Yes — Peel and All
Horses can eat bananas, skin included. The flesh is soft, sweet and easy to chew — a genuine kindness for an old horse whose teeth make hard treats hard work — and the peel, washed, is fibrous and safe for the horses who will take it. Plenty of owners peel by habit; plenty of horses eat the whole thing out of a bucket without noticing the difference, so follow the horse in front of you.
The Treat That Divides the Yard
Banana splits opinion like nothing else in the treat bucket. The smell and the soft, slippery texture are nothing like grass or hay, and a suspicious horse may sniff a piece, work his lips over it, and drop it twice before deciding — or refuse outright, today and every day after. Offer the first chunk on top of a familiar handful of feed rather than from your hand, so it arrives smelling of something he already trusts. And take a refusal lightly: there is no gap in his diet that a banana was needed to fill.
Potassium, Sugar and the Working Horse
Bananas are known for potassium, a mineral horses lose in sweat, which is part of why chopped banana turns up in post-work feeds on some yards after a hot, hard session. The other side of the ledger is sugar: a ripe banana is a sweet fruit, so the easy keeper, the cresty pony and any horse on a vet-managed low-sugar diet gets banana rarely or not at all. For a healthy horse in regular work, one banana now and then is a perfectly ordinary treat. Chopped through a sloppy feed after a hot session it disappears happily, and unlike most treats it travels to a show without melting, crumbling or going sticky in a warm tack box.
Serving It Well
Cut the banana into chunks of a couple of bites each. Whole bananas are soft enough that choke is unlikely, but chunks scattered through a bucket feed or hidden in the bedding as a small forage puzzle hold a horse's interest far longer than one mouthful. Chunks also stretch a single banana across a training session as a series of small rewards for a young horse learning to stand for the farrier, load into a trailer or accept clippers. In high summer, frozen peeled chunks make a cold, slow treat on the yard's hottest afternoons.
Peel Practicalities
Wash the peel if you are feeding it, since bananas travel far and carry field and handling residues on the skin. The fibrous strings of the peel can bother a horse with poor teeth, so for him, peel the banana and serve the flesh alone. Green, under-ripe banana is starchy and far less appealing; wait until the skin has yellowed and the flesh gives a little before offering it.
If banana chunks are your youngster's reward for standing quietly, noting exactly that in KinsLe's Care Teams means a covering helper rewards the same behaviour, in the same moments, on the days you cannot be there.