I have a pony who was getting a bulk of his calories through alfalfa pellets. He is on a small amount of pelleted grain for taste and a supplement meant to make up for the nutritional value from not getting the right amount of grain for a pony of his size. But most of his meal was otherwise made up of alfalfa pellets. And he has free choice access to grass hay and 12 hours of pasture time (plus a round bale). He is not one of those super easy keeper ponies and stays quite lean.
He was doing well with this diet. But recently my barn started getting alfalfa hay. So, at first we added 1 flake of alfalfa hay and i reduced the amount of pellets (november). That went fine. Then more recently, we upped his alalfla hay amount to equal the weight he was getting in pellets and removed the pellets entirely. At first this also seemed to be going well. But at around the 3.5 week mark he’s begun to show signs of some gastric discomfort. No colic, thankfully. But passing more gas than normal and seems uncomfortable in work he previously found easy. Manure looks normal–both in amount and in color/texture/size.
If he was going to have issues with the hay v. the pellets, I would have expected the change to happen within the first 2 weeks of the change, not once we were close to a month in. Would it take this long for a feed change to show discomfort?
Curious to hear if others have experienced a horse who has had trouble specifically with the long stem alfalfa but been fine with pellets. Not sure if this is part of a transitional period that I should ride out (I’ve always been taught that long stem forage is better when possible) or if I should just switch back to the pellets asap, knowing he is getting grass hay so there is some good munching going on.
