Hay - how much do you feed?

squidsin

squidsin

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Feb 16, 2013
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Roxy (and most of the hoses on the yard) is coming in early at the moment - at about 3ish. As she is a massive scoffer, she has a medium trickle net with 4 slices of hay in (which fills it up), and I usually give her an extra slice too. This lasts until she is fed tomorrow at 6am. She is a 14.2 warmblood and holding her weight nicely - and I give her more hay than any other horse on the yard gets - but I still worry that is not enough! Horses are OK if they don't eat hay for a few hours, right?
 
I like mine to be able to constantly trickle feed as both have had sand colic, so mine get about 6kg twice a day (off a big bale), thats hank and jess, plus they have tiny hole nets up as a back up. If I found they had cleared up totally I would up it, they normally mostly clear the bulk feeder and I refill the nets about once a week as they just nibble those slowly.
 
She has always finished hers in the morning. She is an annoyingly fast eater though, even with the trickle net!
 
Mine get nets but they are never empty in the morning. I'm surprised as I thought they'd eat more than they do.
 
Mine get as much as they can eat, fill their hay mangers to the top every night, they are never empty come morning.
 
I have a haybar. Tobes has four BIG slices of a small hay bale every night. Plus I tie him up in the morning with an additional slice before I turn him out and I muck out whilst he is munching. I turn him out at around 7am, he comes in at around 5pm. If he finished the lot during the night, I would give him more.

I might be very wrong, but I think that horses that are controlled forage wise tend to pig out until they realise that forage is there all the time. And if Tobes was a great fat whale then I would soak his hay but still allow him the volume, but decrease the calories. Oat chaff as sold by Honey Chop might be an addition to soaked hay for yours.

I personally don't believe that horses should be without adlib forage. I personally believe soaking hay and getting the least calorific/high in sugar hay and grazing is key and I really do believe, that much as fat people if really boring food is on offer all the time, they would lose weight and control their own intake
 
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I always feed ad lib hay in stable overnight but Libby wouldn't eat more than 4 slices all night (7pm to 7 pm) so I think if you give 5 slices it should be enough not to cause her any digestive upset I think anyway - would she be in 3 pm to 7 am? (16 hours)
 
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Ale gets 3/4 sections all soaked for about 11 hours and then double netted in small holed Haynets. To last from about 7pm till 6/7am.
 
I would give two small hole haynets full to bursting and see if she leaves some - just keep upping the amount of hay until she is leaving some by morning.
 
Ours live out, but there is nothing in the grass at the moment. The 3 good doers are getting at least a small bale a day between them. Mattie, who is a skinny in the winter, gets ad lib hay.
 
Mumbles said:
I would give two small hole haynets full to bursting and see if she leaves some - just keep upping the amount of hay until she is leaving some by morning.
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She'd eat them. Also, I only have one small hole haynet.

I just went up as feeling paranoid about the hay situation and she'd finished it all so I refilled the net. That is good going, even for her, but it's probably because there's no grass in the horrible patch of mud known as the mares' field at the moment. She's moving to better grazing at the weekend so hopefully she won't be quite so hungry!
 
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HorseHelen said:
I always feed ad lib hay in stable overnight but Libby wouldn't eat more than 4 slices all night (7pm to 7 pm) so I think if you give 5 slices it should be enough not to cause her any digestive upset I think anyway - would she be in 3 pm to 7 am? (16 hours)
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She is in from 3pm to 9am but she gets a small haynet and a hard feed at 6am.
 
sjp1 said:
I have a haybar. Tobes has four BIG slices of a small hay bale every night. Plus I tie him up in the morning with an additional slice before I turn him out and I muck out whilst he is munching. I turn him out at around 7am, he comes in at around 5pm. If he finished the lot during the night, I would give him more.

I might be very wrong, but I think that horses that are controlled forage wise tend to pig out until they realise that forage is there all the time. And if Tobes was a great fat whale then I would soak his hay but still allow him the volume, but decrease the calories. Oat chaff as sold by Honey Chop might be an addition to soaked hay for yours.

I personally don't believe that horses should be without adlib forage. I personally believe soaking hay and getting the least calorific/high in sugar hay and grazing is key and I really do believe, that much as fat people if really boring food is on offer all the time, they would lose weight and control their own intake
Click to expand...

I'm not worried about her weight and she's not on a controlled diet - I am getting through a small bale of hay every 2 days which is quite hard on on the pocket at £5.45 a pop! We are only allowed to buy from the yard. Might try the oat chaff suggestion if it will bulk things out cheaply! She has a hard feed of half a scoop of Speedibeet and a scoop of HiFi Lite twice a day too.
 
Neala has ad-lib in the stable, 2 nibbeze nets with around 6-7kg in each, one steamed hay one haylage. She comes in during the day from around 9-5 she always has some left but not a huge amount, what's left gets put in the field for her and smokey to finish off . I find the nibbeze nets brilliant for trickle feeding.
 
People used to look at me funny when I was on a livery yard, all the other horses used to get one loosely packed net and I would insist mine to got two huge nets stuffed to the brim. The horses there came in at 3.30 and went out at 7.30, when I would arrive after work at 6-6.30 most of the horses would have no hay left and IMO 11 hours with nothing to eat is not acceptable.

Jess will eat a small bale a day when its cold so I feel your pain on the cost (hense why I swapped to big bales), hopefully the new field slows Roxy down. I feed redi-grass as a top up if hay gets scarse or straight oat straw just as a belly filler if they dont need more calories.
 
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Well poor Belle gets 4kg of soaked double netted (tiny hole nets) from 7.00 pm to 6.00 am sometimes there is a tiny bit left sometimes nothing, she does however have a small holed hay net stuffed with oat or barley straw as her emergency rations most of which is also gone by morning. I know from experience if I fed adlib she would be huge, she is an eating machine and if left to her own devices will consume anything in front of her, so I make the decision to restrict her (on vets advice) and make it hard for her to eat it all in a flash. She does have plenty of grass in the paddock though so I'm not starving her. She has gained a little bit of weight this winter too - only about 10kg which I'm fairly sure will come off fairly soon if this freezing weather continues.
Oh and if I'm riding she also gets a small net to fill her belly before hand too.
 
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Mine get none in the field unless there is deep snow as they are perfectly capable of digging through shallower snow or eating gorse.

I rarely stable and obv can't soak hay in winter but I am putting ridiculous amounts in with Magic to help stop him going back to his food panic eating he was doing after an issue at his previous livery yard. He's got a trickle net stuffed full, another smaller net full, a big trough full and 2 of those grazing block things
 
Our pair are 15.2 and 15 - both get a double net which weighs 5kgs and they get a token gesture on the floor to nibble at. Chloe gets a slightly heavier net as you should feed more hayledge than hay due to water content. Both normally have a birds nest left come morning. They have straw beds so could nibble those if need be! I have a spring scale in the feed room. I don't weigh them every time as I've got a feel for it now. They get their last net around 8.30pm and I give breakie at 8am. However, they don't stay in much these days, they come and go as they please. Only in bad weather they vote with their hooves and stay home!lol then I organise nets. If they're residing between arena and their boxes which they sometimes do, I tie nets up with roughly 4kgs each in, a bit less as they can nibble grass from around the place.
 
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