Steamed or soaked hay? Which is best?

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myhorsefred

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Hi all,

I'm thinking ahead and planning for winter! (sad I am!)

What are your thoughts on steamed or soaked hay please? None of my horses are lami types, but two did start coughing a little at the end of the winter and I started to soak my hay to get rid of any dust.

I'm thinking of buying a haygain steamer (if I can find a second hand one) and was wondering, are these expensive to run? I feed two bales a day. Sometimes three bales a day if weather is really bad.

Do you have ideas for easy soaking of a whole bale at a time?

many thanks.
 
I've got a haygain, and no way would i got back to soaking. You just get water everywhere, heavy nets and all you achieve is a little dampening down.

Haygain on the other hand is super easy to use with small bales (I don't use nets), makes the hay more palatable and also kills spores and bacteria in the process.

We are also metered for water, so the cost of running a hay gain would be on a par with water used in soaking for me.
 
I had a hay steamer that I bought 2nd hand for £100, it was great as you could set a timer for it (first thing in the morning or whilst you're mucking out etc) so it was all done and prepared for when you needed it.

My hay steamer fitted roughly a bale of hay in, so was more than enough for my one horse.

The cheaper alternative was to make a hay steamer yourself - I heard a wheelie bin and a wallpaper steamer (from B&Q) works the same!
 
I use a Happy Horse steamer -the steam generator is in the house and the pipe goes through the wall into the hay container - then I use it on a timer using economy 7 electricity (OH is a Yorkshireman....) - I steam it for 90 minutes. I fill haynets for my COPD boy and steam a day's worth for him overnight.
 
Thanks everyone.

The wheelie bin type ones - are they safe to use do you think? I've read somewhere about chemicals in the plastic can be dangerous if they're not made from virgin polymer. The steam can make the chemicals leach into the hay?
 
Hells Bells said:
Another fan of the haygain here!

I think there are ways of make shift steaming too- but you'd have to google them!
Click to expand...

This ^^^^^

The people I work for have a horse that has a bad cough and theymade their own steamer out of a plastic garden garden trunk:

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=pl...71&start=12&ndsp=19&ved=1t:429,r:19,s:0,i:142 not this one exactly but you get the point and a wall paper stripper:

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=wa...0&ndsp=14&ved=1t:429,r:2,s:0,i:86&tx=90&ty=45 like this.

Them all they did was to drill some large holes in the base of the the box to let any water drain off and a hole at the front at the bottom big enough for the pipe from the steamer and thats it!!!! they used to turn on the steamer and put in hay and it was done in 45 mins that includes the time for thewater to come to the boil. hope this is helpful!!
 
If you wanted to remove feed value, I'd say soak. But to reduce dust, steam. I've done this before using a plastic dustbin, put a few bricks at the bottom so the hay didn't touch the base, poured in a kettle of boiling water, chucked the haynet in and put the lid on.

Obviously nowhere near as effective as proper steaming but it worked a treat to reduce the amount my horse coughed while I sourced better quality bales from elsewhere.
 
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