Veteran pony who can't eat hay - what to feed when stabled?

[Lexi90]

Would really appreciate some advice.

My old boy can't eat hay any more. He can manage a little haylage, and small amounts of readigrass when soaked, but that's about it.

He is out on grass most of the time, but he will need to be stabled when the weather is bad this winter, and since this is his first time stabled since he stopped eating hay, I'm not sure what to feed him.

He has a couple of hay replacers. A mash and a soup-y type feed, but he'd finish those in no more than an hour.

Any suggestions on what I can give him so he eats enough throughout the night? Any tips at all?

 

[Roasted Chestnuts]

I used to soak a halleys Blox in water and it made a lot of forage. I mixed it with linseed meal and soaked sugar beet pellets into a big trug and left it for my boy to pick at. I sourced him nice soft hay from my yard owner and he had that in his haybar as well. He was on 4 fibre and oil feeds a day with suregrow youngstock balancer as well.

Also used readigrass and dengie senior as well on his feeds to provide a good high calorie forage without a high starch content as he was intolerant to high starch.

 

[meleeka]

Something like speedibeet or fast fibre can be fed in quite large quantities. There’s also grass nuts (soaked). Mix that a trug with some chaff which is easy to chew and you’ve got a replacement haynet. Mine had a black bucket full of soaked speedibeet mixed with chaff in a trug, twice a day to graze, then another with Alfabeet, then a ‘feed’ of Veteran Lite and Dengie Healthy Tummy.

It’s not cheap feeding an oldie with poor teeth, but is doable and of course you are saving on hay costs.

 

[SussexbytheXmasTree]

I currently feed my 27yr old 2 scoops Pure feeds Meadow Mash in one trug and 2 scoops Simple Systems Haycare with one scoop Spillers fibre nuts in the other. Both are exceedingly expensive though. He loves the MM so scoffs that first. He’s not so keen on the HC mix so I’ve added mint and some fenugreek to it. He eats that much more slowly. Thant’s just his day ration if he’s in. I’m going to be bankrupt when we have to come in at night at the end of the month. I’ve tried speedibeet and fastfibre but he won’t eat them.

 

[Highmileagecob]

I am approaching a similar scenario with my old cob, and have discovered Silvermoor Veteran Haylage. It is a bagged short chopped haylage, and he loves it. Now, the only issue is the cost..... Normally I buy a big quadrant bale of haylage and take around three weeks to work through it. I'm seriously wondering whether I could chop that into shorter stems for him.

 

[rabatsa]

I kept a toothless wonder going for several years on soup.

I soaked sugarbeet, grass nuts, high fibre cubes and added suregrow just before feeding. If more condition was needed I changed the high fibre cubes to conditioning cubes. Four buckets full a day did the trick. He did not have any other health problems, only tooth problems.

 

[Peglo]

My 31 yr old got a big bucket of feed of readimash and spillers super senior mash and then a big bucket of grass nuts and speedi beet made into a mash. (Mine needs it quite dry. She can’t do sloppy mash.) then gave her readygrass to chew on but mostly quibbed it. She maybe did eat it quickly but she didn’t ever get thin through the winter.

 

[Polos Mum]

I had one with so few teeth he couldn't eat grass or hay. He lasted 2 years looking well on soaked grass nuts in huge quantities. 3 or 4 x a day with 4 stubbs scoops full of nuts and 5x that of water in huge tubs.
At first he ate them like hard feed but soon adapted to grazing from the feed tubs an would eat them more sensibly.

I bought a pallet of grass nuts directly from manufacturer which made them very cost effective when used in high volume.

 

[tda]

Cheapest would be unmollassed beet, and grass nuts
Simple systems haycare nuts are fab, and still have some structure/obvious fibre once soaked, so not total mush