Old horses and hay

windand rain

windand rain

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Both my old horses are very sensitive to eating hay the poo goes like cow pats and they get messy bums. I tried protexin and pink powder last year. Neither made any difference. This year have changed hay supplier so hope that will work but havent used any yet. Does anyone have a solution or any ideas on how to prevent it as obviously squitting everywhere kind of defeats the object of the exercise as they then lose weight. Both young horses are fine on the same hay and get the full benefit from eating it
 
Strange - I've always found it was haylage that caused that type of problem and hay was usually fine.

You could try a timothy haylaye or high fibre haylage which are lower in sugars and see if that helps.

Or could you replace some with soaked grass nuts?
 
Did you use Protexin Quick Fix first? I found that a course of that following by Protexin helped a lot. I think it’s the feed that makes mine squitty , rather than hay as she was fine when I wasn’t feeding her a bucket feed. She doesn’t seem to be able to tolerate anything soaked so that makes things very tricky and is worse in soaked hay.
 
I've had the problem with one horse for years and not found the solution. He is on Protexin (which does help) but I think its the reduced grass rather than the hay as when we change fields during the winter he improves while he is eating more grass. I'm trying grass nuts at the moment, not to replace hay but to see if they have the same effect as grass. Other horses are never affected.
 
my loan horse used to be bad when we swapped fields and she was on fresh grass. protexin sorted that out. she also reacted to haylage that was strong smellng and quite wet but was ok if it was drier and not such a strong smell. seems like they all react to different things so its trial and error...
 
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