How many bales does one horse eat?

Hello! I am trying to figure out how many bales a single horse ( Gelding or mare ) will go through every week or month. Whichever is easier for you to do.

It depends on the breed, size, and metabolism of the animal. There is no one set answer.

Square bales? Are they small(45-60 lbs), or larger bales(70-80)?
How many flakes are you feeding? Or is it free choice?

It really depends on a lot of factors: will the horse be on pasture? If on pasture, good pasture or overgrazed pasture? How big is the pasture, with how many other horses? Is the horse a hard keeper or an easy keeper? Etc, etc, etc.

My mare, an easy keeper, in a 1.5 acre pasture - alone, needed about 40lbs of grass hay a week (I fed it free choice but she usually ate 40lbs or less/week) and 8-10lbs of alfalfa/day during the winter. During the summer, she does just fine on pasture grass.
So, in the deepest winter with very little pasture grass to be had, she'd eat about 2/3rds a 60lb bale of grass hay and about half an 160lb bale of alfalfa.

She recently moved to a different, larger 5+ acres, pasture so I may not end up needing to feed her much hay at all this winter. Time will tell.

It depends a lot on the horse for how much they need to eat. You can estimate that they'll need to eat about 1-2% of their total body weight in hay per day. 1% for easier keepers, and 2%+ for hard keepers.


ETA- Oops! So many other people saying the same things!

Is there any pasture in addition to the hay?
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It's all based on your horse's metabolism and the weight of the flakes in the square bales. I would suggest you use trial and error. If you horse cleans it up, then you know how much hay/feeding to use. If there is hay left, feed less, if he's still hungry feed more.

The bales I get are in the 35-40. I figure on a bale a day per horse for 7 months. That usually leaves me with enough to feed them inside when the bugs are bad during the summer, as they will go in about 8 and won't emerge until dark.

My horse is mostly stalled, and is rotated throughout the week on dry lots and pasture turnout. I figure any grazing he does is not enough to significantly impact his total nutritional intake.

He's an easy keeper, right around 1000 lbs, so he gets a ration balancer, a little bit of rice bran, and 4 flakes of hay (averages to ~20 lbs) daily. Our bales are 2-strand square bales of 55-60 lbs/each, so he'd go through 1/3 of a bale daily = 2-1/3 bales weekly = 10 bales monthly.

Depends on the individual horse and the amount of grass he's getting. With four horses (2 hard keeper TBs, one senior easy-keeper, and a super easy-keeper draft), I go through 2 1/2 bales a day this time of year. My bales are probably 60 lbs and primarily grass hay, and the horses are out to pasture at least 4 hours daily, less if the heat is really bad and they'd rather be in the barn.

Thanks for all the help everyone!