By Kentucky Equine Research
 
Horses evolved as wandering herbivores, moving slowly for hours and taking bites of whatever forage they came across in their rambles. Modern feeding practice is quite different, with many horses given all-day access to rich forage, an invitation to obesity. Other horses are confined to stalls and given two or three large grain meals each day. Between flakes of hay with a high carbohydrate content, there are often long hours when these horses have nothing to eat. It should not be a surprise that metabolic problems and gastrointestinal upsets are quite common in today’s horses.

By Margaret Evans

Think ‘Chernobyl’ and pictures of the nuclear meltdown from hell spring to mind. In the quarter century since, surprising things have been happening in the exclusion zone around the Ukraine’s notorious nuclear power plant.Plants and animals have returned and in some areas are thriving. But the region screams many vexing questions, none the least of which is the reason for the gradual disappearance of Przewalski’s horses that were released into the area in the late 1990s. And you have to question why an endangered species was released into such a hazardous area in the first place.