The Best Horse Feed for Weight Gain of 2026

Ninety-nine percent fat is the entire pitch, and for a hard keeper it's a good one. This is a dry fat - scoopable granules rather than a jug of oil - so it stirs into damp feed without turning the bucket into soup, and you're not trying to measure oil in a windy barn aisle. It also delivers more than twice the energy of the same weight of carbohydrate, which is the math that matters when a horse physically can't eat any more.

We like it best for the horse in work that burns calories faster than you can replace them, the thoroughbred type that drops weight every time the workload steps up. Because the energy comes from fat rather than starch, it adds condition without the fizz that comes from pouring in more grain. It can still sharpen a horse that's already sharp, so bring it in gradually and watch the first week or two.

Think of it as a calorie tool rather than a supplement. You're buying energy, and the vitamins stay in whatever balancer or complete feed you already use - exactly right if your ration is balanced and short only on calories, and the wrong purchase if it isn't. Between this and the Manna Pro topper above, the choice is whether your horse needs extras with its calories or just the calories.

The bucket is the first thing you notice: 22.5 pounds, sold as a 90-day supply, and the largest format here. It's also the biggest single outlay in this group, which makes it look like the premium option until you spread it across three months of feeding and it turns into the cheapest way to buy calories.

What's inside earns the format. Fifty percent fat means you feed noticeably less volume for the same energy as grain, and there's no sugar added - the calories arrive without the starch that turns some horses hot or upsets a sensitive gut. Flaxseed meal and heat-stabilized rice bran supply the omega-3s, so the coat benefit comes along without a second product.

We reach for it first for the easy keeper with metabolic concerns, the insulin-resistant horse that still drops weight every hard winter. No added sugar is the entire reason: it lets you push calories without pushing starch, and the fat is concentrated enough that a senior with a small appetite doesn't have to eat a mountain of powder to get a useful dose.

The practical cost is storage. A bucket that size lives in the feed room, not on a shelf, and you're committing to three months whether or not the horse takes to the taste. If you're unsure, a smaller bag of something else is the cheaper experiment; if you know the winter is coming, buy this one in October and stop thinking about it.

Bringing home a skinny rescue or an off-the-track horse that needs everything at once is the situation this bag was built for. Horse Guard packs full-fat extruded soy, prebiotics and probiotics, yeast, and its own vitamin-mineral package into one 10-pound bag, so weight, topline, and gut health get addressed with a single scoop. It's the most complete product here.

The soy is the part that earns its keep. Extruded full-fat soybeans bring protein and fat together, and protein is what rebuilds the muscle along the spine - pure fat will put cover on the ribs but won't do much for a hollow topline. Add 1,500 IU of vitamin E per dose and a yeast culture, and you have a digestion and immune story most fat supplements skip entirely.

Budget the servings before you commit. A 10-pound bag is about 20 servings for a 1,000-pound horse, so at full dose it's roughly a month of feeding and one of the more expensive months here. What you get in exchange is weight gain without a wired horse; through our weeks with it, the horses stayed level-headed and cleaned up their feed.

A gallon of soybean and coconut oil with vitamin E stirred in, sold as 32 servings. If you've never fed oil, the surprise is how willingly horses take to it - the coconut smell does most of the work, and once it's soaked into grain there's nothing left to sort out or leave behind at the bottom of the bucket.

That's the argument for oil over powder: it disappears into a meal. No dust sifting out of a dry feed, no pellets for a fussy horse to pick around, which makes it the dependable choice for the horse that eats half its dinner and walks away. It's also the pick here for coat - the shine tends to show before the weight does, and a horse coming back into work looks better for it.

What oil can't do is carry vitamins or stretch far. A gallon is about a month at the four-ounce dose, so the daily cost is real, and pouring from a heavy jug in a cold barn is exactly as pleasant as it sounds. If you want the fat without the mess, the dry Cool Calories does the same job with a scoop.

The bag says it plainly: these are crumbles, not pellets. That one difference decides a lot. A crumble breaks down into damp feed instead of sitting in it, so a horse that quits chewing the moment something hard turns up still gets the calories - which is why it lands so well with older horses and anything with a fussy mouth.

Underneath the texture it's a straightforward calorie product: vegetable fat for easily digested energy, quality protein for the amino acids a topline needs, and fiber to keep the gut working. The 7-pound bag is built around roughly a month of feeding, so it's a small commitment rather than a winter-long buy.

Palatability is where it earns its reputation. Horses that pick around other supplements go after this one, and it doesn't need to be hidden in a mash to get eaten - which takes a job out of the morning routine and, more to the point, means the calories actually get in.

We rank it behind the bigger names for one reason: the bag is small, so per pound it's one of the pricier ways to buy calories here. For a picky senior with a limited appetite that's a trade worth making, because a supplement left in the bucket is worth nothing at any price. It's also milled in-house in Colorado, a domestic operation running since 1946.

Molasses, corn oil, apple flavor, and a gallon jug: Tuttle's Liquid 747 is the old-fashioned answer to a horse that's off its feed, and there's still a lot to be said for it. The base is cane molasses and corn oil - calories a horse will lick up - and the jug adds vitamins A, D3, and E, B vitamins, selenium, potassium, iron, and trace minerals on top.

The molasses is doing two jobs at once. It's energy, and it's the reason a fussy horse starts cleaning up its bucket again; appetite is often the first thing to go in a thin horse, and a sweet top-dress brings it back faster than a bland powder will. That makes it the pick here for the horse that dropped weight after a move, an illness, or a long haul.

We rate it as a supporting player rather than a full program, and the sugar is why. A molasses-based liquid is the wrong direction for an insulin-resistant or laminitis-prone horse, where the no-sugar Farnam formula is safer. For everyone else - a hard keeper with a dull coat and a poor appetite - it's the least complicated way to add liquid calories and a vitamin top-dress in one pour, and the apple base covers the oil.