How to get rid of grass/hay belly?

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scewal

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No matter how strict a diet i keep my cob x tb on she never looses her belly.
Currently her and two others are kept on a track system with pretty much no grass, fed around 20 -25 kg between them with no hard feed. Her worming is up to date also.
When ridden 5 days a week for 1 hour plus she still has a grass belly, ribs are easily felt and not carrying weight anywhere else, help!
 
Well I have just been doing an equine nutrition course and one thing that came up - and was answered by a tutor - is that grass belly/hay belly is caused by poor quality forage. This is because the digestive system retains the material as long as possible in order to extract as much nutrition as it. Can. It was pointed out that this would be normal for horses in the wild but less so for domesticated horses who generally have richer diets. If changing the forage source is not an option, perhaps it might be worth feeding yea saac to promote improved gut health? Hope that helps. For what it's worth - the message was that low quality forage is not a bad thing for horses as that is, in fact, what they are designed to eat. If I can find the discussion thread I will post for you.
 
d_morrow said:
Well I have just been doing an equine nutrition course and one thing that came up - and was answered by a tutor - is that grass belly/hay belly is caused by poor quality forage. This is because the digestive system retains the material as long as possible in order to extract as much nutrition as it. Can. It was pointed out that this would be normal for horses in the wild but less so for domesticated horses who generally have richer diets. If changing the forage source is not an option, perhaps it might be worth feeding yea saac to promote improved gut health? Hope that helps. For what it's worth - the message was that low quality forage is not a bad thing for horses as that is, in fact, what they are designed to eat. If I can find the discussion thread I will post for you.
Click to expand...

very interesting will watch thisto see ifyou can find that thread
 
Here you go. This thread came from the Coursera Equine Nutrition Course. It is offered online through the University of Edinburgh (Dick) Vet School. Even better - it's FREE. They are gearing up to do another one, so sign up here if interested www.coursera.org/equinenutrition.

PS I thought it only fair to make the students anonymous so I have given them numbers. I have left the instructors names on however. Hope it helps!

Student 1
I'm finding this course very interesting so far. One thing I have always wondered though is that if horses are so well designed to eat fibre, what causes some of them to get big hay bellies when on the appropriate amount of forage. It seems to happen more in ponies but also in one of my QH mares. Weight wise she is moderate, easily felt ribs and no big fatty deposits anywhere, but she still has a grass belly. She is on 24/7 native australian grass pasture which is fairly low quality at the moment as it's the middle of summer. Her dinner is 500gms lucerne chaff and 300gms of whole oats plus a vitamin and mineral supplement. Her belly is getting better with the pasture here than at the previous place I kept her but I'm just interested to know the cause of it.

Student 2
I understood hay belly (that doesn't have to do with distended bellies due to worms) was caused by what my vet referred to as "lousy groceries" - i.e. poor quality forage (that is, not LOW quality forage, I make a distinction between the two).

Wendy WatsonINSTRUCTOR • 1 month ago
Hi Victoria, Hay belly is most likely the result of feeding a poor quality forage source. The large intestine retains the poor quality forage longer than a better quality forage source in an attempt to try and absorb as much nutritional value from it as possible. This is what gives the horse the large belly appearance. If the horse is fed better quality forage the large intestine will gradually become less distended and the hay belly will disappear. Best, Wendy

Student 1
Thanks Wendy, guess I need to figure out why the current pasture is working better than where they were before, even though the grass isn't as dense, must be the grass species, Aussie natives which are low nutrient, low sugar and high fibre.

Student 3
Wendy...Now that is a reasonable explanation. I assume that good studies confirm it. I have often been told that it was due to overfeeding, but apparently that is only part of the reason.

Wendy WatsonINSTRUCTOR • 1 month ago
Hey Joseph, Yes important not to mix up overweight with hay belly. We will be discussing BCS (body condition scoring) a bit later in the course and you will learn to assess weight of the horse pretty efficiently with this method. Cheers, Wendy


Student 4
Would this not also be partially due to the horse's ability to process the forage (i.e. teeth, age and confirmation, etc.) ? I have 10 horses on pasture an only one that seems to have a "hay Belly" .

Student 1
Thanks for the replies. In my mare I know it isn't worms, in others its a possibility but there is usually other symptoms too. Victoria I found your comment very interesting, how would you make the distinction between poor vs low? Perhaps poor pasture is grass types not suited to horses?

Student 2
Thanks Wendy. When I bought my mare at 9 months she had a hay belly, and exactly what you described happened. Her first home was not providing good feed. The hay belly disappeared quickly!
Amanda I use low quality to describe what wild horses would find and eat. I use poor quality to describe badly managed forage, example dusty, weedy, mouldy.

Wendy WatsonINSTRUCTOR • 1 month ago
Good description of low and poor quality, Victoria:) Best, Wendy

Student 1
Thanks Victoria, I'm guessing the type of grass my girls are on now is more natural for them and the chaff/oats I feed are good quality too.

Student 2
It does sound like you've found the right balance, Amanda. Surprising that some people see a hay belly and think the horse is actually overweight !

Student 4
Hi - I am curious - how to you know that hay is low quality. Also, how do you find out the protein content of a hay? I feed second cut grassy hay. It is quite green, and heavy. My pony was boarded for a while at a barn that fed hay that didn't look great to me, and the ponies left a lot of it uneaten. They did both have hay bellies at the time. I built a barn at home and feed them this hay with miniscule amounts of grain. They don't have haybellies anymore.

Student 5
Kathleen A. - There are places that will analyze your hay and give you a detailed report that may show protein and fibre content for example. The report also may show TDN (total digestible nutrients) and other computations. These reports are a good objective way to compare various hay for sale in your area .Do an internet search for labs or facilities in your local area. You also could contact agricultural schtools. In the US, your local extension service would be a good source for information.

Wendy WatsonINSTRUCTOR • 1 month ago
I couldn't have said that better myself, Wendy:) A hay analysis is the only way to really be sure about the quality of the hay and every area has a different protocol on how to achieve that. Sometimes a local vet may be doing hay testing so be sure to check out the vets in addition to the feed establishments in your area, Kathleen. Best, Wendy
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Student 6
Amanda - the quality of pasture depends upon many factors. The type of grass is important but the mix of grasses/plants can make a difference. Fertilization can affect the quality of the pasture. Even the height of the grass effects the concentration of sugars in the grass.

Jayne RobertsINSTRUCTOR • 1 month ago
As a point to think about, horses have evolved to very effectively digest these low quality, 'poor groceries'; arguably much more so than many of the modern day diets we feed them :) As long as protein, vitamin & mineral shortfalls are made up for, and the hay is good quality (ie free from dust, molds, debris, weeds ect) then these low nutrient forages can be a very important dietary component for a number of horses and ponies.

Student 7
That was all interesting . Can I ad an other quetion to it ? I have one horse in a groop of 10 suffering with a hay belly. all horses are related. regular worming and wormcount is in place. all animals are on the same diet. So why has only one got the belly?

Student 8
I would like to know this too as I had 5 horses in the same field, but only one had a hay belly. And all were regularly wormed. It was also good pasture grass not what I would consider poor quality at all.

Wendy WatsonINSTRUCTOR • 1 month ago
Hi Birgit, Very hard to speculate but wondering if she is the on the low end of the pecking order of the herd and she is getting the 'leftovers' feed wise. You didn't mention how or what they are fed. Perhaps you should have the vet check her over to eliminate other problems? Best, Wendy
 
Thank you for your reply, I shall try her on a probiotic as the others who share the hay don't have a hay belly and we have had the hay analysed anyway.
 
You could also try upping the fast work - we had a pony who would always carry a belly but this disappeared when she was hunting regularly or was training for a pony race!
 
Grass belly or wormy as you say you can feel see her ribs. If wormy then worm. If grass fast work, strong walk, good trot, canter.
 
Interesting thread. My horses have grass/hay bellies a lot. Their forage comes from different places and has a lot of high quality grasses in it, so I'm not convinced its totally that. They are both very good doers. The only time they don't have grass bellies is when event fit and doing a lot of fastwork.
 
My Arab gets a grass belly when his not fit, if his working everday correctly it stays away, it could also be that your horse is not using the abdominal muscles and lifting his back so his belly will hang down and look much bigger than it is, carrot stretches helps this.

I think grass belly is caused by lack of work rather than the forage my horse is proof of that, also bad posture and not lifting the back as I said before can make the belly look bigger.
 
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Thanks for your replies, she has been wormed regularly. I'm now thinking her belly is just from lack of work, she is a very very laid back horse who is hard work to get any decent movement from. Rocket up bottom required!
 
I would recommend that as your horse is working and you say that you don t give any hard feed this is why the horse has a hay belly it is probably just a case of the horse not having any top line so this then makes the belly look fat once you have increased exercise you then increase feed , introduce new feed slowly so as not to cause any digestive problems it would be a good idea to contact a feed company and ask for some advice as you can explain your horse size breed ect you should feed according to the work ,if you only feed hay this is o k for resting maintenance ,an example if you look at a racing t b they eat about 20 pounds of feed a day and only a few pounds of hay so they have a lot of muscle good top line and no belly . Once you have the correct feed your horse will soon change shape . I hope this helps .
 
Racing TBs aren't a very good example of good nutrition shergar...

Fennel has anti bloating properties if the horse is gassy, you could make fennel tea infusion and put it into some chaff, or you can buy powdered fennel.
 
Feeding less hay and more feed will be nigh impossible as she is kept on a track system. Even when in regular work she maintains her weight too much to be fed any hard feed.
 
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