How much hay to feed???

[ge0rgg]

I have a 15.3hh Irish Draught x TB, she is very good at holding her weight and is ridden approx 5 days per week, the vet says she should have between 8-12 kgs of hay a day when she was stabled in the winter.. So in the winter how much hay do you guys think I would need / what are your horses and what do you feed them? I best listen to the vets advice, but everyone else in the yard never seems to feed as much has as my horse does, she looks so greedy with a haynet the size of 12kg! While everyone else seems to have much smaller bags.. Thanks

 

[Shay]

As a rough guide a horse should have 2.5% of their body weight in dry food per day. That will be made up of a mix of grass from turnout, hay and hard feed if they get it.

So the food weight is about right for the height (you don't say what she weighs) but should be the total food mass - not the hay alone. Unless that is all she gets and she is stabled 24/7? That said - if she eats all that and is not gaining weight then you are probably pretty much on the money. If she is gaining weight cut the feed down; if she is loosing add hard feed. Each horse is an individual.

 

[Exploding Chestnuts]

I suspect your horse has a good appetite, and I would expect her to weigh in at 550-600kgs, [1% is 6kgs], and she would need at least 2% of bodyweight for maintenance, which is 12kgs.
The main thing is to have some hay pretty much ad lib to keep the digestive system working, so you might need to soak it if you don't want her to get too fat, but then you need to add some minerals which have been washed out.
The others may be feeding hard feeds to their horses, but probably they are not built quite like yours, and may be fussy feeders, don't worry about that.
You can expect to bring her in for winter stabling in good condition, so take a weigh tape and record her weight [its not very accurate on actual weight but will tell you if you are losing/gaining], do this every week, you want her to lose a bit of weight from January to April so she is slimline when she goes out on to spring grass. Each horse is an individual, and your vet is just giving you guidelines, keep a spreadsheet on your own horse so you have a record of things, it is impossible to remember when you fed 1kg of high fibre nuts, or when you changed feeds, when wormed etc etc.