Horse owners that love their horses very much enjoy giving them treats and sharing their human food with them.
So, they might want to give their horse cookies as a tasty snack. However, horses cannot eat cookies that were made for humans. The amount of sugar that is in human cookies could cause horses to become sick.
Can Horses Eat Cookies?
There are many fruits and vegetables that both humans and horses can consume. But when it comes to human junk food, horses need to stay far away from it. Horses need to live on a diet of high fiber with some vegetables, fruits, and salt mixed in. This means that there is absolutely no room for human junk food in their diets. And of all the foods that you could give a horse, processed fiberless sugar has to be one of the worst foods to give as a snack.
Sugary processed junk food is even worse for humans, but we won’t get into that in this article.
What Will Happen if a Horse Eats Human Cookies?
How badly a horse’s body reacts to eating human cookies depends on the amount that they ate and the ingredients within the cookie. If you give a horse a oatmeal and peanut butter cookie, then they’ll be fine. But if they were given a chocolate macaroon or cream puff, they’re in for a rough night.
Here are some important ingredients you should watch out for when you’re about to serve your horse a cookie.
1. Sugar
When you give your horse a cookie created for humans, they will eat sugar and flour, both of which have little to no healthy nutritional components. These ingredients can cause blood sugar spikes because of their lack of fiber and high carbohydrate content.
2. Chocolate
If the cookies that you are feeding your horse contains chocolate, then your horse is going to have a terrible night. Chocolate is poisonous to horses, just like dogs. Of course, horses are much larger than dogs, so it will take more chocolate to poison them. They will not die from a few chocolate cookies, but they will have diarrhea and nausea. And you will have to clean up their stables.
3. Diary
Milk, cheese, cream, and yogurt all have lactose as an ingredient. Since the dairy that humans consume comes from cows, horses will be unable to digest it. They are only able to digest lactose from horses. However, some diary in a serving of their food is not too bad. If anything, horses will get nauseated, but not much else will happen to them.
What About Fruit Sugar?
Horses are so susceptible to sugar that veterinarians and horse breeders tell others only to serve a little bit of fruit to your horse and not to do it every day. Even fruits should be treated as a once in a while snack. As you probably already guessed, fruit sugar is okay to feed a horse because fruit also contains fiber. The fiber within the fruit slows down how fast sugar is digested in the horse’s stomach and enters its bloodstream.
What About Sugar Cubes?
As you were reading this article, you probably wondered about sugar cubes. All over movies and television, we have seen horse caretakers giving their horses sugar cubes to snack on. Although this is a common belief, many veterinarians say that this is a false practice, and you should never give your horse cubes of pure sugar. Of course, horses love the taste of sugar so that they will eat them, but the Sugarcubes can cause extreme blood sugar spikes, especially if they’re not being eaten with anything else.
Any sugar that a horse eats should directly come from fruits and or should we vegetables like carrots and beets. Along with fiber, the horse will also get all of the nutrients, phytochemicals, and antioxidants that are in the food.
Horse Friendly Foods, Including Cookies
In the past decade or so, a movement has appeared that treats animals like they’re our babies. The nutritional content of their food has risen, additives and other fillers are taken out, and many places now accommodate animals that are on leashes with their owners. This movement of treating animals like beings with rights instead of creatures to be owned and controlled has also reached the horse-riding community.
There are tons of online businesses that create snacks, treats, and desserts specifically made for horses. These horse treats are only made with foods that horses can digest and taste great to a horse.
All you have to do to find these horse-friendly treats is to go online, and Google search snacks or desserts for horses. You will find a plethora of websites, either selling horse-friendly treats or teaching you how to make horse-friendly treats. There are many websites dedicated to the creation of horse cookies as well. So if you ever feel like treating your horse to a cookie, you don’t have to give them human food which they are not supposed to eat.
When you search through these websites, you will find that the food is made sweet, not from sugar, but from vegetables that horses can eat, like carrots and beets.
We recommend that you purchase treats for your horse from one of these websites, so the next time you’re snacking with your horse, you can give them a snack of their own.
What other foods can horses not eat?
Horses are mainly herbivores so that you won’t see a lot of meat, rodents, dairy, or seafood in their diet. You also need to keep horses away from eating anything with caffeine, moldy hay, lawn clippings, stone fruits, brussel sprouts, broccoli, kale, dog and cat food, and Sawdust.
Conclusion
- Horses should not eat processed human junk food.
- Fruit sugar is okay in small quantities because the sugar in the fruit is slow down by the fiber, so it takes longer to digest.
- If a horse eats too much sugar, they can develop diabetes.
- If a horse eats chocolate, they will experience nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting.
- Horses should not eat sugar cubes in the first place.
- there are many stores online that creates safe horse snacks and treats
