Here it comes again, folks: Old Man Winter has targeted North America and he’s showing no mercy.

Protein’s role in the diet is to provide amino acids (the building blocks of bones, muscles and soft tissues) for growth and repair. So it’s easy to see why, for many generations, we assumed that the more protein in the diet, the better a horse could perform. But somewhere along the way, many people made the leap from “growth and repair” to “energy source.” But protein, and its component amino acids, is not all that good for providing energy.

Grazing is a full-time job for horses. Given their druthers, they’ll graze for 14 hours or more every day, with their broad, flat teeth and sideways chewing motions making short work of the tough, stemmy grasses and weeds that they favor. Like all true herbivores, horses get most of their daily energy requirements from eating plant fibers.