Can someone work out how much hay to feed please?!

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dilbert

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My cob needs to lose weight (current weight 450kg). He is currently stabled from approx. 6am to 3pm and the rest of the time is out muzzled.

In addition to hay and grass, he gets one mug full of fast fibre with a cup of oil for epsm symptoms.

So....for any maths fans, how much hay should I be feeding him for the time he is stabled?
 
Well first you need to work out the weight you want him to be.
It's recommended that you feed a horse 1.5/2 % of their bodyweight everyday, so for example, if his optimum weight is 425kg then you should work out 1.5/2% of 425, which works out as 6.4-8.5kg.
It then rather depends on how good your grazing is as to how much he's eating when out. I think there's a thread further down which has calculations for how much a horse eats when grazing, but I don't know how his muzzle will affect this. Once you've worked out roughly how much he's eating when he's out then subtract that number and the weight of the fast fibre from the 8.5kg to find how much hay you should feed him during the day.
Obviously every horse is different and it's quite hard to work out exact figures, so if you're worried I would soak the hay for up to 12 hours to get rid of all the nutrients which will help him lose weight but keep his fibre intake up, which is very important!
Hope this helps a bit :)
 
Thank you Nemo!

His hay is soaked at the mo although he's starting to get a bit sick of it! Even with his muzzle he's holding his weight far better than his field mates....
 
Just a thought if he's getting sick of soaked hay - could you replace some of it with a low calorie chaff like Dengie Good Doer for a bit of variety? You can feed it weight for weight with hay and it's supposed to be slightly lower calorie than hay so might be worth a try?
 
I feed mine 1% of their bodyweight in hay overnight, of course it runs out though, but that has to be a necessary evil... I also restrict their grazing, generally I do it with electric fencing as one of them really HATES wearing a muzzle.
 
If you want him to lose weight you need to give him a maximum of 1.5% of his bodyweight in Forrage a day. As Sugested above you could give some of that as soaked hay and some as a hay replacer - something like hi-fi lite which is really high in fibre but low calorie would be perfect.

I personally would make the majority of his fibre ration soaked hay and only a small portion hay replacer. you could also put some high fibre cubes in a decaheadron or similar to keep him busy and make him work for his food.
 
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