Showing my age here but we used to chop our own with a hand turned chaff cutter. We made it every other day, I think about a slice of straw to three of hay. I don't think it would be dearer than ready made; my hifi costs nearly £7 and I think a bale of hay weighs more for around £3! I wish I could still buy good old fashioned dry chaff, no molasses or additives. You can always add sugar beet to make it more palatable.
Was thinking of doing pretty much the same as you.Pony struggles to chew hay properly so if I could chaff some for her that would be great!
I've looked at the small garden shredders lately wondering if they'd do the trick!
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Showing my age here but we used to chop our own with a hand turned chaff cutter. We made it every other day, I think about a slice of straw to three of hay. I don't think it would be dearer than ready made; my hifi costs nearly £7 and I think a bale of hay weighs more for around £3!
[/ QUOTE ] Agree totally! When I used to work at a livery yard over 20 years ago
we made our own chaff, by chopping hay in a hand-turned chaff-cutter! When you consider that the bog-standard chaffs are just straw (even cheaper than hay) and molasses (cheap as chips) it irks me to pay the hugely inflated prices for molassed chaff. I prefer to buy alfafa chaff as at least it is full of nutrients.
My grandfather used to make his own chaff and we still have the cutter somewhere but I can imagin it may be cheaper if you are feeding in bulk but I may be wrong
Most chaff's on the market nowadays are just chopped straw and something added. Molassed Chaff is litrelly chopped straw and molasses, where as some called other names are chopped straw blended with alfa and molasses or oil.
I was thinking it would be cheaper too, especially if you had your own equipment. My Dad sells wood chippers, and he thinks if I were to feed slices of hay & straw through one, it would be chaff when it came out the other end.
You wouldn't have to mix vits & mins with it as you can add these to each individual bucket as you make the feed up.