Reducing Haylage?

[el_Snowflakes]

Hi all,

Just wondered how many of you would reduce the amount of haylage available if a horse was overweight- if said horse is not over rugged, excercised regularly, given 2 small holes haynets and no hard feed whatsoever?

 

[Bosworth]

I would replace some of the haylage with straw, or soak the haylage to reduce the nutritional value in it. I would be unhappy about leaving a horse without fibre to eat.

 

[forestfantasy]

As above or switch to hay.

 

[TicTac]

We are having a very mild winter so far and it seems that most peoples horses are doing extremely well. My horses go out every day for approximately 9 hours per day and there is no grass to speak of in the paddocks at the moment.

My 15.1 con x TB 14 year old gelding has 2 small feeds of safe and sound chaff per day with a few carrots and minerals plus approx 8lbs of hay/haylage ( 1 slice haylage in small holed net and 6lbs hay in another net) he is lunged twice a week and ridden maybe once. Depends on time and weather etc. I have managed to reduce his weight by approx 30 kilos since october. He has a full coat but wears a rug with a neck cover as he is grey!!!
For his weight ( now 500kgs) he is having no where near his recommended 2 / 2.5 % of his body weight in food.

My16.2 warmblood mare is clipped and in a medium weight rug and she has approx 18lbs Haylage a night plus 2 chaff/ mineral/ high fibre nut feeds per day. She always comes in ' starving' but is looking round and glossy.

Neither of them are having to try and keep warm and therefor not using up extra calories.

Perhaps if you switch to soaked hay in the small holed nets so that your horse still gets the bulk but not so much of the calories. Fat or not, horses still need fibre in winter if there is not enough grass.

 

[Cortez]

Feeding is a lot simpler than we're all led to believe: if too fat, feed less. If too thin, feed more. And don't feed loads of silly stuff to fat horses. Clean oat or barley straw will provide fibre and "chewing time".

 

[Pearlsasinger]

My still overweight Westphalian Draft horse, who came to us almost a year ago massively overweight, is fed on haylage because that is the most reliable quality forge that we can get.
She goes out for at least 10 hours every day in all weathers, unrugged. This means that I can give her a reasonable amount of forage overnight, so that she isn't standing in with nothing to eat for hours. She can't eat straw as it has given her colic twice. I have soaked the haylage but now that the weather has turned (a bit) colder have stopped doing so. She is steadily losing weight, with the odd hiccup.