how do you feed your forage?

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amandaco2

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mine get a mixture of hay and haylage- prob equiv of 3/4bale at night and 1/2 bale in the day.(horses from 2yo-19yo, 15.2h-16.1h, good doers)

fed in huge tiny-holed nets in the stable and field
i either soak or steam or spray with the hose to make sure there is no dust and they get it shaken out before stuffing into nets.

i did try to feed from the floor or hay bins but they wasted too much and ate even more!
 
Both fed ad lib, never in stable without hay and have hay in field too. Hay sprayed with horse for my mare, and soaked for an hour for fatty bum bum.
 
Mine have haylage in haynets which when I weighed them were around 15kgs each horses are all 16hh and always have a little left in their nets in the morning.
 
feed is just chaff to carry vits, fed 4kg soaked hay at night from the floor. I know she would eat it slower if I tied it up but felt that being without hay by morning was the lesser of two evils. I also am really careful about rotating my fields so i've got plenty of grass left even now which fills her up nicely during the day
 
Mine are out all day, so just grass when out, ad lib haylage fed from the ground at night (well I say adlib, the mare would probably like more but she would be the size of a house left to her own devices)

The foal gets 1 slice from a medium sized bale, the mare gets 2 slices
 
Mine gets 14lbs wetted on the floor per night, and a section of hay in the morning b4 she goes out, 3/4 of a bale os loads altho yours are big neddies!!
 
I used Haybars and haybags mostly. I occasionally use small holed nets but as I have younsters don't like to for them, so only the old mare has one of those for her hay to limit her intake (she's on a diet). The youngsters get ad-lib haylage instead of hay.



The Haybars are okay to a point, but 90% of the time the horses just pull the forage out of it and eat it off the floor. Doesn't really help me personally with wastage.

I love the haybags though. Really quick to fill and easy for the horses to access.
 
All mine have forage on the floor now, even the old boy who used to refuse to eat unless he had a net has realised the benefits of not having to work so hard for it!

I feed hay (both meadow and ryegrass depending on the horse) and horsehage for the old chap, in a pile on the floor. If theres none left the following morning I put more in and if theres a bit left I know Ive got it about right.

Luckily the grazing is still grass and not bare mud so none have hay in the fields.
 
i know i always seem to use far more hay than anyone else.
AND the 5yo has always eaten EVERY scrap of it by 6am when i get down.
mind you there is NO grass at all so hay/haylage is all the forage they are getting
 
Trawler net (20kg weight) fed 2x per day emptied into a round bale feeder. 2 horses share.

Youngster gets 1/2 bale meadow hay per day in a large wooden box
 
Always off the floor, because 1) haynets are dangerous, 2) my horse chokes, and 3) my horse gets nosebleeds. I feed well soaked hay in summer, ad-lib to keep her weight down, and dry in winter ad-lib in field and stable. She is inside tonight with about a bale all to herself, which she will eat and leave just scraps on the floor. If I try to give her less, she eats her bed/box walks/colics/all three
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I prefer feeding my horse soaked hay, but the others refuse to soak hay for the field. Plus our water pipes aren't sunk deep enough and freeze at the slightest sign of cold weather
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So really it's a choice between soaked hay and my horse being on her own in the field, or dry hay and my horse having company. I went for company
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My good dooer who is 750 kg has 10 kg high fibre haylage (blue Marksway bag) in a hay net over night

1 kg in a hay net in the morning

His bucket feed is chaff which is also forage and he has 2 kg in 4 feeds a day.
 
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