Yet another hay post,but please help

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teasle

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Does anyone know why horses would,when odviously hungry, ie no access to any grass worth speaking of, field trashed in winter conditions, refuse hay that looks and smells fine. I posted a while ago about my horse and others refusing to eat the hay that is available at our yard, they sniff it and walk away.Some replied that the horses may be not drinking and not eating because of it but it really does seem to be the hay or certain bales of it.This is making it so hard to get food for our horses as supplies locally are uncertain .I bought 4 bales from the local feed shop of hay my horse loved, but when my friend went to get some the shop had sold out of hay and were not expecting another delivery for a week. So some bales from the yard sourse are eaten and others refused but We cant tell by looking and smelling the bales ourselves which will be acceptable.
 
Yep possibly animals weeing on it or there being plants in there (we found a couple of oak leaves in our last batch and none of the horses ate any of it so we sent it back and got a refund)? Have you searched through the stuff they wont eat for dried leaves etc that shouldnt be there? Also have you tried soaking or steaming it (difficult in this weather I know but if you are all using the same hay just leave a bin full of water and just dunk it to see if it helps - it made my boy eat hay at the last yard). Hope you get them to eat it soon though!
 
Clippy said:
Cats or dogs weeing on it maybe?
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Yep. Lost half a very large and expensive bale to that. Seems to stop them if you store the hay on its side rather than back or front as the animal (in our case a cat) doesn't like standing on the spikier ends. Or use a tarp, which is a nuisance but better than chucking away hay.
 
If you happy that hay is okay (tbh I would normally trust the horse on this one though..),
Countrywide sell something called Hay Boost that you spray over the hay that makes it more palatable?
 
I'm having exactly the same problem with a batch of 40 bales I have. It looks & smells great, but they won't touch it. All the hay was cut from the same field & they will eat the odd bale with gusto if I get lucky & open 'the right one'. Animals can't have peed on every bale.

In my case I can pretty much tell which ones they'll eat by the appearance on the outside. Anything made up of finer grass seems to be palatable, but not the thicker, stalky grass. I've searched through taking out random bales from the stack & only have the stalky ones left now.

I'm worried that they will just leave it however hungry they are so am buying some more in now despite having these 40 odd bales left. Can't ask for a refund on the unpalatable stuff as technically there's nothing wrong with it. It must taste bitter though.
 
During the cold spell one of mine was refusing to eat his hay, he normally has it soaked for no reason other than to reduce calories (fattie connemara!) but this was neither possible or practical. We tried steaming some of the same hay and he tucked in no problem. It may be worth trying steaming some to see if it works?
 
A couple of months ago i bought 30 bales from local hay and feed suppliers. (£6.30 per bale):eek: The hay looked and smelled lovely, but my four just didn't like it one bit. In the end i mixed it in their nets with different hay, but most of it went on the muck heep :(
 
This mpoorning my horse had eaten the last of the bale of the yard hay from an acceptable bale but the yo s horse had not touched her hay,I thind that she has eaten a lot of her straw bed . Unfortunately the lady is away for a few days so wont know that her horse has not eaten hay overnight. What is hay boost like, has anyone used it and do you now its price and how much you need. The new hay I have bought my horse loved it so much that he ate the little bit I gave him to try before his bucket feed and practically mugged me for it when I carried it into his stable.
 
I know your pain, I seem to be spending hours opening different bales and giving bits of them to my horses to taste them, unlike Legaldancer's, mine will only have the mankiest, stalkiest looking ones.... It is a nightmare, you can tell that the horses are obviously hungry, but they will take a mouthful of hay, chew on it a bit and then have a drink and leave the rest.
 
not sure if its an area thing as im also in lincs and have 3 that wont eat some hay .again looks and smells nice.theyre doing my head in turning their noses up yet other bales they rip out my hands
 
I have the same problem occasionally, and as we have rats around the yard that come from the farm next door I'm fairly certain it's where the rats have been in the hay (there's always the odd dead one in the shed when we clear it out) that makes it unpalatable. Steaming it doesn't make any difference.
 
We have had this problem a few times :)

first time it smelled really nice but horses wouldnt touch it, stored it and 6 months later they are!
second time they just wouldnt touch it -they would rather starve! took it back to hay guy and he kindly swapped it!
thrid time took it back and lovrly guy swapped it!
and on xmas day after filling 20 haynets so we didnt have to on xmas, they wouldnt eat it!!!! luckily guy took it back, hes so sweet! :) told us that it is one of his fields that had herbs in it!

Was quite funny that one bale had a dead animal - spine, bones and all! and they ate all of it!!!
silly mammals! :)
 
teasle said:
What is hay boost like, has anyone used it and do you now its price and how much you need.
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Haven't used it myself but it's £6.99 a bottle and looks like it comes in two different flavours and treats approx 17 haynets per bottle. For some reason the link wont work but if you do a search on 'Hay Boost' on the Countrywide Farmers website it should come up.
 
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