Soaking hay on box rest

[canteron]

My overweight horse is on box rest. Current weight is over 500kg, so that’s 7.5kg of hay per day?
If you soak the hay (4 hours) can you feed more, and if so any ideas how much more.
It’s quite difficult to find the information on how many ‘calories’ soaking takes?

She gets her feed split into 4 during the day at 4 hourly intervals and a mixture of soaked and unsoaked overnight. Hard work this box rest!!!

 

[dottylottie]

i feed a bit more if it’s soaked, and i’ve still had very good weight loss results. i also give a net of straw to keep them going

 

[Tiddlypom]

Good luck.

I once fed my 15.3hh late maxicob ad lib soaked hay while he was on box rest, and he gained 40kg in a month . He did much better on weighed nets 4 x daily, but I can’t remember what weight they were, sorry.

 

[meleeka]

I feel your pain. Mine refuses to eat soaked hay at all. I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt that she finds it harder to chew as she’s older and am currently giving her a small teeny holed net of her usual dry (funnily enough she has no problem with that!). I’m also giving a few scoops of Happy Hoof mixed with a bit of Speedibeet, but might have to cut out the beet as she’s putting on weight.

 

[catkin]

Weight of hay is calculated before soaking.
I guess you are looking at providing 1.5% dry weight per day. This is not always 7.5kg for a 500kg horse as hay can vary in %dry matter..

Tricklenet have a good calculator on their website which I've found really useful to work out daily amounts

 

[HopOnTrot]

I used the trickle net website to work it out and I would feed small amounts from 6am to 11pm, plus top chop zero and spiller lite and lean. It was exhausting but she managed to stay trim without getting ulcers. Thankfully only two weeks!!!

 

[GypsGal1718]

If they don’t like soaked hay you can spray on some herbal/mint tea/water with mint to increase palatability

 

[meleeka]

Tricklenet have a good calculator on their website which I've found really useful to work out daily amounts

I’ve just looked and wished I hadn’t . It says a Tricklenet holds something like 8kgs which is apparently what my 12hh
pony is currently getting. No wonder she’s putting on weight!