feeding straw?

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Jericho

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I have a Welsh A mare who suffered laminitis last year and am obviosuly keen not to repeat the same experience again. She is in a starvation paddock and gets about 5- 6 sections of hay during the night only SHARED with my other horse, who comes into the smaller paddock at night (other horse is out during day in adjacent big field. I have only had my other horse a month or so so it is a bit of new routine for the welshie having lots of hay at night and she is already starting to put on weight. I used to feed her a section of hay during the day and a couple at night in small hole haynets. My other horse is coming in with her during the night for company for both of them and I would rather not stable them as they are both unhappy. Soooo (evenually got there).... can I feed just good quality straw to the welshie so she has something to pick at during the day and keep her weight down and then hay at night??? Or does anyone have any ideas to seperate ration 2 horses living in same space??
 
Funnily enough, my vet recommended padding haynets out with straw for my laminitic pony.
I don't know if i would take all of the hay away during the day, but a small holed haynet with a mixture of hay and straw should keep her busy.
 
If you're going to feed straw, oat straw is the most palatable for horses, as opposed to barley or wheat straw. No reason why you can't mix the two - it's not like hay/haylage because both hay and straw are dry roughage.
 
I wouldn't be sharing hay if possible as there's no way to gauge how much the pony is getting. I soak my hay (30 mins hot water or 1 hour cold water) and issue it throughout the day and evening. Dry, ad-lib hay could be enough to push her over the edge. If you feed straw, make sure she's getting some speedibeet and plenty of water. The last thing you need is an impaction! Also try to avoid long periods without food as the blood needs to be at as constant a 'mixture' (for want of a better word) as possible.

Beware the starvation paddock as the grass it contains may be so over-grazed that it becomes stressed. Stressed grass produces fructans as a means of trying to stay alive and keep growing whilst being eaten to the roots - and bang, ponio gets laminitis from non-existant grass.
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Jolly difficult, I know, but just be careful and good luck.
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I wouldn't let them share the hay either, keep them in the same paddock at night by all means, but seperate them with some electric tape. It is common to mix straw with the hay for laminitics, start by adding a little until you reach 50/50. Although oat straw is the nicest it still contains too much goodness for laminitics, so give a nice wheat straw.

Ditto the overgrazed paddock, and the high fructan levels.
 
thanks for the advice but crikey - I never knew that about starvation paddocks. Mine literally has no grass on it just a bit of moss but I do see her trying to graze so I guess there must be something she is getting. So... is the solution to keep her off paddock completely and just mix hay and straw? I really want to get to a point with her where I can let her graze with the other horse at least some of the time.
 
Have you thought about putting her out in the day with a grazing muzzle with your other horse so she gets a little to pick and just mixing the straw and hay at night. We found the muzzzle a great help with a laminitic pony we had
 
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