Horse without food over night

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Daisy2

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Just wondering how long do you think your horse stays without food over night once they have finished their hay. My guys are in a dry lot over night with a couple of pads of hay. The reason is because they are on weighed hay for a month to reduce their size a little and wait till the spriing grass goes over but I just worry that they are without food for some time although there are thistles trees etc to nibble on.
 
I always prefer mine to be able to eat ad lib to keep the gut moving etc. but understand that you need to get weight off could you mix your hay up with straw to bulk it out a bit?
 
well Maizie has a dust allergy so whatever quality hay she eats she coughs so they are on horsehage, does straw contains dusts like hay? I assume it does but I could try it thanks
 
yes it does, not good then, umm you could try feeding some hifi lite or something as forage but not sure how long it would last, i guess haynets inside haynets to make it last longer?
 
You could feed soaked grass pellets, they shouldn't put on too much weight, have more or less the same stuff in as hay, and are designed to be eaten over a long period of time. Than your horse wouldn't have an empty tummy for a long time.
 
I have heard that horse will naturally not eat for 8 hours out of any 24hour period so as long as forage is avaliable during the day I wouldn't worry too much
 
Saxon_Jasmine said:
You could feed soaked grass pellets, they shouldn't put on too much weight, have more or less the same stuff in as hay, and are designed to be eaten over a long period of time. Than your horse wouldn't have an empty tummy for a long time.
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We feed soaked grass pellets to our retired mare to keep her weight on, so i'm afraid I would disagree with this. I would feed well-soaked hay, which removes a lot of the calories, because I agree with you OP, that I do not like horse to be without food for long periods of time.
 
I'd feed soaked hay too, it is long fibre so will take the longest to eat, bucket feeds, even high fibre ones, tend to be eaten in a shorter length of time so may make the problem worse.

Soaked hay will have fewer calories and be dust free and last longer so it would be what I would go for.
 
Well I am pretty sure my lad goes without for a few hours at night because he is on a set ration so as to avoid weight gain. He gets three good sized small bale pads for the night from 7pm through to 5am. But I put that in a double net of small holed haynets to slow him down and that is the best I can do as a compromise. Having just managed to bring him back into road walking work after 8 months rollarcoaster of laminitis...I am afraid being without hay for a few hours or having laminitis is the lesser of the two evils!
Also, even when a horse has finished his physical hay net I would imagine it takes the gut a few more hours to process the food in there...so in my opinion they may not be chewing at one end but the stomach is certainly having to work still...
 
Feeds with an energy level of 8-9 is classed as low energy. Top Spec do a chaff called Top Chop Lite which is mollasses free and has an energy level of 7.5 which is very low. I was advised that eating this chop is like us eating celery, we use more claories eating it than it contains. It also contains less sugar than hay!

http://www.topspec.com/TopChop-Comp.htm

Perhaps you could buy a "lite" Chop, something approved by the laminitis society and feed a tub trug of that. I fed this chaff to my pony and she lost weight very well with it.

I have also ready on The Speedibeet Website that offering a bucket of some speedibeet helps the horse to feel full and will therefore slow down its consumption of hay/grass. However I have not tried this and Speedibeet is high calorie so I would only offer a small amount perhaps mixed with some light chop.

Quote - Can I use Speedi-Beet to help lose weight?
Yes. Strange as it may seem, after the answer to the above point, it is possible to use Speedi-Beet to reduce weight.

Once soaked Speedi-Beet is quite bulky. Feeding this before turn out, or before providing forage, will make your horse feel quite full. As horses are trickle feeders they will tend to graze less and more slowly. You can feed him less and he will lose weight without losing condition. When he achieves the correct weight, feed the Speedi-Beet with his meals and intake will increase


Some high fibre/low energy/low sugar feeds to try:

Hi Fi Lite
Hi Fi Good Doer
Healthy Hooves
Happy Hoof
Top Chop Lite
Fast Fibre
Safe and Sound
Hoofkind

If feeds have an energy level of 9 or below and a starch and sugar content of under 10 combined, then they are suitable to be fed to a horse prone to weight gain. I would also look for feeds that can be used as a partial hay replacer too.

Hope this helps :)
 
I am of the opinion that if my horse doesnt have hay left in his net in the morning then he hasnt had enough hay.

I feed according to type/weight etc (for instance, if it is a fat native then it gets soaked old hay, and my skinny tb's get haylage, my wb gets haylage/hay mix) but have the same thought process.
 
Not eating for 8 hours a day is in periods of rest interspersed with eating, they don't by nature fail to eat for a single 8 hour stretch. The stomach will be producing acids which can cause ulcers if no food is present. My vet advises 6 hours maximum without food unless there is a good reason for it as a one off.
 
My boy doesn't go without hay. If I wanted to reduce the calorific content of his diet I would soak his hay for 12 hours a day and either feed it in small holed haynets or well shaken up and if possible spread out around the stable / field. By simply soaking it you can increase the quantity as you will be literally feeding fibre with little nutritional value.

I personally wouldn't feed chaffs / chops in a tub as they will be eaten quicker than hay... you could give them both a snackball / decahedron with some high-fibre cubes and or some chaff in which will occupy them for ages trying to get the last bits out...
 
A lot of the people who have lami prone ponies on our yard use the small hole haynets and doubled up (i.e. they use two haynets together, one inside the other). This makes it quite difficult for the horse to pick the hay out, so a couple of slices will last them hours, and keep them occupied.

There is one pony though (a haflinger!) who decided it's easier just to chew through the haynets as soon as they're put in to relase the hay. All the other ponies are good though and don't break them.
 
Toto has a large tub trug filled with soaked hay overnight, about 3 1/2 'slices' of small baled hay, and he always has a bit left in the morning :) So he's eating all he wants but not getting fat :)
 
We have a pony who is the ultra mega super good doer who lives on thin air.

We feed low fat feeds, which is more to get supplements into her than anything. She gets a low-cal balancer and a joint supplement, with a little low-cal chaff.

Her hay ration is carefully weighed to be half of the 1.5% of her bodyweight, the recommended percentage ration for horses needing to loose weight. This is put into a haynet from parell products (nothing to do with parelli), which are designed to slow down eating. They basically do the same as stuff 1 haynet inside another, but are much easier to fill than fighting a couple of haynets. This net is then soaked for 24 hours to remove dust, spores and soluble carbohydrates - basically making it as low-cal as possible.

She gets this during the day, and is in for about 8 hours. I am under no false illusions - this does not last for the full day. She spents the rest of the time asleep, then goes out overnight with a grazing muzzle on. Indeed, for all this seems a tiny amount, she doesn't always finish it. During the height of last summer she didn't touch the net all day, just stuffed herself with grass when outside.

As my vet says, this isn't a diet but a lifestyle choice, one that she's had for two years now. Yes, perhaps it does run the risk of gastric ulcers but avoids a lot of other problems associated with obesity, laminitus being the obvious one.

At the end of the day, if you truely have a brilliant doer (and this does not refer to the horse who keeps a reasonable weight during the winter, but the horse who is consistently obese during the winter), modern information puts you in an awkward situation. Half want you to feed all the time, the other half want you to stop.

The way I rationalised it was laminitus is more likely to kill than gastric ulcers.
 
I never leave any of mine without something to eat and that includes fatties and competition horses.

It's really bad for the equine digestive system to go without fibre/chewing and in every case they should never be left for more than 4 hours maximum.
It is not just ulcers you risk but colic, behaviour problems, and hunger !!

If they are fatties then use plenty of well soaked low energy hay in a small holed haynet so they have to pick at it slowly . . . . but thistles and tree's are not enough.
 
Saxon_Jasmine said:
You could feed soaked grass pellets, they shouldn't put on too much weight, have more or less the same stuff in as hay, and are designed to be eaten over a long period of time. Than your horse wouldn't have an empty tummy for a long time.
Click to expand...

Grass nuts are not the same as hay - they are the same nutritional profile as high quality spring grass! So absolutely NOT suitable in this situation!
 
I would feed soaked hay in a couple of hay nets , which will hopefully slow them eating-works with my fat eventer :). Horses need to continually eat to produce saliva. The saliva contains bicarbonate which neutralises the acid in the stomach. No neutralisation can result in ulcers.Although they spend a while not eating,the time they do have available to eat may be taken up with exercise or looking for food . Thats why I think they always need a little something in their digestive system to prevent upset.
 
CBFan said:
My boy doesn't go without hay. If I wanted to reduce the calorific content of his diet I would soak his hay for 12 hours a day and either feed it in small holed haynets or well shaken up and if possible spread out around the stable / field. By simply soaking it you can increase the quantity as you will be literally feeding fibre with little nutritional value.

I personally wouldn't feed chaffs / chops in a tub as they will be eaten quicker than hay... you could give them both a snackball / decahedron with some high-fibre cubes and or some chaff in which will occupy them for ages trying to get the last bits out...
Click to expand...

I dont quite agree with this. Chaff is added to feed to stop the feed from being eaten too quickly. It also slows down the passage of food in the gut and promotes good digestion.

You have to remember that chaff/sugarbeet is a type of roughage and not a hard feed. Feeding chaff stimulates the horses need to chew and providing different fibre sources in the stables helps combat stress. Stress is another cause of laminitis.

A tub trug of chaff/sugarbeet/high fibre cubes or even just a hay replacement chop is often called a haynet in a bucket. If you were concerned about your horse bolting his feed then I would separate around the stable in smaller buckets with large pebbles inside, as well as a soaked haynet.

If your horse has constant access to fibre then he is less likely to bolt his feed!
 
I feed my mare enough haylage that I have to throw a bit away in the morning.

However that haylage is squashed into tiny hole nets at the moment to slow her down. So she is eating less overnight.

Having dealt with her when she had gastric ulcers, that's not a scenario I want to return to!
 
All replies have been gratefully recieved and I have picked up some good tips. I will try soaking the hay, I have done this before overnight and she still coughed on it but perhaps that had something to do with the batch of hay. I have just had a right time with it all to be honest, really noone could try harder, strip grazing really does'nt work unless you let it go down to bare soil/ niblets of grass and then it gets trashed with the first sign of rain, hay coughs, now on horsehage 3 feeds a days but the last feed at 8pm and I am sure they finish in the hour, but now she has the runs ahgrrr!!! My boy is on the same regime with no problems. Now I am worried about impaction and colic.... just of up the field to feed more hay!!! I have ordered muzzles from dinky rugs but they are taking time arriving. Once again thanks.
 
Misinterpreted said:
A lot of the people who have lami prone ponies on our yard use the small hole haynets and doubled up (i.e. they use two haynets together, one inside the other). This makes it quite difficult for the horse to pick the hay out, so a couple of slices will last them hours, and keep them occupied.

There is one pony though (a haflinger!) who decided it's easier just to chew through the haynets as soon as they're put in to relase the hay. All the other ponies are good though and don't break them.
Click to expand...

Ha, thats my mare. I feed soaked hay in double nets and she chews through the first net grrrr.

I used to give my mare ad lib hay but this year she was diagnosed with laminitis so now I have to ration her hay. I visit the yard 4 times a day in order to give soaked hay in small amounts but I know this doesn't last long and I worry, especially during the night.
 
Hi there,
I use a large, very small hole haynet, which means my fella has to really work to get the hay out of the haynet. The haynet ends up lasting alot longer, and there is no way he can bolt the hay down quickly. Hope this helps.
L xx
 
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