Drinking hay soaking water

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Polos Mum

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One of the horses on the yard is on soaked hay, I inadvertently tied mine up next to the bucket that hay had been soaking in (grim looking brown water) and he scoffed it like it was my kids drinking cola! He had a clean water bucket in his stable so not thirsty.
I guess it's all sugary from the sugars that have come out of the hay - in this weather I'm all for anything that will help them drink enough and a bit of extra sugar won't be horiffic for him.

Anything I've not thought about before I start asking them to save it for me?
 
You're right about all the dust - I wonder why they like it so much. I offered it to one of my others and it had the same effect - I guess the sugar outweighs the dust flavour for them.

I'll stick to a carton of apple juice in their water then when it's this silly hot!
 
I don't tend to let mine have it but they have stopped to have a guzzle on the way out to the field on occasion, they chased away from it pretty quickly.
 
MotherOfChickens said:
its really not nice stuff-its akin to sewage in BOD, has much higher levels of bacteria and is pretty awful for the environment as well. I know these guys are selling something but what they say is effectively correct and there's more info online

https://haygain.co.uk/blogs/news-and-events/environmental-effects-of-soaking-vs-steaming-hay
Click to expand...

Anything organic will have a high BOD so in itself that’s irrelevant. Milk had a BOD of 140,000 whilst raw sewage is only 300-400.

Bacteria well it’s washed off the hay and I guess multiplied but is it harmful bacteria? Dust and spores when wet - are they really an issue? They’ll be plenty still actually in the hay itself along with bacteria.
 
I soak hay and the one of mine that can handle dry hay has often sneaked a slurp of hay tea. I was on a yard one where the groom's dog headed straight for my buckets every morning for a drink.

It's a bit rank when it's hot and stewed and I wouldn't purposely let them drink it, but my big lad will choose to drink from a trough full of green slime when there's fresh water - maybe he's improving his gut bacteria!
 
There was a water tank in the corner of the field, not dangerous and too heavy to lift. It had grass, leaves and probably a load of nasty looking stuff in the rain water. One of the horses always had a slurp from it before going to the ‘proper’ trough.
 
I had a mare that had colic and would not drink. We tried water from every source on the farm and she took the one from the mankiest water trough that had not been used for a year. Well mineralised stuff was the vets verdict.

I had completely forgotton that we used to use hay tea.
 
Mine eat the same hay unsoaked, so any dirt, dust, spores etc on the dry hay they will eat anyway - drinking not that much different to eating?

I appreciate the bacteria will multiply more in the water than on the dry hay but that's the only real difference I can think of.

I tried it with another horse yesterday and he loved it like it was chocolate milkshake too - I can't imagine they would really woof something so disgusting and rank. At least I know mine horse isn't just a freak!
 
Hmm - just out of interest, but assuming the hay soaking water is changed after each soak, how can it suddenly turn into 'sewage' etc when the horses that are eating unsoaked hay would be eating everything that comes out of the soaked hay? I agree that water that has been used a number of times woud be gross, but I wouldn't personally re-use the water anyway.
 
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