Hay replacement

[Irishbabygirl]

Hi all, my dentaly challenged 30 year old Watmblood can no longer eat hay - he’s out on good grass and two big bucket feeds a day of Alpha A Oil and A&P Veteran Vitality and looking good on this. Looking for a hay replacer for when he’s in overnight but would prefer a short chop haylage or similar to try rather than buckets of hi-fi and Fast Fibre as he’s a big boy so needs an awful lot! Any suggestions much welcome. Thank you so much in advance.

 

[be positive]

I think if you want to get a decent quantity and quality into him at a lower cost you would find grassnuts more viable than bags of chop which are expensive and may be hard work for an older horse to eat, I would make up a trug of soaked grassnuts separately from his other feeds and leave it with him overnight, to bulk it out if required then stick to the alfa a and just add some to the soaked nuts, if he needs variety then get a plain grass chop to add interest, the other option would be soaked alfalfa pellets.

 

[windand rain]

Emerald green grass chaff and emerald green grass nuts are a high quality fibre feed. If a fatty or needing less carbs soaked grass nuts and oat straw chaff would be good too

 

[ycbm]

I buy this because the bag is so huge for the cost. You might need to soak it, since it's a bit harder to eat than hay based chaff, but at least it will keep him busy all night. Mine have it all day when they are in during the summer.

http://www.efeed.co.uk/products/Horse-Feed/Chaff/Oat-Chaff

 

[Polos Mum]

Soaked grass nuts worked wonders for me in this situation. For the first few days he scoffed them - but after a week calmed down to eating them slowly and a big tub bucket in at 5pm would often have some left at 11pm when I put the second one in.