Chaff in feeds, what does everybody think?

[wench]

Just debating with myself really? Do people think it's worthwhile feeding chaff in feeds?

I am just wondering if I could save myself a few pennies by not actually buying any.

Horse is currently on three feeds a day, approx 1kg of cubes, 0.5k ish of sugar beet, a handful of dried grass, and a handful of linseed.

The linseed is in as I want to get it used up. I am currently feeding the grass, as it has a reasonable DE, and is cheaper than a sack of alfa-a, as horse needs to fatten up.

I am tempted after I have used sack up not to get anymore, or just a cheapy sack. Any opinions?

 

[Addicted to Hunting]

Well I don't feed mine chaff, due to space restrictions and the cost, but I do make sure that they are getting plenty off hay and grass for the fibre and roughage. Would depend how quickly your horse eats, in my view I know alot off people won't agree with this though

 

[angelish]

i use cheap chaff (apple chaff) because my horse is allergic to alfa-a and he is resting so doesn't need the calories but i want something to put his vit & min suplement in

the other one (light work but intended to live out in winter so needs calories) is getting a handful of apple chaff but only to make him chew his feed and not just bolt it down ,if he looses to much weight i will change it to alph-a oil as i find this is fab to add weight/condition as well as fetching him in or adding another feed
i would rather not as i don't want the other horse getting any at all as it brings him out in hives so rather not take the chance of feeds getting mixed up etc

the cheapy chaff is really just fibre/bulk so if i wanted to put weight on a horse i would def be buying the alpa-a oil rather than chaff

i'm sure you'll get better advise but thats what i'd do

 

[Roasted Chestnuts]

My mare olts her dinner if it is just the VV linseed betpulp and barley and haveing watched horses choking because they bolted their feed I DONT want it happening to my guys.

So they were getting alfa oil but I have changed it to ready grass as of today Its jsut to bulk up and stop them from bolting it all

 

[georgiegirl]

I have ALWAYS used chaff for feeds and tailor it to the horses work load ie plain hi fi if in light work to alfa a oil when in hard work.

What are you planning on doing with your horses over winter? Mine are having the winter off and although will be getting ad lib hay (we are currently making the switch over to hay from haylage as they are being let down) wil not be getting any hard feed.

Mine will be kept on dengie hifi and sugar beet (speedibeet - fantastic and a bag lasts AGES) over the winter and thats it. 6yo is having time off til xmas and 17yo will be kept ticking over - I figue I will save more money by feeding fibre based feeds and laying off the hard feeds nuts etc and Im 100%certain they will maintain there weight and be fine (and even if they were working I think they would be fine too!) Fibre based feeds are an awful lot cheaper, can be fed in higher quantities and keep weight on by keeping them warm! - ps not meaning to sound patronising with this info just menaing have you thought about it from a different angle?

 

[kerilli]

i base all my feeds around chaff, and wouldn't eliminate it, personally, but you could perhaps up the quantity of dried grass to say 1/2 a scoop and use that as your base?

 

[aran]

I do the same as georgiegirl.
I tailor to work and it's the first thing I up when i want to up the horses calories.
If you want to 'fatten the horse up' then I'd continue with dried grass, linseed meal (brilliant for adding condition) and sugar beet.
Do you feed a vit/min?
What are the cubes?
I don't feed any mix/cubes, I just feed a balancer, plus ad-lib hay. My feed lasts ages and they always keep their weight.

 

[wench]

At the minute she is on recommended amount of cubes, so no balancer. She's on a yard, on full livery, so not keen on leaving expensive balancers/feed there, as it ends up in others people's horses, in the dog, on the floor or fed in wrong amounts! Ditto with linseed, there won't be any more of it.

Hence the chaff is more of a filler than a base.

 

[TGM]

I believe in fibre-based feeds but I rarely feed chaff! They get tons of good quality haylage and I use soaked grass nuts as a basis for bucket feed. The pony gets just the soaked grass nuts, one horse gets grass nuts with Spillers Slow Release Energy Cubes (which are fibre and oil-based) and one gets grass nuts with cheapy condition cubes. The cubes get a chance to soften into the soaked grass nuts before feeding, so reducing the risk of choke.

I do believe that chaff is great though if you want to slow the rate of feeding down for some reason - whether it is a horse that bolts its food or a fatty that needs to be fooled into thinking it is getting more feed than it really is!

 

[Firewell]

I like chaff, having had a horse in the past that's prone to choke I think it's important. I also think it slows the passage of cubes through the gut as it's more stalky and the horse has to chew it for longer providing saliva and preventing ulcers. Hay is fine but they aren't eating that at the same time as the cubes are they?! Besides every feed company I've called has suggested giving at least a double handful of a chaff like product with cubes or mix.
It's also another way of getting fibre into them and I agree it's a good filler if trying to get a supplement down a fatty.
Feeding a lot of chaff I suppose doesn't make sense if they are eating ad lib hay, and I'm not a fan of leaving chaff for them to graze on as they choff it down in 10 mins anyway. However if a horse is loosing weight and it's eating as much hay as it wants then I will always increase the chaff before the hard feed.
I like HiFi for my horse, it's simple and it does the job. I'm wary of Alfa A oil after a few of my horses have had digestive problems on it but a small amount of Alfa is fine as it's good for stomach acid.
My horse gets a scoop of HiFi with each feed, he'll get a bit more if it snows as an extra fibre source and I mix it with lots of water.

 

[Festive_Felicitations]

I was going to comment but having read all the replies I am now throughly confused.
What do you call 'chaff'??

Here we have lucerne, oaten & wheaten which are basically hay chopped finely.

 

[BronsonNutter]

How 'big' is the feed? (not weight-wise, but volume wise?) If it's smaller than a football, I'd add a few handfuls of chaff just to promote the saliva production like firewell said (but then again, if she has ad-lib hay/haylage that should be fine anyway). If it's bigger than a football then maybe I wouldn't - purely because it'd just get pushed through the stomach quicker, so wasting feed effectively. Except then I'd be wondering why I was having to feed so much of a concentrate, and trying to find a more effective diet

Felicity_09, I think many of the chaffs over here are just chopped straw but there are ones that are made of lucerne and the likes

 

[wench]

Shes on the cubes as per recommedations from vet/feed company. She was very thin and needs to put weight on!

 

[Tnavas]

As you are feeding sugarbeet with the cubes then there is no reason to feed chaff as well.

There was a time when you couldn't buy chaff so you fed sugarbeet as the fibre to open up the feed and prevent them bolting the feed down.

I currently don't feed chaff purely because I am feeding sugarbeet.

 

[snowcrew]

I actually spoke to Top Spec some time ago about the "chaff" debate and they were very helpful.

Neither of my horses bolt their food and graze on good pasture. When stabled they have ample supply of haylage.

One events and the other is a piggy who is a very good doer. The eventer never has chaff just Top Spec conditioning cubes and balancer and the good doer has what I call a pretend feed of half a scoop of chaff mixed with her balancer. I only do this as horses are fed at same time so I purely use chaff to make her think she is getting a feed!

Interesting thread though as the only ever experience I have had of "choke" was when I fed one of my previous old horses chaff in their feed (it had been dampened).

As always there is never a right or wrong way with our neddies, just have to find what is right for the indiviudals and what you want to get from your feeds.

 

[GreyCoast]

Back in the day when I had access to research journals I looked up feeding chaff. The few papers I read said that commercially available chaff in Australia is cut too short to be of any fibre value. One recommended buying your own machine to make it a decent length! I like the concept of fibre at meal times, but like to keep meals small as apparently too much volume means that the food doesn't get absorbed fully? No idea about any of it. Haven't fed chaff other than for a few months and I hope I never have to as it's jolly expensive and messy!

 

[Polotash]

the cheapy chaff is really just fibre/bulk so if i wanted to put weight on a horse i would def be buying the alpa-a oil rather than chaff

Totally agree

 

[aran]

Back in the day when I had access to research journals I looked up feeding chaff. The few papers I read said that commercially available chaff in Australia is cut too short to be of any fibre value. One recommended buying your own machine to make it a decent length! I like the concept of fibre at meal times, but like to keep meals small as apparently too much volume means that the food doesn't get absorbed fully? No idea about any of it. Haven't fed chaff other than for a few months and I hope I never have to as it's jolly expensive and messy!

I don't get that study.
Why would fibre length affect its feed worth?
It would change chew time but it's content is not determined by its length? Its all chewed up in the mouth and then the mushed up bolus is passed to the stomach and GI tract for further processing and absorption. Therefore whether they've eaten long or short strands it will leave the mouth in the same state - mushed.
What affects its content is what type of grass it is, when cut and how stored, therefore straw chaff is great for fatties, dried grass/Alfa for thinnies

I like fibre in feeds - personally I think it should be the base of all feeds. Up its worth first and add to it if needed. Most horses won’t need much added (just a vit/min), some will those in heavy work or losing weight then you keep the fibre and add what you need remembering to up/lower it as required.
A lot of people look to the hard feed first and then just add anything to slow eating etc - I don't think this is the way to think about feeding.

 

[TarrSteps]

I'll confess I don't really "get" chaff because it's pretty much non-existent in Canada. The only people I've ever heard of feeding it are in areas where hay is hard to get and very expensive and even then, it's not common at all. I only knew about it theoretically until I moved to the UK!

So, I can say there are literally hundreds of thousands of horses. everything from hackers or Olympians, that have never even seen chaff and lived long and happy lives. Now, I do understand it depend on what else you're feeding (there is also nothing like the selection of generally available feeds in North America as here - lots of barns feed one or two things to all the horses, varying quantities and proportions) and it is a useful thing for bulking up a meal. But "essential"? I can't really see it.

The horse that was sent to me from Canada wasn't having any of it. The first time he was fed it, he clearly wondered why someone had put lawn clippings in his dish.

I will say though, it's also very standard to feed hay before grain in North America (unless a horse is out, obviously) so presumably that serves the same purpose. If you're not doing that maybe there is more point to it.

 

[KatB]

I've always known it be fed as an extra fibre source, but certainly not something that is "compulsory"! I feed it as my mare will bolt her food, but she gets a handful in evening when she is going to be eating hay all night, and more in the morning as she is out on a very sparse field! She also gets sugarbeet though.

Tarrsteps, we always fed hay then hard feed at the event yard I worked at, as it acts as a buffer and helps digestion... BUT we also fed chaff and sugarbeet

 

[TarrSteps]

It is funny how people get used to things being a certain way, though. I was a bit taken aback when I moved and saw how many people here feed a hard feed meal just on its own, as you'd be really taken to task for that in my culture, but clearly the horses are none the worse for wear.

The fact is, horses survive just fine on all sorts of regimes.

 

[coreteam1]

It is funny how people get used to things being a certain way, though. I was a bit taken aback when I moved and saw how many people here feed a hard feed meal just on its own, as you'd be really taken to task for that in my culture, but clearly the horses are none the worse for wear.

The fact is, horses survive just fine on all sorts of regimes.

I lived in Oz for a while and even their hay intake was different to ours. I remeber feeding the horses something called Lucerne?? it was really dark green adn came in bales like our small hay bales but was fed in smaller quantities. It looked a nice thing to feed

On the chaff thread..I feed Dengie Hi fi and loads of it for my boy. I even give him a bucket of it before going out for a ride or after being ridden before his tea. It's really helped me keep him at a healty weight and helps me keep his sane too.
I feed two heaped scoops a day plus the bucket of it (special dengie bucket they give away at Your Horse Live )