Feeding hay in the stable

Pearlsasinger said:
How long did you try it for?

I have to say that almost every horse I have owned, with just a couple of exceptions has been a good doer. But under no circumstances am I prepared to leave a horse unattended with a haynet in a stable - far too much possibility of disaster!

My Draft mare DID go through 2 bags of chaff per week but it was worth the expense, imo, to avoid her standing around with nothing to eat for hours on end.
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She was not restricted till she stopped any major growing at 3 (she is now 8)-she lived out on just fairly poor but plentiful grazing-in reality she is not restricted in the stable now as I give her straw to top up and have always done that but if you give her as much hay or grass as she wanted she would just not stop eating-she is strip grazed with hay as a top up at the mo and living out so she is restricted as in she has to work hard for what is there when she has eaten the fresh strip but once in at night she is not restricted as much in the field.
If it worked for every horse then they would not be as many obese horses about and it is on the increase-there are 3 at work one of who has been on adlib hay and grass for 4yrs, another who has been on it for 18months-he is not greedy but puts on weight looking at food and another who has been with us 4.5yrs and is on adlib soaked hay in a paddock with not much grass (he is a shetland).
Where I keep my mare there are about 50 other horses and the vast majority are fed adlib and there are 10 who not obese of which 5 are ill or ancient, only 2 are fit and a really good weight one of those is mine kept as above and the other is fed adlib.
 
Safe feeding of a haynet from the floor. Use a small hole net. Remove the cord and replace it with a 4mm link chain. Fill the net and close it as normal, and use a carabiner clip (ebay for chain and clip) to hold it shut. Do not fasten the end of the chain together. There is nothing to get caught around the feet, and having the haynet loose on the floor gives the horse nothing to pull against and slows it right down and is a natural eating position.
 
If mine were stabled I'd like to see some left in the morning😃
I use a courser hay for my natives/fat prone....it takes more chewing and so lasts longer.
Also, some haylage actually has less sugar than alot of hay....always worth finding out when feeding fatties😃
 
twiggy2 said:
Did not work with mine,
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Nor with my friend's horse - the one I mentioned above. He's 23, she's owned him 17 years and she's never restricted his hay - mainly because he worked very hard in the early days eventing to Intermediate so needed it. When he retired she tried to find ways of restricting him but they all failed. He chews through a haynet in 10 minutes (a trickle net took him 40 minutes to be fair) pulls it all out onto the floor and eats it in an hour so that doesn't slow him down. She adds oat straw to bulk it out but he will literally stand and eat until it's all gone, there's no little and often with him, he has no off switch.

The poor boy's obese but she has tried everything, which either didn't work (muzzle lasted 5 minutes) made things worse (stabling during day in summer meant box walking which aggravated his arthritic hocks) or wasn't an option (no bare paddocks at our yard) that she's decided it's better for him to have a happier shorter retirement so she's given up. He lives out, unrugged, all winter but still gains weight. He's never had laminitis but his weight must be putting strain on his joints. He's field sound and happy though.
 
I found a compromise with my good doer TB - he has some hay in a haynet tied under his window at the back of the stable and some in a big trough in a front corner of his stable - that way if hes particularly hungry he can eat the loose hay in the trough first then he has the hay in the net which takes him a bit longer to eat. He usually has some left over by the morning in one or the other x
 
Mine (all good doers) get 6.5kgs of hay per day, soaked in summer. They are out during the day, strip grazed in summer, on moderate grazing in winter. If fed ad lib they would be like hippos. One is so greedy he has to be on shavings otherwise he would have a bare stable in the morning, the others are on straw beds so can snack as they like. Ad lib hay is fine if a. the horse is a poor doer, b. in hard work, otherwise I find it just leads to porky ponies.
 
Mine comes out of the winter fatter than the summer. They come in about 4 mainly because of getting them in in the dark, and go out about 9. If they had ad lib hay they would be like balloons. They never have any left in the morning. Do worry about ulcers but then
worry about them being overweight particularly going into the Spring.
 
Pearlsasinger said:
How long did you try it for?

I have to say that almost every horse I have owned, with just a couple of exceptions has been a good doer. But under no circumstances am I prepared to leave a horse unattended with a haynet in a stable - far too much possibility of disaster!

My Draft mare DID go through 2 bags of chaff per week but it was worth the expense, imo, to avoid her standing around with nothing to eat for hours on end.
Click to expand...

I struggle with this with one of my mares. She gets 6 to 8kg about 8pm and just munches until it is finished, she rarely has anything left by morning. I turn her out about 6.30am but it worries me that she does stand in for part of the night without forage.

Do you mind me asking what sort of chaff you fed your draft mare and how much did you feed her, thanks.
 
Gosh, a lot of people worrying about their horses, but I've yet to have a problem with horses not stuffing their faces all the time. I spent a lot of time in the US where it was normal to feed horses only twice a day, and with smaller than would be considered normal over here amounts of hay. Never saw a problem there either. Sometimes theories are not borne out by practise, and it is not a definite that all horses will suffer with ulcers, colic, whatever, if not kept chewing constantly. Feed according to condition and work, and if that means restricting amounts then so be it. It's far worse to have fat horses IMO. Obviously if the horse has a problem which would be exacerbated by restricting amounts of hay then that must be dealt with, but otherwise I don't see it as a massive guilt trip to feed horses less and have them be a tad hungry in the morning.
 
twiggy2 said:
She was not restricted till she stopped any major growing at 3 (she is now 8)-she lived out on just fairly poor but plentiful grazing-in reality she is not restricted in the stable now as I give her straw to top up and have always done that but if you give her as much hay or grass as she wanted she would just not stop eating-she is strip grazed with hay as a top up at the mo and living out so she is restricted as in she has to work hard for what is there when she has eaten the fresh strip but once in at night she is not restricted as much in the field.
If it worked for every horse then they would not be as many obese horses about and it is on the increase-there are 3 at work one of who has been on adlib hay and grass for 4yrs, another who has been on it for 18months-he is not greedy but puts on weight looking at food and another who has been with us 4.5yrs and is on adlib soaked hay in a paddock with not much grass (he is a shetland).
Where I keep my mare there are about 50 other horses and the vast majority are fed adlib and there are 10 who not obese of which 5 are ill or ancient, only 2 are fit and a really good weight one of those is mine kept as above and the other is fed adlib.
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I wonder if it is actually the grazing which is the cause of the problem. Our grazing has never seen a cow (except over the wall) and has never been fertilised in any meaningful way. We have old pasture with varied plants and not too much grass.
The Draft mare who was obese had been given haylage and coarse mix and only turned out on alternate days in her previous home, my farrier insists that haylage is a major cause of laminitis.
 
Pearlsasinger said:
I wonder if it is actually the grazing which is the cause of the problem. Our grazing has never seen a cow (except over the wall) and has never been fertilised in any meaningful way. We have old pasture with varied plants and not too much grass.
The Draft mare who was obese had been given haylage and coarse mix and only turned out on alternate days in her previous home, my farrier insists that haylage is a major cause of laminitis.
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non of the grazing has ever been fertilised or had cattle on it, it is as you describe old pasture-it is one of the reasons I stay at a tumble down yard
 
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