Pre-Competition Feeding: What to Feed Your Horse and What to Avoid

You've spent months training. Your horse is fit, sound, and ready to perform. But what you feed in the days and hours before competition can make or break your results. Getting pre-competition feeding right is one of the most overlooked aspects of equine performance management — and getting it wrong can lead to sluggish performance, gut discomfort, tying-up, or even colic.

This guide covers everything you need to know about feeding your horse before a competition, whether you're heading to a dressage test, a cross-country course, a showjumping round, or an endurance ride.

Why Pre-Competition Feeding Matters

Horses are hindgut fermenters with a sensitive digestive system that doesn't respond well to sudden changes. Their energy systems rely on a careful balance of fibre fermentation, glycogen stores, and fat metabolism. What you feed — and when — directly influences:

• Available energy during exercise
• Gut comfort and stability under the stress of travel and competition
• Hydration and electrolyte balance
• Temperament and focus (yes, diet affects behaviour)
• Risk of metabolic issues like tying-up (exertional rhabdomyolysis)

The goal of pre-competition feeding isn't to load your horse with extra fuel at the last minute. It's to ensure the digestive system is comfortable, glycogen stores are topped up, hydration is optimal, and nothing you feed creates a metabolic disadvantage.

The Week Before Competition

Good pre-competition nutrition doesn't start the morning of the event. It starts several days beforehand.

Keep the Diet Consistent

The single most important rule: don't change anything dramatically in the week before competition. The equine hindgut microbiome needs consistency. Introducing a new feed, suddenly increasing concentrate meals, or switching hay sources can cause digestive upset — the last thing you need on competition day.

If you know your current diet needs adjusting, make changes gradually over two to three weeks before the event, not in the final days.

Top Up Glycogen Stores

Muscle glycogen is the primary fuel source for moderate to high-intensity work. Research shows that horses can take 48–72 hours to fully replenish glycogen stores after hard exercise. This means:

• Avoid intense training sessions in the 48–72 hours before competition
• Maintain normal concentrate feeding to keep glycogen stores topped up
• Ensure your horse has ad-lib access to quality forage, which supports slow-release energy through volatile fatty acid production in the hindgut

Monitor Hydration

Start paying close attention to water intake in the days leading up to the event. A dehydrated horse going into competition is at risk of poor performance, impaired thermoregulation, and impaction colic. Ensure your horse has constant access to clean, fresh water and consider adding a salt lick or loose salt to meals to encourage drinking.

The Day Before Competition

Prioritise Forage

Forage should remain the foundation of your horse's diet on the day before competition. A horse that goes into a competition with a healthy, functioning hindgut full of fermenting fibre has a steady supply of energy, better hydration (fibre holds water in the gut), and a calmer demeanour.

Aim for your horse to consume at least 1.5% of body weight in forage daily — ideally more. For a 500 kg horse, that's a minimum of 7.5 kg of hay or equivalent.

Feed Normal Concentrate Meals

Stick with your regular hard feed routine. Don't increase the amount, and don't add extra scoops "for energy." Overloading the digestive system with starch the day before competition increases the risk of:

• Hindgut acidosis (undigested starch reaching the hindgut)
• Loose droppings on competition day
• Excitability and fizzy behaviour
• Tying-up in susceptible horses

Ensure Adequate Electrolyte Intake

If your horse will be competing in warm conditions or performing prolonged work, consider providing electrolytes the day before. Oral electrolyte supplementation encourages drinking and helps pre-load sodium, chloride, and potassium levels. Always provide electrolytes alongside ample water — never on an empty stomach or without water access.

Competition Morning: What to Feed

This is where timing really matters. What your horse eats in the hours before exercise directly affects blood glucose, insulin levels, and gut comfort.

Feed Forage First — And Early

Your horse should have access to hay or haylage as early as possible on competition morning. Ideally, allow forage access right up until 1–2 hours before the start time. Forage:

• Maintains hindgut function and comfort
• Provides a steady release of energy via volatile fatty acids
• Acts as a fluid reservoir in the gut (fibre absorbs significant water)
• Helps buffer stomach acid, reducing the risk of gastric ulcers during exercise

A horse that exercises on a completely empty stomach is more vulnerable to gastric acid splashing onto the unprotected upper portion of the stomach — a primary cause of equine gastric ulcer syndrome (EGUS).

Timing the Concentrate Meal

If your horse normally receives a hard feed in the morning, give it — but time it carefully.

• Feed the concentrate meal at least 3–4 hours before exercise. This allows blood glucose and insulin levels to return to baseline. Exercising during an insulin spike can actually impair fat metabolism and reduce the availability of blood glucose to muscles.
• If you can't feed 3–4 hours ahead, it's better to skip the concentrate entirely and rely on forage alone. A small hay feed is far less disruptive than a poorly timed grain meal.

This 3–4 hour window is supported by research showing that insulin and glycaemic responses to grain-based meals peak around 2–3 hours post-feeding. Exercising during this window can cause a paradoxical drop in blood glucose, reducing available energy.

A Small Forage Snack Before Warm-Up

Offering a small amount of hay (around 0.5–1 kg) about an hour before exercise is a sound strategy. It provides a fibre mat in the stomach to protect against acid splash and doesn't cause the insulin disruption associated with starch-rich feeds.

What to Avoid Before Competition

Knowing what not to feed is just as important as knowing what to feed.

Large Grain Meals Close to Exercise

As discussed, feeding a starch-heavy meal within 2–3 hours of exercise is one of the most common pre-competition feeding mistakes. It disrupts insulin and glucose dynamics, can cause gut discomfort, and in susceptible horses (particularly those with polysaccharide storage myopathy or recurrent exertional rhabdomyolysis), it can trigger tying-up.

High-Sugar Treats and Supplements

Avoid loading your horse with sugar-based treats, molasses-rich feeds, or glucose-based "energy" pastes immediately before competition. These cause rapid blood sugar spikes followed by insulin release, which can actually reduce energy availability during exercise.

New or Unfamiliar Feeds

Never introduce a new feed, supplement, or treat on competition day. Even well-intentioned additions like a new calming supplement or a different brand of electrolyte can cause unexpected digestive or behavioural responses.

Excessive Concentrates Overall

If your horse's total daily starch intake exceeds 1 g of starch per kg of body weight per meal (or 2 g/kg body weight per day), you're increasing the risk of hindgut disturbance. For a 500 kg horse, that means no single meal should contain more than 500 g of starch. Many commercial performance feeds contain 25–35% starch, so just 2 kg of such feed would put you at or above this threshold.

If you're unsure about the starch content in your horse's diet, it's worth analysing your horse's diet with a proper nutritional tool to ensure you're not inadvertently overloading the system.

Haylage That's Too Rich

High-energy haylage (particularly early-cut, high-protein varieties) can sometimes make horses fizzy or cause loose droppings. If you normally feed haylage, stick with the same batch you've been using. If you're travelling and bringing forage, bring your own supply rather than relying on what's available at the venue.

Restricting Water

Some owners worry about their horse drinking too much before competition. Never restrict water access. Horses self-regulate water intake effectively. Dehydration is a far greater performance risk than a full stomach of water. Allow free access to water right up to exercise.

Special Considerations by Discipline

Eventing and Cross-Country

Cross-country demands high-intensity effort sustained over several minutes. Glycogen stores are critical. Focus on maintaining normal feeding in the days before, feed forage on the morning, and time any concentrate meal at least 4 hours ahead. Electrolytes are important, particularly in warm weather.

Dressage and Showjumping

These disciplines involve shorter bursts of effort but require focus and calm. Avoid high-starch feeds that can make horses reactive. A forage-first approach on competition morning is ideal. Some riders find that horses perform more calmly when concentrates are replaced with fibre-based feeds (such as beet pulp, chaff, and oil) in the days leading up to a test.

Endurance

Endurance horses rely heavily on fat metabolism and steady energy supply. Pre-competition feeding should emphasise forage and fat sources over starch. Electrolyte pre-loading the day before is essential. Many successful endurance competitors feed soaked beet pulp and hay the morning of a ride, avoiding grain entirely.

Racing

Thoroughbred and standardbred trainers typically feed a small hay meal the morning of a race and ensure concentrates are given no later than 4 hours before post time. Some trainers offer a small bran mash the evening before, though this practice is increasingly replaced by evidence-based approaches focusing on consistent fibre feeding.

Post-Competition Recovery Feeding

While this article focuses on pre-competition feeding, it's worth noting that what you feed after exercise also matters for recovery:

• Offer water with electrolytes as soon as possible after exercise
• Provide good-quality hay within 30 minutes of finishing
• Wait at least 1 hour before offering a concentrate meal
• A small meal containing easily digestible fibre (soaked beet pulp, for example) can support glycogen replenishment

Building a Pre-Competition Feeding Plan

Every horse is different. Breed, workload, temperament, metabolic health, and discipline all influence the ideal pre-competition feeding strategy. Here's a practical framework:

Final Thoughts

Pre-competition feeding success comes down to three principles: consistency, timing, and forage first. Resist the temptation to change things at the last minute, time your feeds to avoid insulin disruption, and never underestimate the power of good-quality hay as your horse's primary fuel source.

The best competition diet is one that's been carefully planned, tested in training, and tailored to your individual horse's needs. If you're unsure whether your current feeding plan is supporting your horse's performance goals, take the time to review and adjust well before competition season — not the night before your first event.