Has anyone experienced their horse becoming hot due to feeding a quart of soaked alfalfa cubes? I gave a friends mare some and she attributed her “energetic” ride to the cubes.
I used to have a Tb gelding boarded on the farm that if you gave him “cubes” he would become a jazzed up nut…talk about energy. Whew, wow. But I have 2 other Tb’s that it doesn’t have any effects on them at all.
[QUOTE=lostkiwi;5368616]
I used to have a Tb gelding boarded on the farm that if you gave him “cubes” he would become a jazzed up nut…talk about energy. Whew, wow. But I have 2 other Tb’s that it doesn’t have any effects on them at all.[/QUOTE]
Same here…one gets up, up, UP & the others are unfazed…
That doesn’t sound like much (just a quart of cubes) but I suppose a horse could get jazzed by it. I have one that if he gets any little bit of alfalfa, he turns into a demon – I call it his crack cocaine. He loves it, will break down the door to get to it, but it makes him high.
I’ve not experienced that ever before. I’ve fed as much as 100% (more typically 70% though) of the daily ration in alfalfa cubes to my horses, including TB’s, and I’ve never, ever experienced a “hot” horse from it. In fact, my figity horses seemed to settle down on it.
Based on my experience with more than a dozen different horses - this threory of alfalfa=hot, always puzzles me.
Remember, one person’s “hot” is another person’s “normal”! My little warmblood that we call “Sparky” (like sparkplug) and “pop gun” because of his zero to WAHOOOOOOO habits is one that I fed only grass hay and no grain, etc. to keep him quiet enough when in our hunter barn. He’s in dressage training now and they feed him grain and alfalfa and I’ll see him warming up at a show and think, “OMIGOD, he is going to be WILD, he needs a lunge!” That’s my old hunter, has to be quiet, mentality. The dressage trainer loves him “up” and can’t ride him when he is quiet.
And I’m not saying alfalfa=hot – just that I do have one horse that it does turn into a demon, so I do believe that some are sensitive to it. Not all, by any means.
