My mare was hospitalized recently (she’s fine now) and the hospital said she was low in protein. In fact, they fed her alfalfa while she was there. She’s a very easy keeper and her diet is normally coastal hay, a little senior feed, and the proper amount of ration balancer. Well, that isn’t working, apparently. She looks good and has enough energy, but tests don’t lie. The ration balancer failed me, lol!
Where we live, it’s difficult to get any hay besides coastal, alfalfa, and timothy. I feed her coastal hay because I’m allergic to timothy and I worry about her getting too much with alfalfa. I was under the impression that alfalfa was too rich for easy keepers. Tell me, please, can an easy keeper eat alfalfa hay without getting overweight? I’m slowly switching her to alfalfa in the morning and coastal just at night.
I would get more information from your vet before being overly concerned about switching her hay.
Blood proteins can drop or increase due to disease process. Just because her ‘protein was low’ while she was hospitalized doesn’t mean she isn’t receiving enough in her diet.
If you are very concerned, you could also have your vet pull blood after she’s been home for a week or two and reevaluate.
There are other reasons to switch her from coastal and if your vet advised that, you should definitely do it.
Thank you. I’m aware of the risks associated with coastal. The vet opinion in this area is that if a horse ever shows a mild colic, switch and never go back. Some horses have an issue with coastal, while most can eat it their entire lives without a problem. If I could feed timothy I would. The only choice for us to feed feed coastal or alfalfa. Coastal makes me nervous, so I’m trying to get more information about feeding alfalfa.
Our horses have been on only alfalfa for decades, without any problems whatsoever from the alfalfa.
Nice, as that is about the only hay available here regularly.
The problem with alfalfa is that it is higher nutrition level per amount than other hays, so you feed less, which make humans feel like they are depriving their horses, or if they overfeed, well, more calories in, horses do get fat.
Another problem is, overfeeding alfalfa is expensive, horses just excrete the excess nutrients, but is wasteful.
Also alfalfa is more apt to mold than other hays, we have to be aware of any moldy hay and throw that away.
There is one time you don’t want to overfeed alfalfa and that is to horses under 2 years old.
Alfalfa is high in calcium, older horses just excrete the excess, but in the very young it can cause an imbalance with phosphorus and cause skeletal deformities.
Not a problem with mature horses, their metabolism is not sensitive to that balance any more with regular feeding practices.
Many ranch horses are used hard and kept in communal pens or small traps with free choice big square bales and do fine for many years.
The beauty of alfalfa, it can be considered a complete feed in itself, has the proper amount of the right nutritions for horses to thrive on it, properly managed for age of the horse and amount of alfalfa.
Then, in other parts of the country, alfalfa is seen as poison, so there is that.
Alfalfa can be very beneficial to young horses. Yes, it’s high in calcium, sometimes 6:1 ca/phos, but when added as 20-30% of the forage intake, to grass forage that may easily be low in calcium, it can be a huge benefit.
ALL horses need the ca/phos ratio managed to a reasonable degree. It’s just that adults can deal with a higher ratio than growing horses, but even then, they still need enough Phos outright for that higher ratio to not be a problem. So yes, it can cause problems for adults too.
Alfalfa isn’t complete any more than grasses are. High iron and low copper and zinc can still be a problem.
the 10s of thousands (i hear it’s about 50,000 lately) mustangs in the BLM holding pens are fed strictly alfalfa. Though some of the facilities have grass hay roundbales available for foraging as well, Many mustangs are notoriously easy-keepers fyi.
i feel primarily roundbales and augment with alfalfa to my herds.
I have easy keepers that I feed almost exclusively alfalfa. I feed it as I find it makes them look very healthy and they always clean it up instead of wasting it like they do with other hays. It also seems to be less dusty.
Thank you for your opinions. I really appreciate it. It’s been a long time since I needed to use alfalfa hay. I fed a diet of alfalfa and oat hay to my first horse out west. That was an ideal diet, if you avoided the first cutting, which was higher in calcium. The oat hay was 1:1 calcium to phosphorus and counterbalanced the alfalfa nicely.
Since then, I’ve lived in places with great grass hays available. That is, until we moved down here awhile ago. I’ve mostly fed coastal, but we had one mare who didn’t tolerate it, so we fed her orchard/alfalfa (which is now impossible to get). Until I bought this mare, our horses had higher nutrition requirements. I do worry about excessive calcium in alfalfa, but so many here in the East feed straight alfalfa. The stuff you can get here definitely doesn’t look like first cutting. The stems are thicker and no flowers.
Anyone down here in the South? What hay do you feed your easy keepers during the winter months? We have enough pasture for them through the hot and humid season (thank goodness because alfalfa doesn’t do well in humidity). We feed a ration balancer while they’re on pasture, but it doesn’t seem to be enough for the hay. The vet school indicated that it’ typical that horses fed coastal hay and a ration balancer don’t get enough protein (even with a little senior feed). Please see my other thread about the burros for the full story on our mare and her hospitalization.
I’ll talk to our vet, but she is very busy. All I know is that I cannot feed her enough senior feed because that will fatten her up too much. I can test the hay to get good numbers, but for discussion purposes, the coastal is probably around 5% protein. Hay grown down here doesn’t retain much in the way of minerals because of the porous soil.
I should mention that we have used peanut hay in the past, but it was difficult to store in the barn and inconsistent in quality and availability. I need something I can depend on being available, especially because humidity keeps us from stocking up.
Just FYI, I’m familiar with your other thread and enteropathy can definitely lower serum protein without the diet being actually deficient.
Again, I am not trying to talk you out of getting away from the coastal. Just maybe give you more information.
One option (if grass hay is very difficult for you to find) is to feed strictly tifton 85. It’s relatively easy to get in most southern US states. It’s still Bermuda, but has a slightly better nutritional profile and has less risk of ileal impaction than other Bermuda grass hay. You may have to ask some specific questions at the feed store to make sure it’s what you’re getting.
Also, I wonder if soaking Timothy cubes or pellets would irritate your allergies?
If you can say what state you’re in, others may have better ideas for you about what’s available.
Not necessarily, I have a very easy keeper, has PPID, has been on Prascend and thyroid supplement now going on seven years, that time in dry lots and on only alfalfa.
He gets blood work every year and is doing fine and he is not the only one around here like that.
Alfalfa is, like all such, a little bit depending on where grown, but in general, as our nutritionist used to call it, “alfalfa factors” play into every ration he ever prepares, giving more benefits than you would expect.
I would try it, then if the horse is not doing well, of course follow that and try other.
I would not dismiss it offhand.
No1, thank you for the advice regarding Tifton 85. I will ask. I can store grass hays, so a special shipment is possible.
I know the vet school really hates coastal. Our local vet sees many farms feeding it out of necessity and is more realistic because of what’s available in this area. The vet school is near a horse center where everything is available.
I would like to incorporate it into my mare’s diet to be certain about ehr protein. I also want to stop feeding her grain (roughage is always better). ANother idea I have is something I heard in college Ani Sci classes. No perfect feed can replace greens. That sounds funny, but a complete feed was made for sheep. It was supposed to be perfect. They added every known nutrient in perfect balance. A control group of sheep was fed pasture grass. Guess which one looked better? There is more to grasses and green hay than we have identified. So, ideally, my mare can eat hay during the winter, with a vitamin, perhaps, if I think there might be something missing. I want to give her a break from concentrates. No ration balancer. No senior feed. .
Talking about green, In our riding center in Europe, every morning the horse and wagon left early, the farmer cut fresh alfalfa until he filled the wagon and brought it to the center.
Then every horse and we had over 100 there would get a small bundle of freshly cut alfalfa about noon and they ate every bit of it like a treat.
Our horses in the mountains were turned out in the alfalfa field for a couple hours of grazing every morning, as soon as the sun came out and the dew had dried out.
The alfalfa fields were cut every day and fed fresh to the handful of milk cows.
Alfalfa can be fed fresh also, or grazed, if managed right.
Pardon all my quoted sections, but it helps me be more precise on how I’m replying:
What is “East”? It’s the less common person I know “in the East” who feeds straight alfalfa, and most of them are feeding young TBs, or heavily pregnant or nursing mares. Alfalfa doesn’t grow in a lot of the East, and can get $$ to get in an feed in large amounts.
Calcium can be managed with extra phosphorous, and as long as the whole diet, an adult without health issues which shouldn’t have a higher ca diet, can tolerate a 4-5:1 ratio very well as long as there’s enough phosphorous outright. And, as long as we’re not talking about a high performance horse like a longer distance endurance horse where that e-lyte imbalance can cause problems
Define “South”. Many areas of the general S/Se grow nice Orchard, and there are usually a lot of other varieties of Bermuda grasses. I know Tifton 85 was one mentioned. There are LOTS of Bermuda hays other than Coastal
Common, not sure about typical, I’ve seen lots of Coastal analyses with 8-9% protein, but for sure it can be lower without a lot of effort
I would test if you want to know. 5% is on the lower side of what I’ve seen, but maybe that’s average for your particular soils. Soymeal and split peas are good sources of protein, though do come with calories. Any source of crude protein is coming with calories. You can likely feed a couple pounds of a ration balancer, add some whey isolate protein powder, and see how the numbers work out.
Complete equine feeds are designed for horses who can’t eat enough long-stem forage. They are not intended to replace grass or hay as long as the horse can eat grass/hay, and even then, if there’s a hay shortage, you can use good complete feeds to help things along.
Sheep aren’t horses. But horses will always do better, all else equal, with at least 1.5% of their weight, preferably 2%, with long-stem forage from grass and/or hay. That’s the nature of the beast. It’s not a huge secret. Grass is full of vitamin E, vitamin A, omega 3 EFAs, pre/probiotics, water, long-stem fiber, chew time which generates more saliva which helps buffer stomach acid.
Concentrates are often low on E, A, Omega 3 (most have more 6 than 3 and not even enough 3 at that), many don’t have any beneficial amounts of pre/probiotics, are certainly not long-stem fiber, and take less time to eat.
No hay is 100% complete. There are deficiencies, or imbalances, or both (and often both).
There are good quality “super” v/m supplements that are more forage balancers than just a general v/m supplement. They don’t provide significant protein though, though some of them to provide appreciable amino acids.
if my easy keepers had only alfalfa, they would be whales. PPID brings new challenges. Thyroid supps increase metabolism.
JB, thank you for the precise answers. I’m familiar with a lot of what you posted, so I’ll just touch on the areas I don’t know.
Orchard hay doesn’t grow this far South. I love that stuff. Fed it when I lived in Virginia.
Last time I tested coastal, it was 5% protein. Sandy soils and poor nitrogen down here. The farm we moved from was like beach sand. This farm has much better soil. We don’t need nearly as much composted manure to grow our gardens. Most hay in this area is grown on farms with sandy soil, like our old one. In fact, I dump the feed tubs twice per day to keep sand from building up and we do regular bran/psyllium/mineral oil mashes, whether they are on hay or pasture…
Supplementing phosphorus would be good, but, I would need to test the alfalfa. It was easy using oats, back in the day, but not a good idea with an easy keeper. Any ideas?
Local horse board spoke of feeding alfalfa blocks in their pastures. It seems to be common down here. If the quality is similar to the bales we just bought, it shouldn’t be that excessive. This alfalfa is always very thick stemmed. Good color, lots of leaves, but thick.
You can get monodosium phosphate to add, but it’s pretty icky so you hope you don’t have to add much. But how much you need, really requires a hay analysis
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t wheat bran pretty high in phosphorus anyway? So, if her horses get regular mashes, the balance is probably closer to what it should be?
