Making Hay: How to stretch your horse’s hay supply
By Dr. Martin Adams
It may be a long, dry summer. If you find yourself “short” on pasture and hay, here are a few suggestions for “stretching” your hay supply.
The first option is to feed a limited amount of a high quality chopped hay. Chopped hay products may be fed to totally replace the horse’s hay needs, but are usually too expensive to justify feeding at a full replacement rate. Southern States has Triple Crown® Chopped Grass and Chopped Alfalfa Forages available in 50-pound sealed bags.
These are high quality forage products that are easy to store, provide less feeding waste, convenient for travel, and low in dust and molds. For replacing some of your hay, feed chopped hay at 0.5 percent of body weight daily (5 pounds for a 1,000-pound horse) and provide baled hay at 1.0 percent of body weight daily (10 pounds for a 1,000-pound horse). Then adjust the amount of concentrate or grain, chopped and baled hay to maintain desired body condition.
The second option is to feed hay cubes. Advantages of hay cubes include less storage space and handling ease, and decreased feeding waste. Hay cubes have adequate particle size to maintain normal digestive health and prevent wood chewing, so they can be used to partially or totally replace baled hay.
Be careful when adapting horses to hay cubes. Horses may consume them too quickly and choke. Feed hay cubes close to the ground so the horse must chew the hay cubes before swallowing. Otherwise, if you provide them in buckets closer to the horse’s mouth, wet or soak the cubes with water to soften them and reduce the likelihood of choking.
To replace all of your horse’s forage needs as hay cubes, feed 1.0 percent to 2.0 percent of body weight daily (10 to 20 pounds for a 1,000-pound horse). To maintain desired body condition, feed more or less hay cubes or adjust the amount of grain fed. Triple Crown® Alfalfa and Alfalfa-Timothy Forage Cubes are available at Southern States and Agway locations. These forage cubes are made from high quality alfalfa and timothy hay for maximum nutritional content.
The third option to consider is use a “hay-replacer” horse feed. Horses normally have a daily minimum requirement for hay, 1.0 percent of body weight or 10 pounds per 1,000 pounds of body weight, to maintain proper digestive function. Southern States has horse feeds available that allow you to “stretch” your hay feeding by replacing some of the fiber. When feeding one of these high fiber or “hay-replacer” feeds, you can reduce your hay-feeding rate to only 0.5 percent of body weight per day (5 pounds for a 1,000-pound horse).
High fiber horse feeds available at Southern States include Reliance® 12P High Fiber, Legends® 12P Maturity and four Triple Crown® feeds: Low Starch, Complete, Senior and Growth. These “fiber-based” feeds can be fed more safely at higher levels than conventional “grain-based” horse feeds. Highly digestible fiber sources used in these Southern States horse feeds include soybean hulls, alfalfa meal and shredded beet pulp — and all horse feed formulas are “fixed,” meaning all ingredients and their amounts remain the same, bag after bag.
Consider one of these feeding options — chopped hay, hay cubes, or a high fiber horse feed — to “stretch” your horse’s hay supply safely.
Martin W. Adams, Ph.D., is Nutritionist and Sales Manager, Horse Feed Sales, Southern States.
