33. Replay: Your horse's hindgut microbes and their impact on... everything! | Best of 2025

To wrap up 2025, we’re resharing our most popular guest interview from Season 1 — and it’s a favourite for good reason.In this episode, microbiology expert Dr Belinda Chapman and Dr Nerida take us inside your horse’s hindgut ecosystem.Together, they look at what the microbiome actually is, why horses rely on microbes far more than we do, and how the balance between the fibre-loving “good guys” and the weedy, greedy starch-fermenters can influence everything from digestion and energy production to health, performance, and behaviour. Dr Belinda and Dr Nerida also dive into some seriously fascinating concepts (in a very listenable way), including:Why horses have a more complex microbiome than humansThe underappreciated role of anaerobic fungi in fibre breakdownWhat “quorum sensing” is (and why it’s a bit mind-blowing); andWhy microbial diversity = resilience (and what that means in the real world) If this episode helps you see feeding through a new lens, we’d love you to subscribe so you don’t miss the practical, science-backed episodes coming in 2026 - and we’d really love ypu to share this with a friend who loves a good horse nutrition rabbit hole as much as you do, they’ll thank you for it.💛 More about Quantal Bioscience: ⁠https://www.quantalbioscience.com/⁠Hindgut microbiome testing with Dr Belinda: ⁠https://www.equigi.com/home⁠Discover and download the MyHappy.Horse App: ⁠https://www.myhappy.horse