibre: may provide more digestible energy for horses needing condition.
- Very mature forage: may be harder for some horses to thrive on.
Sugar, Starch and Laminitis-Prone Horses
Water-Soluble Carbohydrates
Water-Soluble Carbohydrates, or WSC, include simple sugars and fructans. This figure can be useful, but it does not always give the clearest picture for laminitis management.
Ethanol-Soluble Carbohydrates
Ethanol-Soluble Carbohydrates, or ESC, mainly represent simple sugars. These are particularly important because simple sugars can affect insulin levels.
Starch
Starch is digested to glucose and can have a strong effect on blood insulin. Starch is not reduced by soaking or rinsing hay, so low-starch forage is important for horses, ponies and donkeys prone to laminitis.
For Laminitis-Prone Horses
For horses and ponies prone to laminitis, the combined ESC and starch level is often the most useful figure to review. A combined ESC and starch level below 10% is commonly used as a practical target for managing laminitis risk.
If your horse has a history of laminitis, EMS, PPID or insulin dysregulation, always work with your vet or qualified nutrition professional alongside forage analysis.
Testing only WSC or NSC can sometimes result in safe hay being ruled out unnecessarily. This may lead owners to soak forage that does not need soaking, potentially removing useful water-soluble nutrients.
Read our guide to soaking hay for horses here.
What a Full Mineral Analysis Tells You
Minerals do not work in isolation. They interact with each other during digestion and absorption. Too much of one mineral can interfere with the absorption or usefulness of another.
This is why forage-led mineral balancing is so valuable. It allows supplementation to be targeted to the forage your horse is actually eating.
Calcium : Phosphorus
Calcium should be higher than phosphorus. Many UK and European forages contain more calcium than phosphorus.
Calcium : Magnesium
Many forages are relatively low in magnesium compared with calcium, so magnesium often needs supplementing.
Iron, Copper, Zinc and Manganese
These minerals interact strongly. High iron can increase the need to carefully balance copper and zinc.
Selenium
Selenium has a narrow safe range. Testing helps avoid feeding too little or too much.
Minerals Reported in a Forageplus Mineral Analysis
Calcium: bone and teeth formation, blood clotting, muscle contraction and nerve function.
Phosphorus: bone and teeth formation, energy metabolism and body fluid buffering.
Magnesium: enzyme activation, muscle and nerve function, and metabolic health.
Potassium: fluid balance, electrolyte balance, muscle contraction and nerve function.
Sodium: fluid balance, nerve transmission, muscle contraction and electrolyte balance.
Iron: oxygen transport and enzyme systems.
Zinc: hoof quality, skin health, wound healing, immunity and enzyme function.
Copper: connective tissue, coat pigment, haemoglobin synthesis and hoof quality.
Manganese: bone formation, growth, fertility and enzyme function.
Molybdenum: interacts with copper and sulphur.
Sulphur: found in important compounds including biotin, thiamin and chondroitin sulphate.
Chloride: acid-base balance, osmotic regulation and gastric secretions.
Cobalt: required for vitamin B12 synthesis.
Selenium: antioxidant function and muscle health.
Iodine: essential for thyroid hormone production and metabolic regulation.
Testing for Nitrates in Hay and Haylage
When both nutritional and full mineral analysis are carried out, the nitrogen and sulphur relationship can help give useful information about protein quality.
Nitrates can become a concern in forage when levels are high. Drought, frost, fertiliser use and manure application can all influence nitrate accumulation. High nitrate intake can be dangerous because nitrate may be converted to nitrite, which interferes with oxygen transport in the blood.
Which Forage Analysis Should You Choose?
If you simply want to check energy, protein, sugar and starch, a nutritional analysis is a useful starting point.
If you want to balance minerals accurately, choose a full mineral analysis. This is especially useful where hoof quality, coat condition, metabolic health, poor topline or long-term diet balancing are concerns.
For the most complete picture, combine nutritional analysis with mineral analysis.
Ready to Test Your Horse’s Forage?
View our full range of forage analysis services and start building a more accurate diet from the forage up.
The Forageplus Approach
At Forageplus, we believe the best horse diets start with the forage. By testing grass, hay or haylage, you can move away from guesswork and make better decisions about minerals, protein, calories, sugar and starch.
This analysis-led approach allows you to feed in a way that is more targeted, more practical and better matched to your horse’s individual needs.
