The June Grass Flush: Why Now Is the Riskiest Time for Laminitis

If your horse or pony has made it through spring without incident, you might think the worst of the laminitis risk has passed. It hasn't. June is often when grass sugar levels spike hardest, and it catches a lot of owners off guard.

Why June specifically?

Grass produces sugars (fructans) through photosynthesis during the day and uses some of them up overnight for growth. In cool spring weather, that overnight drop is reliable. But as June brings longer daylight hours, warmer nights and often a mix of sunshine and rain, growth patterns become erratic. The result is grass that's holding onto more sugar than it's using, particularly:

• After a sunny day followed by a cool night

• Following rain after a dry spell, when grass puts on a sudden flush of new growth

• In the afternoon and early evening, when sugar levels peak

This is exactly the pattern June tends to deliver in the UK, which is why vets often see a rise in laminitis cases this month, even in horses that were fine through April and May.

Who's at risk

Native breeds, good doers, older horses, and anything with a history of laminitis or underlying conditions such as Equine Metabolic Syndrome or PPID are most vulnerable. But it's worth saying plainly: any horse on unrestricted rich grazing can be affected. Laminitis doesn't only happen to the obviously overweight.

Restricting grass without restricting turnout

The instinct is often to bring horses in or strip them of grazing altogether, but that creates its own problems: boredom, stress, and long empty hours without forage in front of them, all of which come with behavioural and digestive downsides of their own.

A better approach for a lot of yards is to keep turnout but change how the horse accesses forage:

• Track systems or restricted paddock areas to limit grazing time on the highest-risk grass

• Muzzling during peak-risk windows if track systems aren't practical

• Slow-feeding hay to fill the gap, so the horse still has something to work on through the day without unlimited access to sugar-rich grass

This is where a slow feeder earns its keep. Rather than cutting forage time down to nothing, you're swapping some grazing time for controlled, low-sugar hay that keeps the horse chewing, occupied and settled, without the fructan spike.

Our Hay-Saver, Hay Nest and Hay Play ranges are both built around this principle: small holes that force a slower rate of intake, so hay lasts longer and mimics natural trickle feeding rather than a horse gorging in short bursts. On a restricted-grazing routine, that steady access matters as much for behaviour as it does for the gut.

A few practical pointers for June

• Turn out early morning or overnight rather than afternoon, when fructan levels are typically lower

• Avoid grazing after a cold night followed by bright sun — this is one of the highest-risk combinations

• Keep an eye on rapid grass growth after rain; a paddock that looked fine a week ago can change quickly

• Don't assume a good doer is "fine" just because they've always been fine — risk builds cumulatively and June is often the tipping point

The bottom line

Laminitis prevention in June isn't about starving horses of forage, it's about being more deliberate with where that forage comes from. A slow feeder won't undo a genuinely high-risk paddock, but as part of a wider management plan it gives you a practical way to keep horses settled, occupied and on a steadier intake through the riskiest weeks of the grazing season.