Dust free hay for good doer pony?

[Lacuna]

So we're heading towards spring soon and pony has been doing well with no cough over the winter. he's been on haylage over the winter and done well. In fact only had one cough when we had to give them dry hay in the field (delivery was late) so I'm sure now that it is one of his triggers.

Due to the setup of the yard its rather difficult to soak hay for long enough that it will remove all the dust (due to time/space restraints) and he's such a good doer that haylage in the summer will probably be asking for trouble. So I'm looking for a very low-cal, dust free forage that he can have overnight in the summer, any recommendations are welcome.

 

[Shay]

Could you use grass nuts or a low calorie forage replacer? You could try soaking for only 10 minutes which will damp down most if not all the dust. Or even just pouring water over the net although that won't be as effective obviously. But if he is too dust sensitive for that then hay replacer is probably going to be better.

 

[Pearlsasinger]

Do you want to bring him in to the forage or give it outside? I got a lot of weight off the Draft mare who was obese when I bought her by supplementing her hay/haylage with plain oat straw chaff in big trugs. I always thought that if she was hungry she would eat it and she did although she wasn't impressed with the taste.
We found that steaming hay was effective for a cough.

 

[Leo Walker]

Bagged high fibre haylage mixed with straw and big buckets of straw chaff worked exceptionally well with mine