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How do you hay?

4K views 26 replies 21 participants last post by  clippityclop 
#1 ·
Sounds like a stupid question.

I like my horses to have plenty of hay. They don't work hard, Simba is on the leadrein and Bandit gets ridden out a handful of times a month so I don't like to give them too much hard feed. I like the boys to have plenty of roughage and tend to give them plenty to keep them going into the night.

I get to the yard about 6pm every evening when I am finished work. I find it slightly odd that by 6pm none of the other horses will have any access to hay throughout the night. The old man who tips about makes comments about me giving my lads more hay and says they have enough during the day.

How do you all hay? Do you like them to be able to nibble away as they like? Or do you find it normal that a horse will go for approx 14 hours with no hay/feed? I'm only curious as I start to question the way I do things, when I see others doing it so differently.
 
#2 ·
Horses normally spend 18+ hours a day grazing and really should have something in their gut at least every few hours. We feed free choice hay, all they can eat, to supplement the pasture grass.

 
#3 ·
I was a bit confused at first - I read the title with "hay" meaning how do you mow, bale and store hay (where I grew up, "haying" meant actually harvesting your hay).
Anyway - we have switched to rounds starting this past winter, so it's just a matter of dropping a new bale out there every two weeks (three in the summer heat, they have slowed down on eating). Prior to that, when we used squares, we would put hay out morning and evening, enough that there would be just a little left by the next feeding. We have a manger in our stall and would also put some outdoors so they could choose to "graze" the hay piles outside or have a snack while in the barn.
My personal preference is to have hay available at all times - horses are meant to take in and digest on a constant cycle, long gaps between feed may be convenient for humans, but is not necessarily best for the horse.
 
#6 ·
I try to give enough so that my horse always has hay in front of him. My horse is pretty much an average keeper and gets very little grain. The longer a horse's stomach is empty, the more prone they will be to ulcers, which can cause other behavior issues because of the pain, unthriftiness, and colic. Hay's cheaper than any of that stuff. I will make sure my horse 'cleans up' a couple of nights a week by going light on the hay, but I shoot for just short enough that he eats all the leftovers but isn't out of hay for hours.
 
#8 ·
Thanks all. I've always given horses enough to let them munch away contently, but just question things when I see it being done differently.

Our summer is that bad that they are both stabled during the night and the turn out situation has changed and is frustrating me. The Barn owner has sowed the two big fields in barley. Now there is very little turn out and my two are out with one other pony (a teaser who makes my life difficult) is what was meant to be an arena; that hasn't had the footing put down yet. It's quite a small space and I throw them hay in the morning when they are turned out.

I'm just amazed every evening that they aren't hayed again. The old man makes snide comments about me "wasting hay on my ponies".
 
#9 ·
My horse is kept stalled except for 3-4 hours of turnout daily. He gets hay 3 times daily. Whenever I'm there I fill up his slow feeder net, which keeps him happily eating longer, but the stablehands won't fill it up for me- they just toss the hay over the stall door.
 
#10 ·
I like them to always have something to munch on as well. When I do feed hay it is in small mesh hay nets. Candy is slowly being introduced to grass pasture right now. One flake of our hay is around 5 lbs, so half a flake is 2.5. At about 8:20 she gets half a flake (all feedings in hay net) then another half flake at around 10:30, and at noon she gets turned out for however amount of time. She is currently at 3 hrs of grass turnout, adding 1.5 hours each day. When she gets brought in, another half flake, and then 2-3 hrs later gets another half flake, all the way up to 10 pm. Sounds obsessive, but tis a horse friendly schedule!! People have made fun of me and how often I make sure my horses get fed, but anything for the horse, right?
 
#12 ·
my nibble all day long. In the morning my two hard keeping boys are turned out to pasture and i toss out a 70lb of grass hay in the night pasture. Then about 7pm i let the 2 boys back into the night pasture and my three horses have enough to last till morning (they actually have extra left in the morning and thats what my other horse munches on)
 
#14 ·
Free choice when the pastures aren't enough to sustain them. Those that are stalled at night get enough to keep them busy until morning turnout. My grandfather always said if they are completely cleaning it up between feedings, they aren't getting enough. I've lived by that rule for as long as I can remember.
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#15 ·
The performance horses get 2-3 flakes of Grass (depending on the horse). JJ and Scrat get 1 flake of Alfalfa with the grass, Polly and BB get just grass no Alfalfa. So they eat the Alfalfa in a rush and pick at the Grass throughout the day and there is always some left over in the evening. And they get the same at night and they usually have a bit left over in the morning as well.

They get enough to keep them busy but not enough that they are never going to clean up......and right now hay is steady but the prices will go up very soon so it is expensive to feed free choice around here. And the big bales around here are either cheap and cruddy or expensive and nice. So they get fed what they get.......
 
#18 ·
Right now my mare is getting straight alfalfa, so I only feed twice a day. I don't want her eating so much sugar constanly, but she usually doesn't even finish what I feed her, so she has left overs to munch on in between feedings. Most people I know that free feed use straight grass or a mix with very little alfalfa.
 
#21 ·
I like free choice, too. My guys are dry lotted (meaning no grass in their pasture - mostly because we have so many trees!) and they get a round bale of coastal/rye mix about every 8 days or so (that's how long it takes them to eat it). We buy all of our hay at the spring cut, and buy enough to last us for the entire year until the next spring cut. It's good stuff - they don't get fat and they are by no means thin. It's a great quality hay, too, so I don't have to supplement with anything else. The only time someone gets grain or supplements or whatnot, is if they are actually working (training, competing) and not just being pasture ornamnets. Of course, everyone knows that free choice grazing or hay keeps the teeth healthy too, so you aren't having to get teeth floated all of the time.

Mammal Horse Vertebrate Mustang horse Mane
 
#24 ·
Hippy lives out 24/7, so we give him access to hay whenever we can!
He's only in fairly light work at the moment, so we don't give him any hard feed really, but horses are natural grazers so I think it's ideal to give them access to hay for as long as possible every day.
So keep going, whatever this man says! :)
 
#25 ·
Most of our horses are fed free-choice 1/3 alfalfa 2/3 timonthy hay. We go through 290 pounds of feed and about 3,000 pounds of hay per week O_O they suck the hay up like vacuums. However, a little over half of our herd is miniature horses, and since we keep them dry lotted, they have to have more hay than average. Its the price to pay for healthy animals!
 
#26 ·
Our horses are out 24/7, even in winter. We give them free choice hay. We try to have them out on grass a few hours a day. We feed them square bales because we don't have anything to move round bales. Eventhough it would be cheaper to do round bales, square bales are better. Horse don't burry their heads as much into the hay and breathe the dust in. One of ours has heaves so we try to limit the dust. I put out 4 bales for 7 horses. They usually clean up most of it by the next day.

As for stables not feeding free choice, especially in the stalls, they do it so hay isn't wasted and cleaning stalls is less of a chore. It is better to have hay in front of them all the time but unles it is put in a feeder, it gets spread around, and gets pee and poop in it.
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#27 ·
it gets spread around, and gets pee and poop in it.
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Yes - that's a big problem with round bales..there's always a bit of a waste. What is the fastest way to get a horse to pee? Put some hay on the ground in front of him...at least with my boys..haha!

With round bales here at my house, my goats usually clean up anything that spills over the edge. As soon as the boys wander off to go stand in the sun, the goats run over and clean up around the bale. I hear that the average waste for round bales (and this is for cows) is 20%. That is considerable. I would have to say at my house, the average waste is less than 5% with goats - and I guess I'd have to say the chickens that come along and scratch up and around the hay as well (looking for worms/bugs) help keep the fly population down since pee/poo doesn't get a chance to build up...

It's like a happy little ecosystem!
 
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