For those who use chopped oat straw ... a quick question

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wildandwoolly

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Morning all. I've got a fatty who was doing really quite well losing weight with diet and work. Unfortunately I've had an accident and won't be able to ride for a few months so am considering using chopped oat straw as a partial hay replacement to try and keep up the good work. I have a friend who can come and ride him but it will only be occasionally so not enough to help with weight control really. My question is when you put the chop in a trug do you damp it? I just have visions of him snorting and blowing it everywhere! Thank you muchly!
 
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I didn't. We went through a couple of bags per week at one time but she certainly wasn't wolfing it down at a rate to cause a problem. She ate it grudgingly when she had run out of hay/haylage. I used to put a big trug of chaff in her box alongside her measured ration of hay/lage for her to come into, then topped up the hay at last checks (about 11.00 pm), so that she couldn't eat all the hay at once. I knew that the chaff would probably not be all eaten until early morning, so didn't want to dampen it, in case that started it to go 'off'.
 
I did to start or he did exactly as you said and blew it all over. We also had several incidents where he kicked hell out of the bucket in rage. He soon got over that and realised that was his dinner now!
 
We use honeychop lite and healthy.
8kilos of hay a night ( he is 16:3) then four kilos of the chaff and he is loosing weight nicely.

Also under rug. He has been in no more than a 200g in the coldest days this winter.
 
Thank you everyone for your replies. I'll get some for him and see how it goes. Hopefully he'll be nice and slim by the time I'm fit to ride again :)
 
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I feed mine dry. Strangely, one of my horses (the highly bred warmblood one..) absolutely loves it and tucks in before she goes to her haylage. She only gets it because she goes inside out trying to get to the wannabe fattie's supply, who only eats it in desperation when all other food has gone. It works well as something to munch when all the hay has gone, so good luck with it. I also use Swedish haynets to slow down the hay consumption, which seems to work well. Good luck!
 
Leo Walker said:
what on earth is a Swedish haynet? :oops:
Click to expand...

well I think its one that hangs against the wall-a flat net, its rectangular and you fill it from the top (they have ties on them). I have two, one has two sections to it so you can lay two net sizes next to each other thus making the mesh size smaller. they're good, easy to fill, you can hang them low and they take quite alot of hay. I think it was an offshoot from the Swedish Hoof School originally-I bought mine SH as the postage is spendy!

https://www.slowfeeding.com/slowfeeding/modells/
 
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