Steaming hay advice sought

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Di-Anna

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help:eek:..... in view of the fact I have a pony who last winter developed a bit of a cough whilst stabled overnight, I am planning to make a home made steamer with a metal dustbin and lid and a wallpaper stripper. It is big enough to steam one net of hay at a time, the hay is really good clean quality and I would prefer him to stay on hay rather than haylage as he is prone to weight gain, and I can only feed hay to my other horse therefore more economical to have both on hay.
How long should I steam each net for ??? I have seen various times ranging from 10mins to a couple of hours !
Any good advice gratefully received , thanks :D

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We use a professional hay steamer at our yard and we steam them from 45- 1 hour. Not too sure about how long in a home made device?? A dustbin will be much smaller so perhaps more steam and hotter?? Double check the use of a metal dustbin as that would get incredibly hot so you would have to be careful around it and what is around it. All professional steamers are a heavy duty plastic, the "kettle" is the only part made of metal. Difficult to give correct advice on that one!
 
If it's just for 1 pony buy and plastic dustbin and pour 2 kettles of boiling water over the top of it. Put the lid on and leave it until is cools. Easy! :)
 
At a yard I worked at we used to put the hay into plastic bags, pour the boiling water in then tie the top of the bag with twine, left them for half an hour or so
 
I looked into this last year and I
Made one and it's the beat thing I have ever done!

I had a plastic drum with a lid about 3 -4 inch from the bottom we drilled a hole to fit the wall paper steamer hose in, I filled it up with water on a morning and set a timer to come on at 5pm it takes about 15 min for the steamer to get hot so I used to set the timer to be onfor about a hour, I used to fit a big haynet in mine great if you only have one horse! The only thing with steamers is they don't take the sugars out of the hay where soaking does but my mare loved it, just dont over feed!! Good luck
 
We have one made out of a wheelie bin with a milk bottle carrier in the bottom to give air space and cut a circular hole at the bottom for the wallpaper steamer hose to go through. It holds 2 big nets and we steam for an hour to 1 1/4 hours. Very cheap and effective! :)
You can also easily drain the build up of water via the hose hole too.
 
galaxy23 said:
If it's just for 1 pony buy and plastic dustbin and pour 2 kettles of boiling water over the top of it. Put the lid on and leave it until is cools. Easy! :)
Click to expand...

I used to do the same also, it comes out like haylage. I put one in a bin in the morning and left it in until night and one in the evening for his morning net if he was staying in.
 
galaxy23 said:
If it's just for 1 pony buy and plastic dustbin and pour 2 kettles of boiling water over the top of it. Put the lid on and leave it until is cools. Easy! :)
Click to expand...

This is what I do, although been wanting to try the wheelie bin method for a few years but never get round to it! Maybe one day I will!!
 
Last winter I steamed hay for 3 horses when they were in for a while. I keep all my Dengie bags as they are pretty indestrucible, stuff them with hay they pour a boiling kettle over them and then stack them up with a rubber feed skip on top of the pile. I do the evening ones in the morning and the morning ones the night before so they get about 8 hours
 
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