Alfalfa cubes/pellets, timothy pellets?

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Hm, interesting. I'm not sure that my horses would eat straw!

Not only oat straw but barley as well. I haven't met a horse that wouldn't eat both. If you have a beer plant nearby, you can pick up barley hay rather cheap.

Hay really has to be through the roof before pellets are really a viable alternative on any large scale. Alfalfa pellets are running $10/50# ($400/ton) while grass pellets are $11/40# ($550/ton). You can buy alot of hay with that $$.

Here in Arizona many of us feed straight alfalfa. I have only come across one horse that gets soft/runny poop from it. And even then, it depends on the batch. The coarser alfalfa keeps her poop firmer than the really rich, fine stemmed alfalfa.

I kind of find it hard to believe a handful would make a horse go psycho. But then again, my yearling is really a handful at times.

I guess what I'm try to say it, don't be afraid of a moderate amount of alfalfa. We (us Arizonians) feed it all the time because it's nearly the only hay we can get. Well, that and bermuda is nearly all I have ever seen. I can count on one had the number of times I have seen any other hays out here.

Alfalfa is generally a high quality, high nutrition hay. It would be an excellent supplement to grass hays.

I've never fed timothy, but I've heard it's good.

I think the other poster might mean oat hay and it is basically straw - lol; it's cut at a different time so it can be used for hay instead.

When I lived in SoCal, I know folks that fed oat hay when the price of regular shot up and it was all they could afford. Not the tastiest of hays by any means but, it is forage to get thru the horse's digestive system when there isn't anything else.

Oat Hay

We used to overseed our hay fields with oats. We would get our first cutting well before they were really ripe enough to combine. This bumped up the quality of our hay (we were actually raising hay for cattle, not horses, at the time.) When the vet commented on how nice the hay would be for horses, my father in law rolled his eyes because he knew hubby and I would snag some of the "oat hay" for our horses after that.

He was right!

I would give anything to have that hay now!

We've been supplimenting our hay/pasture with alfalfa pellets and timothy pellets. This year, because the grazing is nonexistant, we've had to use our winter hay already. We are supplimenting with the same feed we would use in the winter - the alfalfa or timothy pellets (depending on which horse) and soaked beet pulp, along with flax meal. We may have to break down and add a little regular horse feed stuff when it gets cold to add calories and keep their weight up.

Oat hay and oat straw are not the same. Oat hay is harvested with the seed heads still on in more immature stage. Nutritionally it will test out similar to grass hays while lower in calories. Oat straw is the stalk that's left after the grains have been harvested.