Newly cut hay does the sugar reduce??

Leo Walker

Leo Walker

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My horse is very, very reactive to sugars/starches etc, but he also works very hard and is event fit, so needs calories. He has an oil/fibre based diet. Hes in from 9am to 3pm but only picks at his hay, so like an idiot I bought some freshly cut organic meadow hay thinking it would be slightly higher calories. and ideal for him.

It wasnt! I very, very, very narrowly avoided a serious incident tonight and its only the fact the neither myself or my backstep panicked and just calmly got the moronic horse free, twice! I'm pretty sure the only reason my internal organs are still functioning is the fact I'm fat and my fat got squished not my organs but the less said about that the better!

It took me a little while to realise that this kamikaze behaviour coincided with the new hay. I have months worth of it stacked up! Will the sugar/starch reduce over time? Is soaking my only option? If so how long is long enough to reduce the sugar? The idiot creature has had less than a bale so far and is off his rocker to the point he is dangerous so continuing to feed it isnt an option! The last time I had this sort of behaviour it was when I started feeding oats, so the hay is clearly rocket fuel.

I really, really dont want to have to try and sell it, but equally someone will get hurt if I dont do something and I just want my lovely superstar pony back!
 
When was it cut ? We always let the hay sit for at least 6 weeks before feeding but the grass is still growing where I am could it be a grass flush? Or if he is that fit he could just be feeling very well and I find the fitter they get the more energy they have
 
A couple of days before it was dropped off. Its definitely not a grass flush. Hes micromanaged and has a pretty much bare lot apart from whats growing and then a foot or so of long weedy grass everyday. It is 100% the hay. i'm sure most horses wouldnt even register it but he is such a superstar apart from the food issues. He is just so reactive hes dangerous, and I dont mean a bit tricky, I mean tonight he flipped and tried to jump through an 8 foot high hedge with a carriage attached, due to me and my back step not freaking out we got him out and then he flipped again and tried to jump through the hedge on the other side.

Honestly, I know he sounds pyschotic, hes not! Hes a superstar and will gallop and do obstacles with me and then I can drop the reins and let a novice child drive him round. Hes so perfect there isnt words. Its just high starch/sugar foods send him loopy!
 
It interests me that you have experienced the same reaction with Oats .This is in line with the research carried out by a french animal nutritionist (Tisserand,work also verified by Wolfe) The extra sugars available early in the gut transit of the hay give what can best be described as an exponential boost in energy . 25% more than the sum of the sugars and starches separately. How much hard feed are you feeding ? cut it back to zero and feed a low energy balancer with low energy chaff. The hay will remain rocket fuel so treat it carefuly . Glad your OK , I also wear one of those internal body protectors.:(
 
I wouldn't feed it can you not get hold of some old hay for now and just leave the new stuff for a while your not supposed to feed it so soon after being cut.
 
Hes very sensitive. I initially put it down to hindgut issues but we havent had any hindgut issues for the best part of a year, The oat period was really fun, not! He went from being a total to superstar, so good that novices got him fit with no issues. We added oats as he needed calories to balance the work, I've never had an issue before.

He went bat **** mental!! He went from being such a superstar that tiny children could drive him to being a rearing moronic idiot.
 
What a very frightening incident. So glad nobody was injured, human or horse. It sounds like your hay may be the culprit. Not knowing the background of your horse, would it be worth putting him on a diet for laminitic horses? Low starch feeds and soaked hay to avoid sugar until he is back on an even keel. Not sure that would be appropriate if he is in heavy work. All the best, I hope you get to the bottom of it soon.
 
I’m no expert but I *think* the important thing regarding hay is a) the type of grass and b) the time of year it was cut. If yours has been sitting a month then it must have been cut in May, which is very early in the growing season, many of the grasses won’t have started to flower or seed fully and so I think they will have been putting a lot of energy into growing nice juicy sugary leaves, rather than going more fiberous as they do later in the growth stage. The amount of sugar in the grass at the point it is cut and dried is pretty much the amount that stays in it even as it ages. Only a high moisture content and resultant moulding and yeast production might diminish the nutrient content. So I would either soak it for an hour or sell it to someone else and buy some late cut meadow hay from last year (and that’s late cut not second cut).

Someone else may correct me.
 
I’m not sure how sugar levels could diminish over time as it doesn’t evaporate. For dieting I soaked hay for at least half a day preferably overnight to draw out as much sugar as possible. For reducing I think a couple of hours followed by a good rinse would significantly draw out a lot of the sugars. Such a shame to do to nice hay though :(
 
I don't know the technical reasons but I was taught that you should always be using last year's hay! It seems now that a couple of months is okay, and people start feeding hay a couple of months after being cut.
I would guess it's just too rich at the moment, and next spring it will be the perfect power feed for your fit pony 😁
 
Sussexbythesea said:
Such a shame to do to nice hay though :(
Click to expand...

It feels criminal! But hes just so extreme in his reactions. Hes fine and then its like a switch flips and hes lethal. I cant not feed him, he drops condition quickly due to the amount of work he does. Hes on a high oil, very low sugar/starch diet. Its taken me a while to figure it out but his feed definitely suits him. Looks like I will be spending the summer soaking the beautiful hay. Honestly, sometimes I despair!
 
No. Sugar levels do not decrease once humidity in the hay has dropped low enough that the grass can't convert sugars into fibre any more (aka "grow"). The only way for sugars to go after that is if the sugars are fermented by bacteria (as is the case in haylage), or maybe "digested" by other microbes (mould), but of course you don't want your hay to be wet enough to ferment like haylage!
I do wonder though if there isn't some degree of fermentation going on anyway in hay that is "curing" right after baling, else why would you get hay stacks heating up (and potentially catching fire)? I suspect that's more common though if the hay still had too much moisture. I'm guessing if your newly cut hay isn't heating up, then its nutrient composition isn't changing much any more.
There's a study on the www.safergrass.org page looking at year-old hay, it and it pretty much shows that the only nutrients that degrade over time are vitamins, but macronutrients and minerals stay the same.
http://www.safergrass.org/pdf/old_hay.pdf
 
early cut hay has much more starch/ sugars / protein than later cut. Meadow grass is better than rye for horses but essentially if your horse is susceptible to this sort of feed you should be looking for late cut hay when it has dried out before it gets cut. The sugar content will not reduce if it's stored correctly.
 
can you not sell it? pain to have to soak all of it-hay is still short in many parts of the country and some will want good hay, saves on hard feed (not that I have such creatures lol!)



eta having had on react in a similar way to alfalfa I do sympathise-although I think that when driving goes wrong its even more terrifying! glad you're all ok.
 
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I agree that you're probably better off selling the rocket fuel. You're going to have to soak it for at least 12 hours to get rid of the sugars. Glad you're all OK.
 
If I were in your shoes I would sell the hay and get some late cut meadow hay later on, cut in July. There should be some about as one of the conditions of these Environmental things is not to cut the hay until July. In the meantime can you buy some bagged forage to tide you over, like Top Chop, etc. In fact Topspec has a very good advice line and they might help overall.

As for feeding new hay, I have fed it when it was about a month old. I had virtually run out of the previous season's and was going away to a show so I had to take it but I introduced it slowly and everything was fine. But hay does cure in the stack, so always the advice is to let it sit and store for at least a few weeks, but I don't know about the advice to feed it 1 season old, just letting it get dusty!
 
The short answer is no, WSC levels don't decrease in dry hay with storage, so if you don't want to feed it you'll need to rehome it! That said, maybe you could get away with mixing it in very minimally over the winter with other hay?

The % of WSC in grass falls rapidly after May, so will be much lower in hay baled in a few weeks time.
 
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