How much hay do I need to last the winter?

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tangosmum

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We are struggling for hay down here in North London and already paying £6 per bale with feed merchants telling me it will be going up in the winter!

I am tempted to buy as much as I can for the winter now, but how much.

Right now my 14.1hh Gyspy cob is munching a bale a week, but is out 20-22 hours a day and is having to be brought in to feed to keep weight on him...as there is literally no grass, just dust. I have caught him munching hawthorne hedges this week. We have had a couple of short showers of rain in about 8 weeks...the rest has been hot sun.

I have space to store 25 bales maybe 30 if I stack them really sensibly. But trying to work out how long this would last. It looks like he will be out most of the day and in overnight (tea time to breakfast time) So I am guessing he will eat at least half a bale a day ...so 3 maybe 4 a week?

Does 3 or 4 bales a week sound about right? Which then means I can probably only store about 10 weeks worth of hay. :(

All this hay issue is driving me mad, and I admit I am starting to worry.
 
Hi, yeh we are struggling here too in Essex although thank goodness i'm buying my winters hay off the field at the end of July, last year I used 300 bales between 2 horses that was for overnight in and a bit in the field during the day.
 
Dizzy, 16.3 DWB, six years old, will get through a bale a night most nights. If she were in all day that would be two bales per day/night.

When we had six out on grazing, when the grass had gone, we were getting through two round bales a week, with them out twenty-four/seven.
 
Depends on the size of your bales, and what else you're feeding him. He'll need around 20lbs a day, so take it from there.
 
Depends also on weather. If we had not had the amount of snow that we did last winter, I could have knocked my hay bill by about a third.
The second lot of snow we had, we used a months hay in little over a week.
 
I get through a bale of [normal, standard small bale) hay a day between 2 x 14.2hh cobs and a mini Shetland in winter

This year I'm going to feed 50% haylage and 50% hay as for the first time last year I fed haylage as part of their rations and the skinny cob really kept her weight on well.

Think you're supposed to feed 1% of your horses' bodyweight in forage a day... so about 5kg for a 500g horse.

Can't remember where I read this, but it reckoned on 7kg if you were feeding haylage, because it's wetter and therefore heavier...

Anyways, having weighed it all, it equates to one decent sized slice of normal hay and a bloomin full haynet of haylage.... which to me doesn't seem enough... per horse. So I'll probably give more!

Tend to chuck over as much as they'll eat as I have zero grass in the winter.

If you're paying £6 a bale for standard hay, you might as well buy haylage as you can store that outside, and pay about the same price.
 
Yep, you should be feeding 2% of bodyweight to maintain condition and not less than 1.5% for weight loss.

I would imagine you will need to feed around 20lb a day as has been said, so weighing a bale will give you an idea of how much you need.

I always weigh my haynets and found it easier to save hay this way.
 
MJ is a 15.2 Welsh Cob; in the winter he is stabled from 5ish pm to 6ish am.

He has 2 scoops of mollichaff for breakfast and tea, and a few high fibre nuts in his playball overnight.

He gets through a bale of hay in 3 days in a very small holed haynet.

I reckon on feeding hay between October and March, and maybe a few extra bales to put in the field.

Not sure if this helps at all!
 
we have 2 16.2 ish horses who are quite good doers, but one is working hard hunting int he winter

we went through 160 small bales of haylage last year, and it wasn't uncommon for us to use 150 bales of hay before last winter. speak to your supplier and see if they can deliver 25/30 bales a time when you give them a week or so's notice.
 
Hi all

Thanks for ideas

Using various online calculators from spillers and baileys etc it seems ideal he will need 10KG of hay per day...

I remember reading somewhere that a small hay bale is approx 20kg So I will take my bathroom scales up with me today and see how much mine weigh.

So if it is about 20kg I could be looking at approx half a bale a day. Or 90 bales to last 6 months.

I think I will invest in a couple of small hole hay nets too....to keep him munching as long as possible.

I am wondering if feeding a good balancer into the winter will help too?

He is currently on a handful of chaff and a handful of pony nuts, plus biotin and a couple of sections of hay a day plus grass 22 hours (what there is of it). He is in very light work (being backed).

In the winter he will still be in very light work, (20 minute hacks 3 times a week) so hopefully the increased hay but less time on grass (6 to 8 hours a day) will balance this out.
 
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