“That’s overkill. I’ve always fed my horse the way I learned, and it was never a problem.”

If you’ve ever thought that, I understand — and for many years that logic really did make sense. The problem is that the landscape has shifted under our feet. You’re not doing anything wrong: what ends up in the feed trough today simply isn’t the same as it was twenty years ago.

Some horses carry a name, a bloodline, a history — and an expectation that leaves no room for error.

After years studying equine metabolism at Cornell, Colorado, and Florida, I came to understand something generic protocols tend to ignore: every high-performance horse is a unique metabolic equation — and getting that equation right is what separates an animal that merely survives from one that truly performs, year after year.
METAHORSE exists for that level of demand. It isn’t about giving nutrition advice — it’s about following closely, with clinical precision, the horses that deserve a diagnosis worthy of what they represent.
If your horse is irreplaceable, let’s talk.
— Dr. Sofia Cicolo

What changed in your horse’s feed (without you noticing)

Hay is getting more expensive, scarcer, and traveling from farther away — often grown on depleted soil, treated with herbicides and pesticides that didn’t exist when this “traditional” management approach was created.

Alfalfa has practically disappeared from everyday feeding. A myth took hold that it “heats up” the horse — but it used to be used heavily. The real reason behind its abandonment has more to do with price than with the animal’s physiology.

And commercial feed is where the quietest — and most dangerous — change has happened. To cut costs, ingredients unthinkable years ago crept in: protein sources the horse barely absorbs, brewery byproduct, cottonseed hulls, antinutrients, even reject material from biscuit factories. The result is feed loaded with starch and sugar, pushing the horse’s metabolism toward an insulin output its body was never built to sustain — the equine equivalent of ultra-processed food.

What’s happening with horses today isn’t an isolated case — it’s a silent epidemic of metabolic imbalances, already documented in several countries. METAHORSE was created to bring this approach here before it comes too late for one more horse.

And this isn’t a standardized spreadsheet, the kind any generic app can spit out. It’s the intersection of years of surgical practice, up-to-date science, and the perspective of someone who is also a rider and lives the daily barn routine. Every case is read individually.

Think back to yourself, ten years ago

You probably didn’t worry about ultra-processed food or glycemic index, and you didn’t think your own endocrine health was essential to your quality of life. Today that has changed — because science has advanced, and because we’ve learned, in practice, the price of ignoring those signals.

It’s the same with your horse. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t choose what he eats, doesn’t decide when it’s time to change. You’re the one who decides.