Good doers - Hay in the winter?

[cookster1975]

There are 4 horses on about 9 acres at our place at the mo. 2 are cobs, 1 is a New Forest and mine is a TBxWB. We are putting a mixture of hay and haylage out every day and the grazing is not too bad.

One of the cob owners begrudges paying for the hay as she thinks her cob is fat and doesn't need any.

What do you think a good doer should be having? He's having no feed at all, but surely he needs fibre (hay) and vits/mins?

 

[posie_honey]

if he has grazing still (ie grass with no snow covering) then yup he could probably cope fine with nothing else - i'm sure many a horse has coped in that situation without vits and mins but if it was mine i'd add vits and mins
if the grass is covered with snow then he'd need additional forage such as hay - or even a hay straw mix if he's a fatty
on another note - some people put hay etc out on frosty days to help prevent laminitus in fatties

 

[ThePony]

With just 4 horses on that amount of land then I wouldn't be expecting to add any hay unless they had somehow managed to make all of it into mud or if it was covered in snow. That is plently of grazing to keep fibre going through their gut.

I personally like to give a token handfull of no molasses chaff with vits and mins to our good doers as they are in plenty of work and one has tied up in the past so we are very careful that they get vits to help with deficiencies in our grazing. If they did less intense work then I don't think they'd need the feed tbh.