Feeding oat straw chaff

[Hormonal Filly]

I wasn’t feeding my mare enough forage, she lives on fresh air! She is slightly over weight. So she is now getting soaked hay (she is much happier!) and always has some left which is great.

I started giving her a bucket of Honeychop Oat chaff during the day while stabled last week, but she’s finishing the bucket everyday despite having hay left.

Will this lead to weight gain?

 

[Pearlsacarolsinger]

I wouldn't think so. My mare lost weight on a similar regime. Just keep monitoring with weekly weigh-tape.

 

[Prancerpoos]

I think you will be fine. I used to give my haffie pretty much free access to oat chaff and it definitely helped keep her weight loss whilst giving her something to munch.

 

[P.forpony]

Agreed, very unlikely.
Average daily energy requirement for a horse in light work is 70ish MG
Oat straw chaff is about 4 MG/KG
So a kilo of chaff is only 5.7% of daily calorie requirements.
Definitely preferable to an empty stomach!

 

[Hormonal Filly]

Thanks all..

Agreed, very unlikely.
Average daily energy requirement for a horse in light work is 70ish MG
Oat straw chaff is about 4 MG/KG
So a kilo of chaff is only 5.7% of daily calorie requirements.
Definitely preferable to an empty stomach!

Thing is she’s eating the oat straw chaff when she has soaked hay left.. might see if I can find out the mj/kg of soaked hay!

 

[Hormonal Filly]

This is quite interesting, so looks like Oat straw chaff (5 MJ/Kg) is less or almost equal to 8 hour soaked hay.

 

[Goldenstar]

No it straw chop is the lowest calorie thing you can feed .

 

[Pearlsacarolsinger]

Thanks all..


Thing is she’s eating the oat straw chaff when she has soaked hay left.. might see if I can find out the mj/kg of soaked hay!

She probably prefers the chaff because it's dry!