Not eating hay

[BobbyMondeo]

My boy is just not eating his hay, ive tried soaking it, getting it from different suppliers, mixing grass/treats in with it and nothing has worked. He is eating his other food/ his straw bedding fine so not a teeth problem.

Just wondering if there is anyway to make it tastier without anything sugary as he is on box rest.
Just gratefull for any ideas really

 

[ladyt25]

Hmm, don't know really - think ours went through this when we were feeding them lots of hay due to the snow. They got to the stage where they couldn't be bothered with it and were bored I think. We bought a bale of haylage to share between them and mixed this in small bits in their hay, seem to perk them up.

That probably isn't much could if you don't want him to have sugar though!

Have you looked at northern crop drier's graze-on? I think essentially it's just grass - not sure of sugar content etc but you can check on their website. I feed it to my failry fat pony - mix it in his feed - to slow him down and it's not done him any harm. I think you can just feed it as it is though.

 

[Echo Bravo]

Mine are leaveing some of their as well, eating their short feed ok so I've cut their hay down big time and have empty nets. not over feeding on the short feed, I honestly think they are getting bored just need fresh spring grass.

 

[Izzy1]

Get some horsehage. The blue bag is actually much less sugar than normal hay (hay 10% and horsehage high fibre (the hoof kind one) is only 3%. I started to feed it to my very depressed and picky laminitic who was dropping condition and she absolutely loves it and there is not a strand left in the morning. Might be worth a try. I find it lasts a lot longer as it is well packed and once you've fluffed it up you actually don't need to feed that much of it.

 

[pottamus]

My lad went off his food altogether when on box rest. I bought some dengie healthy hooves and started feeding him buckets of that for a while as it is more interesting than his hi fi lite and he perked up a bit and started to eat his hay again. I also got some marksway horsehage high fibre and gave him a pad of that twice a day so he was at least getting some fibre down him. That too helped and he started to eat fairly normally again, although much reduced to how he eats generally, but I dont think he needed as much because he was stood doing nothing in his box all day.

 

[HOLCHE]

Try steaming it?

Take a look at Countrywide Farmers website - they do a product called hay boost which you can spray on.