The Horse Forum banner
Status
Not open for further replies.

Alfalfa cubes for young horses

14K views 27 replies 15 participants last post by  honeyloaf72 
#1 ·
I am considering switching my horses diets to alfalfa cubes or a combination of alfalfa cubes and hay. They are both young morgans, aged 2 years and 8 mos. Both are fairly new to me ( about 2 months). Their previous owner fed alfalfa exclusively, but it is not easy to get in my area and very expensive. The local hay is very low in nutritional value and particularly protein. I have tried feeding it with alfalfa and my horses won't touch it- they just spread it around and trample all over it, after picking through it to get the alfalfa. I don't want to buy more local hay if they are just going to waste it, and I am running very low on alfalfa. I have no experience with the cubes. How much do you feed? Do you have to soak them first, and for how long? Are they safe to feed to a weanling? Any info or advice would be very much appreciated.
BTW they are also fed Pro-Form Step 2 (for young horses) and a vitamin/mineral supplement twice daily.
 
#3 ·
The two year old can definitely handle roughages now. However, the younger one still can't utilize forage very well yet since he hasn't quite adapted the right microbes for proper hindgut fermentation. His diet will still be mostly grain (about 60-70% actually). Also, because of this you don't have to worry so much about over feeding grain with him because he doesn't have the hindgut fermentation to cause problems yet.

However, when they are growing they have high protein requirements. Because of this I'd definitely go with the higher protein source. Also, make sure they are getting enough lysine which is really critical for proper growth in young horses.

I hope that helps some! I don't know about the exact amounts though.
 
#7 ·
i have never heard anything like this before - grain being 60-70% of a young horse's diet? that just seems... off to me.

as far as cubes - you could soak them if you're worried about how they'll eat/digest them. soaking will help with lowering the amount of dust the horses may inhale/consume as well as making them easier to chew and providing more water to their system.

i supplement my colt's feed with cubes but only because he likes to scarf his grain down and that helps slow him some. haha
 
#4 ·
I live on Vancouver Island- alfalfa has to be shipped from the mainland or Washington state. We get lots of rain here so the soil is very depleted making the local hay poor in nutrition. Luckily I have a large pasture with really nice grass which is just coming in now, so hopefully they will be off the hay in a month or so.
 
#5 ·
If you can get it, alfalfa pellets are a great feed. We use alfalfa pellets to supplement hay and pasture all year round. Our filly, Rain, is nine months old and is just now being weaned, but she's in great shape, and on nothing but alfalfa pellets and prairie hay. (And flax meal)
 
#14 ·
We use OmegaHorseshine as our source of flax meal - it also has other stuff in it (like psyllium to help push sand through and out of her system), along with other goodies - plus it's been stabilized so it will keep for up to a year if kept cool and dry - not that a bag lasts that long!

She gets about 1/3 cup twice daily. It's probably more than she needs, but who knows?
 
#15 ·
I have both my horses 8 & 2 on cubes, hay, flax and pelleted feed(gelding is on a maintenance and filly is on a feed designed for growing horses)

I came from CA where I was used to feeding alfalfa and we got huge bales. We are in SC now and it took me almost a year getting my gelding on a diet where he didn't drop weight and he's not a hard keeper. Once I started using the alfalfa cubes and flax he has been doing fantastic and even seems more relaxed. So I put my filly on the same and she's maturing nicely :) I soak them and they have no trouble eating them.
 
#16 ·
Can't stress enough--- SOAK THEM!!!! When I've fed them in the past (when alfalfa prices skyrocket from time to time) I measure it out into one of those big plastic tubs with rope handles (from Target or something like that) and then hose it down until they are pretty much covered. About 20 minutes is good enough, then just use your feed scoop to make sure it's all broken up and soft. My kids call the slurry "alfalfa-sauce".

Before we started soaking, we had two horses (both HOGS at feeding time) choke within a few days of each other. Miserable and expensive lesson to learn.
 
#17 ·
If you do alfalfa cubes, I would suggest soaking them, however you could just do a hay additive or a hay extender. (pellets)
 
#19 ·
Thanks mls!

@Left Hand Percherons - I didn't say they were incapable of digesting it, but they can't do it efficiently yet.

And about the young horses in the wild. They get enough nutrients to survive, a lot of the times these young horses are pretty scrawny though. For them to get enough nutrients for sufficient growth their diets need to be supplemented with a high percentage of concentrates.

It seems like it would go against nature but it doesn't. This is what research has found. If you would like to look into it yourselves there are a lot of equine nutrition research papers you can search at Google Scholar
 
#20 ·
For them to get enough nutrients for sufficient growth their diets need to be supplemented with a high percentage of concentrates.
That is very unhealthy. There are feeds/supplements designed to give a young horse all it needs in a very small dose, so they can live mainly off forage, which is what they need. too much concentrate is bad for ANY horse, let alone a baby.
 
#21 ·
"The recommended ratio for weanlings is 70% concentrate and 30% hay, while the recommended ratio for yearlings is 60% concentrate and 40% hay."

This is from page 3 of the NUTRITIONAL ASSESSMENT OF WEANLINGS
AND YEARLINGS paper done by Kentucky Equine Research.

http://www.ker.com/library/advances/325.pdf

I find that this argument has gone beyond the scope of the OP, but felt that this information is still relevant. However, this will be my last post on the matter of concentrate/hay ratio.

I just thought I'd share what all the equine research facilities have been proving. It's up to you whether you want to believe them or not.
 
#24 ·
I too have a problem getting Alfalfa hay.I live in the deep south and aparently Alfalfa hay does not grow down here it's just to darned hot. I tried getting the alfalfa cubes and my horse wouldn't eat them. shell eat the pelets IF i mix them with sweet feed but once they are processed that much i feel like they may have lost a lot of the "forage" qualities. just make sure to not to feed them "dry" the alfalfa cubes. I saw a some HORRIBLE pics of horses choking on you guessed it, Alfalfa cubes in my Vet book. it looks awful and it's painful for the horse and usually requires a vet visit to fix.
 
#26 ·
I just want to make th egeneral remark that horses and donkeys are designed to process bulks of low quality (read low nutrition) food. In nature, they survive in area's where cows don't, because cows need better food.

As a consequence, I think there are more problems caused by too heavy food than by too low nutritional food.

I give my horses hay all year round, but this is hay that comes from natural land, and its not as heavy as the high nutricional hay that is produced for cattle. It also has a high diversity in grass and plants; it's not a monoculture.

A horse is in fact not a grass eater like a cow, in nature it eats anything from grass to trees. It's a dustbin!

Beside this hay, I give them a handful of grain to keep them friendly, and to create some diversity again.


Another remark is that this rule applies more for natural breeds than for the more domesticated breeds: a Fjord will suffer more from high nutritional food than a Thouroughbred.



So general rule: HIGH amounts of LOW nutritional value.
 
#27 ·
These horses were accustomed to eating straight alfalfa before I got them (2 mos ago). I tried them on local hay and they turned their noses up. But I finally found some they will eat. I don't know why- it doesn't look or smell any different from the hay I already tried, but a friend was selling it cheap because she wanted to make room in her barn for this year's hay. I have a limited supply so I am supplementing it with the cubes to stretch it out until the grass comes in. They seem to be fine and the 2 yr old is thriving- it's the little guy (9 mos) I'm more worried about as I'm not used to feeding a baby and really don't want to do anything wrong.
 
#28 ·
In the wild they still nurse on their mother. I bought 2 Belgians, Katie (mom) and daughter (Penney). Kate 6 yr old and Penney a yearling. I new zip about horses. I just saw their beauty and I was hooked. Quick put up a fence and 3 sided shed. That's all I had. I couldn't separate them and Penney nursed for 6 yrs. I still have Penney, she's 24 now. I miss Katie, she is buried out in the pasture. She died 2 yrs. ago.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
You have insufficient privileges to reply here.
Top