Hey, hay? Well, hayING, that is: When and where to feed it?

[pwynnnorman]

I'm trying to decide on the trade-offs of feeding hay in the stalls vs. in the pasture. Mine is the common routine of turning out with a couple of hay piles waiting (or tossing out the piles after). But, of course, that leads to a lot of waste, more labor, less precision and the risk of sand colic.

So, I'm wondering about feeding their hay while they are still in their stalls and turning out an hour or two later. The problem with that is that I would have to top off water buckets, make sure I didn't throw the hay onto manure (and I've got some messy ones that poop over every inch of the bedding), and worry about it getting pawed and mashed and walked into the dirty bedding, causing more waste...and, of course, some don't scarf up all their hay in one sitting, so they'd not get their full ration AND I wonder what impact turnout without hay would have on them running around and getting in to trouble out in the field (well, more than usual).

Any thoughts?

[Jaegermonster]

I feed rolls. I have a roll feeder that I heard about here, called the Better than Nothing round bale feeder. It's great, I am very happy with it.

Today I had to throw a couple of squares since the roll is gone. I took two bales out and put out one more pile than I have horses and that was that.
Usually I just have hay in a net in the stall to prevent waste, and roll outside. I hang the nets very very high for safety.
I have lived in FL all my life, and I feed coastal hay, so according to some folks all my horses should be dead :) I don't bran them, nor do I use any of the other products on the market that people are convinced they need to get sand out of their horses.

But I could not tell you the last time I had a colic out here.

The rolls only last about a week, if they lasted longer than that I would be afraid they might get moldy, but my hay monsters decimate them fairly quickly.

I usually put them back out as soon as they are done with their grain so I have minimal stall cleaning. They usually are only in longer than what it takes them to eat if the weather is bad or if I'm doing baths that day or something, like the vet or farrier is coming.

[DLee]

Pwynn, I could have written that post word for word! I go back and forth depending on how muddy it is and how tired I am of doing stalls. There is always more waste of hay feeding them outside. But I save on shavings and (my!) labor when they are not inside so much. I've decided it's a tossup for me.

[pwynnnorman]

I wonder how many do it which way? I have a feeling that most turnout with hay, don't you? (Except show barns that do only a few hours here and there of turnout???)

Jaeger, I've debated on coastal and round bales, too. The place I get hay gets a lovely quality of coastal and I did try to use it--then my older horse had a classic impaction colic that lasted three days (so much for the money I'd saved) and the first thing the vet asked (in the first of three visits) was whether he was eating coastal. He actually hadn't been on it for about a week, but that question made me start rethinking it again (ugh).

Now you have me rethinking it YET again! It's all I fed to the mature horses when I was in NC--and I'm tempted to feed it to them here, keeping the babies on alfalfa and the old horse on O/A...but what a hassle to have to stock three different types of hay. Still, I sure am tempted.

BTW, I found a research study through The Horse magazine that pretty much convinced me that the best prevention for sand colic is feeding plenty of hay. The research methodology was some of the best I've read in the horse biz--I really couldn't find any holes in it except the usual sample size and representativeness, which weren't bad, but obviously can't be expected to be perfect. Since then, I don't worry about sand except when I can't hay someone as much as I'd like (like the show pony who needs to have a tidy wasteline--I do worry about him, but still don't use psyllium supplementation because that same study found MORE problems with it than with the control group).

[Jaegermonster]

I've heard all the stories about colic and coastal hay and so on and on and on.
I've fed it my whole horse life (over 30 years) with no problems related to that.
I think some vets are quick to blame it when there is no other obvious cause just to give the owner an answer and something to "fix' besides "I don't know". If you don't cut into the horse you really don't know what caused it. And with horses it could be anything.
I think really most colics are caused by management issues, like they aren't drinking enough, slight worms, or any variety of things.

But primarily I agree with you, not feeding enough hay, whatever the type, is the cause of more problems than not.

Now that is not to say that there are not horses out there that may be sensitive to the very fine coastal but I don't think that is very many. But if you have a place where you can consistently get good quality fresh coastal I can't imagine that you would have a problem. Feeding crappy hay of any kind will cause you problems.

I have heard of some places that have T&A rolls but I don't feed that so I don't know who they are. Being in Ocala you probably could find someone easily. And there is also always peanut hay.



ETA I have found that feeding rolls streamlines things much more at feeding times, and also makes it much easier if hubby has to feed or if I am away makes it easier for the horse sitter. Much faster for me too to get out and ride or get on in to work if I don't have to wheel square bales around throwing flakes. Not to mention the financial savings of rolls vs squares.

[MistyBlue]

Drill some holes in the bottom of those plastic laundry baskets. Attach to fence posts...every other or so to give room between.
Put bale in wheelbarrow and cut twine, roll along outside the fenceline stuffing flakes into each basket. Keeps it off the ground, nobody can poop in it without excellent aim, rain drains out the bottom, no mud/no sand issues and you're not wandering all over the paddocks trying to put out piles randomly. :D

[Bayou Roux]

Drill some holes in the bottom of those plastic laundry baskets. Attach to fence posts...every other or so to give room between.
Put bale in wheelbarrow and cut twine, roll along outside the fenceline stuffing flakes into each basket. Keeps it off the ground, nobody can poop in it without excellent aim, rain drains out the bottom, no mud/no sand issues and you're not wandering all over the paddocks trying to put out piles randomly. :D


This is brilliant!

Though, I suspect, that with our raucus gang of wily beasts, we'd have a game of salt-block hoops going on in no time.

We feed hay inside, am & pm, with plenty of water and leave them to their own devices for the six hours (or less) they're out this time of year in these weather conditions.

Stalls are always cleaned exactly the same way-- mucked, then used bedding scraped to the back of the stall to encourage use of that area as "the facilities" and hay/water delivered at the front. Works pretty well for most of them. The occasional waster/pooper/pee-er will mess up the system now and then, but for the most part, it goes okay. And it's less labor-intensive than hauling hay outside through 8" of snow...

[RackOn]

The problem with that is that I would have to top off water buckets, make sure I didn't throw the hay onto manure (and I've got some messy ones that poop over every inch of the bedding), and worry about it getting pawed and mashed and walked into the dirty bedding, causing more waste...

Exactly my thinking. If I hay prior to turnout they just make their stalls harder to clean and end up wasting instead of eating their hay. It seems that after being in all night they are ready to go out.

So in the winter I throw hay out in the pasture for my two horses and turn them out to eat. Don't have to worry about sand we don't have that here.

When the grass comes on in the spring I always feed a flake or two before turnout so they don't start eating new grass on an empty stomach as my pasture is very lush. Then they go out without additional hay but get hay when they come in for the night.

Have never had a case of colic or any other type of digestive/metabolic problem.

[MistyBlue]

Bayou...I can't take credit for the idea. Someone else on here posted photos of her horses ocne in their turnout and I noticed that she had those tall white plastic hampers attached to her fence posts in the background and asked her about them. She told me how she used them for hay and how she drilled and holes and attached them. I thought it was a pretty imaginative idea and remembered it.
And for the life of me I can't remember who it was. I recently tried to find the old thread to find out who it was and also to find the photos...but no matter what combo of words I put in I can't find it. :no:

[the_other_mother]

Well I have hayracks in my turnouts and unless its raining, I put their hay in there. They usually pull it out and eat it off the ground anyway but I have mats under the rack and the mats catch whatever doesnt fall in the bunker part of the hay rack. If its raining, I put their hay in their stalls. First I pick their poop and top off their water buckets though.

[bit-o-honey]

For logistical reasons I can't use round bales, so I divide up a couple of square bales in the morning, in 7 piles for 5 horses in the paddock near the water trough. I put it on the ground - in a clean, poop-free area preferably on top of the grass if possible (after all, this is how they eat normally when grazing). They play musical hay-piles, but the poor girl at the bottom of the pecking order always has another pile to go eat. The horses seem happy with this and it provides them with more outdoor time. No problems with tummies at all (no sand here but the tradeoff is 4 or 5 inches of shoe-sucking virginia red clay mud). There is a little bit of waste sometimes if they wander off and don't finish it all, but I'd rather make sure they have a little too much now that it's cold. Mine are easy keepers, so I feed a supplement and a small amount of grain, a moderate amount of alfalfa and lots of good timothy (mine prefer this over orchard grass for some reason).

I suppose a point in favor of putting the hay outside is that no matter how well kept, the barn is more of an enclosed environment trapping dust, fumes, and all kinds of airborne yuck, etc. It's better for their respiratory systems to be outside breathing fresh air. It is also better for their joints to let them move around naturally outside.

[SkipHiLad4me]

When I was working at the barn during the summers in college, the BO always fed hay in the stalls and then turned them out afterwards. There were about 50 horses on the farm so the extra hour or two of them being in their stalls created quite a bit more work in the stall cleaning department. Not to mention, some of the horses peed and pooped on more hay than they ate so there was a lot of wastage that I just dumped in the manure spreader every day.

I convinced the BO to try haying the school horses out in the pasture and just see how it worked. He was concerned that they'd fight over the hay or it would be wasted. He quickly discovered that they cleaned up every scrap out there and that everyone was fat and happy. He decided to try it with the boarded horses also and found the same results. Needless to say, I was ecstatic and it saved me a ton of work in the stall cleaning department. It was also much faster to drive the gator out in the pasture and throw out hay vs trying to put the right amount of hay in individual stalls in the barn. Less clean up in the barn aisleways too.