Does anyone not feed a chaff with thier hard feeds...

Bug2007

Well-Known Member
Joined
20 July 2010
Messages
1,569
Location
Dorset
Visit site
...i'm currently only feeding mug of high fibre nuts, mug of outshine and seaweed, with sugarbeet water.
In the winter they have mollichaff in with whatever feed they are then on, but now they are on a huge amount of cattle grazing, so don't need the forage, they just have the nuts and sugarbeet water to take the seaweed in.

Just wondered if anyone else didn't bother with the chaff at this time of the year.
I find it takes ages to get through a bag when they are having a handful of it and it goes off so just don't feed it.
 
I always feed a bit of chaff. It slows them down from scoffing the food too quickly and also slows the passage of food through the gut. Rich grass can upset their stomach and cause scouring/colic as the horse processes it too quickly, when on rich grass my horse gets some low cal chaff with his mug of balancer as a form of fibre just to help things move a bit more slowly :)
 
I use a small handful of dengie Alfa A molasses free chaff, this will not go off imho, it is expensive but I like to feed a variety of feeds, and this one has alfalfa plus herbs, and can be fed wet or dry. If the grass was rich I would feed the HI FI molasses free, with no alfalfa. I only feed a small amount as recommended amounts tend to assume that the horse is on poor grazing, whereas mine is on old pasture.
The names of all these chaffs are very similar, so be very clear what you want, as far as I know there are only two molasses free products.
 
Last edited:
I feed chaff - but only a small handful to mix in 25ml of oestress.
If she didn't have oestress she would have 1 1/2 mugs of lo cal and that is it.

(she has plenty of hay when she's in her stable to provide fibre and good quality grass in the field)
 
I never feed chaff. My horse takes his time eating his hard feed so I don't have to slow him down. He gets plenty of forage as it is so I don't see the need to feed it.
Correct me if I'm wrong though, I wouldn't want him to be missing out.
 
I never used to feed it, I fed my hunters, team chasers, p2pers etc. for years without it with no problems.

I only buy it now because the daughter insists on it. Personally I don't think it makes much difference unless you have a bolter.
 
Always feed my 18hh warmdblood chaff, a hard feed and sugar beet in winter. and a good full scoop of it too! being a big frame of a horse he can drop weight very easily, with this feed twice a day and two big haynets of night grazing all day, he never drops the weight and is never over weight! but i suppose they are all differnt, however if i just gave him mix i think he would just look at me as if to say wheres these rest.....
 
Top