Feeding hay alternatives to sport horses - school thesis, please help!

LoveEillia

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Hi!

Does any of you feed alternatives of a baled meadow/grass hay (hay cubes, alfalfa hay, haylage, beet pulp, etc.) to your horses in moderate to hard workload? Do you substitute all of the hay in their diet or just a part of it? I'm writing a thesis about hay alternatives, so I would like to know how many of you actually use them while feeding your sport horses.

Thanks! :)
 

Sail_away

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Well paddy (my horse) is an Irish sports horse - not sure if he counts as he’s not exactly high level. He’s jumping 1m out competing, we school at elementary level dressage, ridden 6 days a week. So if that qualifies, then he was on Timothy haylage this winter but it was too fattening. He was on all Timothy haylage, (but turned out in the day) about 9kg per night.
He has just moved on to soaked hay and is looking a little slimmer for it. I did like the haylage for the reduced dust content, but he couldn’t have much of it which meant he ate his straw overnight. With the soaked hay he can have 4-5kg more which keeps him going better.
 

LoveEillia

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Well paddy (my horse) is an Irish sports horse - not sure if he counts as he’s not exactly high level. He’s jumping 1m out competing, we school at elementary level dressage, ridden 6 days a week. So if that qualifies, then he was on Timothy haylage this winter but it was too fattening. He was on all Timothy haylage, (but turned out in the day) about 9kg per night.
He has just moved on to soaked hay and is looking a little slimmer for it. I did like the haylage for the reduced dust content, but he couldn’t have much of it which meant he ate his straw overnight. With the soaked hay he can have 4-5kg more which keeps him going better.

Thank you so much, this is very helpful :) Do you add any concentrate to his diet? How old is he?
 

My equine life

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My horse isn’t a sport horse, she is retired and struggles with her teeth. She gets part of her grass/ hay replaced with two feeds of what I call her mush everyday. She’s only 11hh so it’d be more for a competition horse but she gets a scoop of spillers fibre nuts and a scoop of Speedi beet soaked along with a scoop of Speedi beet molasses free. These can all be fed in quite high quantities to replace part of a horses forage. I also put linseed in her mush as it has the same omegas as grass. She doesn’t get a lot as she’s only little but you can feed Quite a bit of linseed I’m pretty sure (not sure of values but mvf thought about 200g)
 

LoveEillia

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My horse isn’t a sport horse, she is retired and struggles with her teeth. She gets part of her grass/ hay replaced with two feeds of what I call her mush everyday. She’s only 11hh so it’d be more for a competition horse but she gets a scoop of spillers fibre nuts and a scoop of Speedi beet soaked along with a scoop of Speedi beet molasses free. These can all be fed in quite high quantities to replace part of a horses forage. I also put linseed in her mush as it has the same omegas as grass. She doesn’t get a lot as she’s only little but you can feed Quite a bit of linseed I’m pretty sure (not sure of values but mvf thought about 200g)

Thank you!
 

MiJodsR2BlinkinTite

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Well........ I don't know if I can be of any help coz I have cobs, not sport horses!

BUT: I recently fed Dengie's (new) Meadow Grass chop with herbs to my youngster (cob) and she literally exploded underneath me!! She's always been a really nice little girly up to this point and this behaviour was totally alien to what she's usually like, so I went back to the last thing I'd changed, which was the feed, and started researching what might be going on.

Changed back to normal feed and she was her normal placid self!

Looked up the sugar content for the offending feed and it was way higher than her normal feed which was Dengie Hi Fi Mollasses free.

Dunno if this helps.
 

Leo Walker

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Thank you for your answer! How much haylage do you feed? What is your horse's workload and do you feed them any concentrate in addition to the haylage?

Its ad lib, rough guesstimate I'd say 8kgs a day, she also has straw to pick at and is turned out 9 till 4 ish but theres not a huge amount of grass. She gets pink mash, grass nuts and oats. Shes worked most days, stupid weather dependant! Currently a long way from being fit but shes trotting 90% of a 6mile loop we do twice a week and working on fast work in the school in between.
 

Leo Walker

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BUT: I recently fed Dengie's (new) Meadow Grass chop with herbs to my youngster (cob) and she literally exploded underneath me!! She's always been a really nice little girly up to this point and this behaviour was totally alien to what she's usually like, so I went back to the last thing I'd changed, which was the feed, and started researching what might be going on.

Alfalfa had a similar effect on mine. It built up over the course of 10 days and she completely lost her mind! Yet oats make her forward and keen in a good way. I'm very careful with what she gets fed now though after alfalfagate!
 

LoveEillia

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Its ad lib, rough guesstimate I'd say 8kgs a day, she also has straw to pick at and is turned out 9 till 4 ish but theres not a huge amount of grass. She gets pink mash, grass nuts and oats. Shes worked most days, stupid weather dependant! Currently a long way from being fit but shes trotting 90% of a 6mile loop we do twice a week and working on fast work in the school in between.

Thank you, very helpful! :)
 

sportsmansB

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I had a mare competing at pre novice eventing, 110 SJ and ele dressage who couldn't eat hay or haylage due to choke and had to get all her fibre from hay replacers.
She was 17hh and 3/4 TB 1/4 ID
This is what I did:
- Kept her out 24/7 if at all possible. This did 3 things - she got grass, it meant she wasn't standing in with nothing to do as its hard to stretch the replacers out to be ad-lib, and stopped anyone accidentally feeding her hay with the other horses
- When she was out and there wasn't much goodness in the grass, she got a bucket twice per day consisting of soaked grass nuts and fibre beet. The equivalent of 3 dry scoops of each per day, soaked and over the 2 feeds. It made pretty big buckets. She could eat chaff / alfa so got 2 scoops of that per bucket too.
- When she was out and the grass was good she just got a normal feed of nuts or mix
- If she had to be kept in, she got the grass nuts / fibre beet split over 4 feeds, and in between each she got a lucie brix from simple systems. She ended up having about 5 of them over the day to keep her occupied. The down side of this was that when she did have to be kept in she was obviously getting a lot more energy than a normal horse on cool mix and hay. It wouldn't really have been sustainable long term but it was doable for a few days between paddocks or in terrible weather. It was also hideously expensive as the lucie brix were approx £16 for 20 so that was £4 per day and I was going through 2-3 bags of each type of feed too, it worked out about £50/week and relied on people remembering to chuck her in a brix regularly too.

I was really, really lucky that she was easy in herself- she didn't mind being out on her own at all, but was equally happy in with other horses, so there was always somewhere to put her to keep her out.
PM me if you have any questions
 

LoveEillia

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I had a mare competing at pre novice eventing, 110 SJ and ele dressage who couldn't eat hay or haylage due to choke and had to get all her fibre from hay replacers.
She was 17hh and 3/4 TB 1/4 ID
This is what I did:
- Kept her out 24/7 if at all possible. This did 3 things - she got grass, it meant she wasn't standing in with nothing to do as its hard to stretch the replacers out to be ad-lib, and stopped anyone accidentally feeding her hay with the other horses
- When she was out and there wasn't much goodness in the grass, she got a bucket twice per day consisting of soaked grass nuts and fibre beet. The equivalent of 3 dry scoops of each per day, soaked and over the 2 feeds. It made pretty big buckets. She could eat chaff / alfa so got 2 scoops of that per bucket too.
- When she was out and the grass was good she just got a normal feed of nuts or mix
- If she had to be kept in, she got the grass nuts / fibre beet split over 4 feeds, and in between each she got a lucie brix from simple systems. She ended up having about 5 of them over the day to keep her occupied. The down side of this was that when she did have to be kept in she was obviously getting a lot more energy than a normal horse on cool mix and hay. It wouldn't really have been sustainable long term but it was doable for a few days between paddocks or in terrible weather. It was also hideously expensive as the lucie brix were approx £16 for 20 so that was £4 per day and I was going through 2-3 bags of each type of feed too, it worked out about £50/week and relied on people remembering to chuck her in a brix regularly too.

I was really, really lucky that she was easy in herself- she didn't mind being out on her own at all, but was equally happy in with other horses, so there was always somewhere to put her to keep her out.
PM me if you have any questions

Thank you so much! :)
 

oldie48

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TBH I am a little confused by your question but I have a 16hh dressage horse in moderate work (ridden 5x weekly with at least three schooling sessions with a lot of trot and canter) She is pretty fit. I make my own haylage, late cut and drier than most so lower in sugar. She has ad lib when in and is out currently about 3/4 hours daily on poor grass. She has two feeds of Half scoop Ease and Excel + unmollassed beet + half cup of micronised linseed with a haylage balancer.
 
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