Horse not eating hay

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Rainbowbright

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11 March 2011
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Cork, Ireland
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Hey all, my horse, alike many others, love his food. He has been eating hay since start of the summer, i have moved livery yards and he was eating hay from small bales, and still does, but he will not eat the hay from a round bale. It is older than the small bales and quite dusty as he had a bit of a reaction to it (runny nose, cough) but i have been soaking it...he's quite simply just refusing to eat it....what can i do, the livery owner doesnt want me using the baled hay...though i am using it in the evenings if he is out for the night....thanks
 
Buy yourself some new hay?

If you really have to use the old stuff, have you tried sprinkling apple juice over? my Horse turns her nose up and certain bales, nothing I can do will make her eat it, so instead I have to switch it with the other liveries and ask the farmer for different ones next time (I'm sure he loves me :p)
 
Thanks....i think ill just have to keep using the small bales until we change to haylage....he makes his own hay on site and i even have an allergic reaction to the hay in the round bale...all the other horses are eating it fine though one or two did get a reaction to it aswell but they are still eating it when soaked.
 
Obviously your doing right by soaking it. My horse dislikes soaked hay aswell!
I bought s bottle of Hay boost from Countrywide and you spray it on. Its actually to increase the goodness and add vitamins but has a minty flavour so firstly helps increase palatebility but also increases the feed value so it wont matter quite to much if they dont eat as much as they should. I then added fibre by way of high fibre nuts and Hifi type feeds. Not idea but may tide you over?
 
I 'm quite cautious but if my horse is being seriously fussy over her hay, I trust her opinion tbh. She's loves her food so if she won't have something it is usually because there is something wrong with it, which won't be good for her. People use all sorts of fertilisers and chemicals nowadays and it might be that the hay field has been sprayed with something which your horse can smell. I would stick to the small bales if I were you and change to the bigger bales if the quality improves.
 
Except dust isn't merely a tiresome, cough-provoking nuisance! It's usually highly dangerous aspergillus (fungal) spores. Soaking dusty hay is merely sticking the poison to the hay and preventing it from floating about into the air - and potentially lungs (and worse, guttural pouches) of your horse.

Go and buy clean forage and listen to your horse.

The only reason to soak hay is to make good quality hay less potentially harmful to a laminitic by leaching out some of its sugars. Even this is an arguably pointless procedure by some research and has shown to be inefficient and unreliable.

Soaking does not make rubbish and poisonous hay edible!
 
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