Is chaff really necessary or just more expense?

[Beatrice5]

Hello,

I feed chaff always have alongside whatever cubes, balancer / vitamins the particular horse needs. But I am just wondering as mine are on ad lib haylage and out in the field in the day again with access to haylage why do I need to give them chaff with their feeds.

As I understand chaff is just fibre ( Chopped straw / grass etc ) and not much more unless a mix like happy hoof or a conditioner like Alfa oil ( I undersatnd those ones

) So why do we feed Hi fi lite etc isn't that to be instead of cubes etc to add your balancer / vitamins too?

TBH as I stand there waiting for little chap to finish his feed so greedy doesn't push him off I wonder does he really need this chaff slowing him down? You are probably all going to scream yes he does at me

 

[Paint it Lucky]

There's a question!

Traditionally people have been taught to feed chaff in order to slow horses down in their eating and stop them bolting their food, make them chew it more so it gets digested better etc. But recent research has shown that adding chaff to meals can actually make the food pass into the horses hindgut quicker, which is bad as cereals/starch can't be digested here and instead produce lactic acid which can cause digestive upset. So it's open to debate!

Personally I like to feed mainly chaff (well alfalfa) and only a little bit of nuts/cereal if nessecary as horses are much better at digesting fibre. If you were feeding lots of cereal it might be better not to add chaff. It depends on the circumstance really. If you only feed small feeds anyway then chaff is a good filler to make the horse feel he's had a proper meal. If the feed is already large which cereals/nuts/mix etc it might be better not to add chaff to make it even more filling as horses stomachs are only small so you don't want to overfill them.

Hopefully that made sense!

 

[TGM]

Chaff can be helpful if you have a horse who bolts its feed or if you are unable to give us much long forage as you would like. Or for a horse with dental problems who can't eat long fibre. Or if you need extra calories but don't want to feed cereal based feeds then grass and alfalfa based chaffs are useful. Another use is when you are feeding several horses and some of them are getting big feeds and there are one or two on just a token - then giving a low calorie chaffs make them think they are getting more than they really are! However, I don't believe all horses need chaff in their feeds.

I don't feed chaff to any of mine at the moment. Two only get a token feed of a handful of soaked fibre cubes anyway, and the veteran doesn't need her feed consumption slowed down at all so she gets sugar beet mixed with oats.

What are you feeding with the chaff?

 

[tootsietoo]

I have just recently stopped feeding HiFi Lite for the same reason as you are wondering about. He is in the field for a long day, and lots of quality haylage at night. He is a good doer so was just on a balancer in the summer, so I fed the HiFi Lite to fill out the handful of balancer, but now I'm just giving him nuts. If they have plenty of other fibre, I'm sure it's fine.

 

[Beatrice5]

Very interesting, I have been reading Clare Macleoud's book on equine nutrition on and off as it's a bit of a text book and had thought that the quicker it goes in the quicker it goes out as you said pushing it all through.

My mare is at the end of her pregnancy somewhere between month 10 and 11 and currently has a green feed scoop ( the small feed scoop not the round bowl one) of stud nuts, a scoop of non molassed beet, a cup of stud balancer and a bowl scoop of Alfa A oil plus her garlic and magnitude and some equine gold on alternate days. this she has twise a day. She is just starting to get a small amount of fat on her but I don't want her to gain any more so think I should cut down and maybe stop rugging her asap.

Little man has half a bowl scoop of alfa A oil, half a green scoop of stud nuts and half a cup of balancer and a scoop of unmolassed beet plus vits, garlic etc twice a day. As he is only just turning 3 this summer I want him to recieve optimum nutrients to enable him to develop and grow properly. For the first time ever he has a small amount of weight I condition score him 3 instead of his usual 2.

 

[P4NN]

I feed HiFi Good-doer because I use dengie natural vitality leisure vits and mins supplement and equine america magnitude and they are powders so I need the chaff to carry the powder into the gut.
I can see why it isnt needed if you use a balancer which is mix or pellets.
I feel we tend to beef up a handful of nuts with chaff to make it look more appealing to us.

 

[vhf]

If I fed chaff my girl would still be eating tea when I arrived with breakfast... I've seen paint dry faster than she eats... so I seriously hope chaff isn't essential! I have used it to slow others down though.

When I started riding, you couldn't buy chaff so as we didn't have a chopper, we didn't feed it...

 

[digitalangel]

i dont feed chaff to my mare, she doesnt like it, and she doesnt bolt her feed anyway.

 

[millitiger]

i feed chaff to mine just so they have something with their Topspec balancer! they get 1 scoop of HiFi Lite each per day, split in 2 feeds.

my youngster gets 2 scoops of Alfa-A a day with his Topspec to help with his condition.

i think 90% of horses don't warrant needing mix or nuts so maybe your question should be why do people feed cereals their horses don't need??

 

[JenHunt]

If you just feed hard feed you run the risk of two things...
1) the horse bolting his feed and getting choke.
2) overloading the stomach with carbohydrates (starch & sugar) and causing the bacteria that thrive on this to thrive and unbalance the delicate ecology in the gut. This can lower the pH (make the gut more acidic) which can lead to an upset stomach, colic or even ulcers....

If you are concerned that you are just making it more expensive to fee your horses why not look at giving them a higher energy higher protein chaff with a balancer and taking out the other hard feed?

 

[Puppy]

I only feed chaff (dengie good doer) to one of mine as something to bulk out and slow down her lo cal balancer and supplements with, especially as they are field fed together at the mo.

 

[Toast]

I feed chaff because chubby pony would swallow her feed in one if i didnt..
I feed it to my littleun as something to go with his stud balancer to bulk it out a bit.
Some of the stuff you can buy is cheap as chips! so i dont see it as an unnecessary expense at all really.
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