rug~addict
Well-Known Member
I was wondering how many of you feed chaff? And what are your reasons for feeding/not feeding it?
Ive always thought we feed chaff to slow them down. So why are some of you using soaked products instead?
I was thinking of starting a similar thread, so thanks for saving me the trouble!
I don't feed chaff, and never have. I don't see the point of it, it's mind boggling seeing all the various permutations of chaff at the feed merchants.
Chaff would have been used traditionally to slow down eating when horses were kept on high grain diets, oats and barley as the main feed so it did need something to help them chew, feeding has changed so much over the years, more people feed a high fibre low grain diet so it really is just a filler to bulk out what is in the bucket, I haven't fed it for some time as I just don't see the point with modern feeding methods.
The choice is amazing so many people are obviously happy paying ££s for what is basically chopped hay/ straw/ alfalfa and in many cases lots of molasses to make it palatable, I prefer to give mine more hay.
I am another who thinks chaff is a waste of money. My ponies get unmollased sugarbeet, Linseed and a balancer at the minute, alongside adlib hay.
Agree with this, as a minimum. Should probably have qualified my earlier post by stating that my neds live out, with additional soaked hay as necessary. They get twice daily tiny feeds of a handful of soaked hi fibre cubes with added micronised linseed, pro hoof and salt. They will already have a gut full of fibre when they eat their hard feeds, so not need to add more. They don't bolt their feeds.Whenever you feed, 75% of your feed should be forage (fibre) based.
Whenever you feed, 75% of your feed should be forage (fibre) based. Forage/fibre opens up the mixture spreading the concentrate over a larger area so that it is digested properly. It slows the movement of the food through the digestive system allowing the digestive enzymes/bacteria etc to mix with the food and do a better, safer job.
Chaff/Sugarbeet also slow down your horses eating therefore more saliva is added to the feed right at the start of digestion.
By slowing the movement of feed through the digestive system you reduce the risk of hind gut acidosis.
A small feed of forage/fibre before riding also prevents stomach acid from sloshing around onto the upper non glandular part of the stomach, reducing the risk of ulcers. Chaff floats on the surface of the stomach acid.
Tnavas, surely that depends on the chaff you are using, speedibeet is 12 DE MJ/Kg, meadow hay is usually 8-11. Chaff might work out cheaper in the long run if I just chopped up some of his hay but there are other reasons for feeding beet.
I do think it is also important to remember that most horses are not being fed a bucket feed in isolation, they usually have hay before and after anyway. Dry weight Frank gets approx 40:60 beet: oats obviously the beet then expands so does most of the advantages your 75% is giving you in volume at least.
Having done an Equine Nutrition Diploma course recently you are so very wrong. The directive is to ALWAYS feed a high fibre diet, modern foods are causing a lot of dietary problems because they have minimal fibre.
A horses digestive system is designed to work most successfully on FIBRE only.
Regardless of hay and grazing, adding chaff or beet to the feed slows the passage of the food through the digestive system allowing enzymes and bacteria to do their work properly. This helps reduce the potential for colic and also hind gut acidosis.
But doesn't the decision to feed chaff (or not) depend on what else goes in the bucket and what is fed alongside? Copra, for example, is a "modern" feed (only been around for about 20 years) and is entirely fibre-based. Whether or not to feed chaff is a decision the individual horse owner must make based on any number of factors, including (but not limited to) access to turnout, quality of grazing, other forages, metabolism, workload, hard feed, bedding, blah, blah, blah.
P