oat or barley straw for laminitic ?

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JLD

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and how do I tell the difference. further to my obsessional posts about impending laminitis. I am trying to work out if oat or barley straw is best to feed as getting different opinions ( obviously will get even more now but aiming for majority vote !)
 
JLD said:
and how do I tell the difference. further to my obsessional posts about impending laminitis. I am trying to work out if oat or barley straw is best to feed as getting different opinions ( obviously will get even more now but aiming for majority vote !)
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Neither shavings would be the best in my opinion, that is what I prefer to use.
 
I think oat straw is best, I use oat straw chaff to bulk out feeds, they're not that keen but it's tough they'll just have to put up with the deprivation!

I've checked the ingredients of quite a few of the light chaffs & they all contain oat chaff.
 
Oat straw is better, barley straw can have spiky bits which can cause choke and also in my experience oat straw is more often grown by old boys who spray a bit less so a bit less chemical laden. It's also more appetising. Oat straw is slightly higher energy but still a lot less than unsoaked hay. Altho hay soaked for a long time would be lower, that's more work and also not possible all through winters in areas such as mine (Cairngorms) and also the oat straw is a lot more bulky, so by volume and chew satisfaction its lower, even if not by weight.

Getting hold of oat straw is the main headache, I get mine rebaled by an old boy locally who makes some big bales. I feed it whole, not chopped, which is fine for horses without choke or colic issues and who are otherwise fighting fit: any digestive or eating issues and I would only feed it chopped.

Because it isnt as appetising as hay, they do pick at it slower and that actually helps prevent colic for mine, despite straw having the reputation as a colic magnet, BUT I would never use it for bedding for a greedy or colicy horse.

If looking for a farmer with oat straw, contact an agricultural auctioneer, or else drive around just after the main harvest is finishing, since oats are generally harvested slightly later than everything else. The crop is easy to spot as it looks like enlarged grass rather than straight up and down wheat, and is slightly greyer than the golden of other crops.

Hope this helps.
 
Oat straw, here, too. Make sure you buy it from a source that grows it for feed as well as bedding, though, or check how it is harvested. Some farmers spray the oats before harvesting, to produce a 'dead crop' (they may call it something else!!). One round here does that.
 
It is extremely unlikely that there will be any feed value to speak of left in straw, everything has travelled up the plant to the seeds by the time the plant is cut. I feed my mare on plain oat straw chaff to help to control her weight. She has been known to get colic after eating long barley straw. Although it easier to get hold of long barley straw than oat straw, there are companies which sell oat straw chaff over the internet.
 
How does feedings oat straw chaff work for trickle feeding when in ? What sort of volumes are we talking about. Bearing in mind we are talking about a fatty pony with no full gauge !
 
I have fed barley straw for 20+years, modern combine remove the 'ears' that used to cause problems and also the modern types of seed produce a softer stem. Its got a slightly lower DE than oat straw but its still about 8. I have fed it soaked to a laminitic pony which slows consumption, feeding the same weight unsoaked that you would feed hay.
The bulk of high fibre low calorie feeds is made up of straw pellets treated to make them more digestible.
 
JLD said:
How does feedings oat straw chaff work for trickle feeding when in ? What sort of volumes are we talking about. Bearing in mind we are talking about a fatty pony with no full gauge !
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Loads!
Last winter, I split my mare's overnight forage into 4, she had 1/4 of her haylage when she came in with a large trug of chaff, then another 1/4 of haylage about 8.00pm. At midnight she had the rest of her haylage and another large trug of chaff to last her until the morning. She lost weight gradually but was never left feeling hungry because she had run out of food. We were using 2 bags of Honeychop plain oat straw chaff per week.
 
I gave mine two slices as an overnight ration. During the day she gets a slice twice a day plus a small feed of sugar free chaff or fast fibre with her mineral supplement and pink powder, plus whatever she can find grass wise in the field (tho this is at time of year when grass eaten down and what's left is yellow and very dead)

NB forgot to say in previous post, bear in mind straw should only be 50% of forage max, they still need the rest to be hay as straw is low in some minerals and protein (for this reason you should also feed a mineral supplement if using straw for a large proportion of the forage ration)
 
I use soaked hay. Day hay is soaked overnight, night hay soaked during the day. Roughly twelve hours each.

Had a fatty on box rest for three months due to laminitis. He had ad lib soaked hay and lost enough weight that when he came back into work his brand new, made to measure saddle could not be flocked to fit him and had to be sold.

It's a bit of a faff, but obviously normal hay is much easier to get hold of. It was in a haylage net. Might have had another haylage net over the top as well, I can't remember now.
 
I think I will have to stick with soaked hay as spent 2 days trying to source oat straw and failing and even pure oat straw chaff seems as bad locally. Confused by how to feed ad lib though as he goes through a stuffed medium small hole double net in under 2 hours. He is 13.2.
 
Most of the barley has been harvested here but the oats are not ready quite yet. We're hopefully looking to cut our oats tail end of next week or the beginning of the following week. Maybe where you are the oats haven't been harvested yet either.
 
Barley has only started this week! We cut our winter barley today, we have usually started by 20th of July, a wet year put everything back a few weeks. Our wheat and rape is still weeks away yet which is unheard of for us!
We have a neighbour who didn't get his oats in in autumn and sowed them in spring instead, they don't look like they'll be ready til October.
However it has been a successful hay crop this year!
 
I feed barley straw along with soaked hay. If your horse goes through a net really quickly it may be worth investing in a Trickle Net, they are expensive but super sturdy and really help the hay ration last.
 
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