Particularly interested in hearing about managing horses who can’t eat hay, who also live in extreme cold climates. I’ve got issues right now with my 24 year old mare, and I just can’t imagine getting through a winter without hay (very cold, like sustained -20C to -35C not including wind chills).
It’s not that cold here, but I feed a mix of LMF senior and alfalfa pellets to horses in that situation.
You could try free choice alfalfa pellets and see if that works for her in the way that the hay does. Obviously you can’t soak them in that situation but it might still work for her. I grew up in barns that fed hay cubes dry and it worked out okay (again, warmer climate).
I would imagine your vet has several clients in this situation and would have some good management suggestions for you. I’m not sure exactly what your question or concerns are, so maybe I missed the mark.
I live in a similar climate to you (sometimes below -40C without wind chill), and we have a couple of horses at our barn that are not on hay. They do just fine on dry hay cubes in the morning, lunch time and dinner time/night check. If your barn is insulated, there is also no reason as to why you couldn’t soak them if desired. Both maintain a healthy weight throughout the winter. I believe they are purely alfalfa cubes.
I spent about 6 winters in MN and I honestly would not like to think about trying to manage a horse who can’t eat hay. What about chopped forages?
Here we have a product designed just for that.
Works so well many show barns, at home and on the road feed only that, no hay any more, and their horses do fine.
A local mill produces it:
https://www.hiprofeeds.com/products/alfa-pro/
Not sure you may have one such complete feed where you are, but maybe ask your vets about such feed, or another kind of processed commercial complete rations?
I have a 25 y/o with no teeth, who can’t eat hay. We live in NE, USA with average winter temps within 0F-30F.
I have noticed that we have had to blanket him very aggressively since he lost his teeth. Prior to that, he was an air fern who was fat on a handful of grain, and if he needed something in the winter it was a 100 weight at max. Now I have him in mediums and heavies when the rest of the herd (TBs) are in 100 or 200 weights.
I think because he no longer has all that hay to digest and keep his body warm, he is more sensitive to cold.
For food, he is on 3qts of soaked Triple Crown Senior Complete Feed, 4x a day. He also has 8 hrs on a grass pasture in the spring/summer, with the rest of his time being in the TB herd which is a large mostly dirt lot with a roundbale. He will munch on the round bale, but gets very little out of it.
In the winter we have been known to bump him up to 4qts per feeding, as he has generally loses weight once he can no longer eat grass. He starts to get soaked timothy cubes once the grass is good and gone, and gets about 2 qt each feeding. He will lose interest in them so we’ve had to find creative ways to get him to eat it.
He turns his nose up to Dengie and some other short-chopped forage alternatives we’ve tried.
I am considering Well-Solve Wel Gel if he has trouble keeping weight this winter. It is expensive, but I have used it with great results in the past with a horse who was struggling to keep weight and having some serious ulcers.
Right now he is probably a bit overweight, but I have not wanted to cut him off - I’d prefer he go into winter with a bit of extra padding versus a perfect 6 on the BCS scale.
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I have an ancient pony who gets soaked senior feed and soaked alfalfa cubes. He also gets Cool Calories in winter.
My old gummer ( well, not 100% toothless but a dental mess) lived happily on Poulin Carb Safe and Lucerne Farms bagged chopped hay. When he needed something extra I gave him soaked hay stretcher pellets. He was stalled at night and had heavy blankets.
Thanks for all the replies. The mare seems to be having some serious issues with her TMJ; we are assuming she hit her head on something (although no mark on the skin) and for the last week she can eat only soaked cubes/beet pulp. She is having a very difficult time chewing.
That’s awesome that you can do 4 feeds per day. That’s simply not an option for me, unfortunately, so I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that.
I have an older gelding (32) that has been living on a mix of hay pellets, beet pulp, and senior grain . I soak everything (use cold water in the summer and hot water in the winter).
Over the years, I’ve had to tweak how he was getting his forage. Initially, he was quidding his hay (started in his mid-20’s), so I moved him to chopped forage/dengie and soaked hay cubes. He got to the point where he was starting to quid his chopped forage so I moved to a mix of hay cubes and hay pellets. There was a point where I had trouble getting hay cubes and made the decision to just switch him over to pellets.
He gets a mix of timothy (1 quart) and alfalfa (2 cups) pellets, beet pulp (1 cup before soaking), and safe choice senior (2 quarts). I don’t need a fat supplement for him, but as Beowulf mentioned, he’s more sensitive to the cold as he’s gotten older and now requires blanketing (much to his displeasure). He gets fed twice a day and is on grass during the summer. In the winter, I increase his hay pellets and grain.
I would try the soaked cubes over hay pellets, because the extra fiber in the gut is more helpful to the digestive system. It also takes longer to digest than pellets, helping create warmth with fermentation. Perhaps a heated bucket could keep that unfrozen in winter. My old horse also got the Old Kent Senior pellets soaked, because they had less molasses than other brands of Senior pellets. Old horses just don’t need all that sugar! Mine was alone in her spacious paddock, no other horses taking her food or pushing her around, pulling on her blanket.
She also got some plain oats, cracked corn as grain, which added to the “roughage” going thru her gut. She didn’t use all of her grain, you could see the oats in the manure, but we thought it was helpful just going thru her. I bought some 3rd cut grass hay which she mostly quidded, but she enjoyed doing that and other horses would clean up the quids as they came in thru her paddock, even frozen, that she spit out. So it was not wasted hay. We don’t feed alfalfa much or very often. Too rich for our horses, gave the old mare the runs.
I did blanket her lightly, mostly as a wind break. But I am mid-state, not “Up North” like OP. OP might like to use a heavier blanket up there.
Our winters aren’t as bad as yours (Wisconsin) but I’ve kept a few different seniors going when they couldn’t have hay - but it depends WHY they can’t have hay and what their other problems are. The heated bucket idea is a good one, assuming you have someplace for this horse to be separated from the others. If you need to pack in the calories, it’s also a somewhat different conversation than if the horse is generally in good shape and just needs to get some fiber or stay busy in their stall.
Mine were able to eat some hay if I gave them the right kind. I bought some dairy alfalfa and filled a hay net, and they would shake the net and eat the tiny leaves off the floor. It kept them busy and it lasted for days. I wouldn’t count on it for a source of much fiber. I definitely blanketed them more heavily and paid more attention to wind and weather - but they were also 25-30 years old.
I’m in SW Michigan where it can get colder than Alaska in the dead of winter. I have a boarder who’s mouth is an absolute mess. He’s also 28 and a historically hard keeping TB. He came out of last winter looking better than he ever has. He gets 3lbs. soaked Purina Eq Sr and 1.5 qts. of soaked alfalfa cùbes, AM and PM His owner also has him on a couple of supplements like a weight builder and a joint supplement. ÃŒ just bring out a couple of 2L bottles of hot water to the barn and start them soaking right away in the winter. They’re ready to be fed in under 15 minutes. The Eq Sr us ready to go almost immediately.
and a flake of hay to occupy him
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Thanks for all the replies. Right now we’re dealing wtih a tmj injury (i have no idea what happened).
Hopefully we can get her eating hay before winter hits. I am concerned about the long periods without food, since I can only manage 2 feedings per day.
I have a pony boarded at my farm who is in his mid 30s, has nubs for what teeth remain, and can’t chew hay or grass, can’t even chew soaked alfalfa cubes. He gets 16 pounds (dry) of alfalfa pellets soaked and 7-8 pounds of senior feed soaked per day. I started out feeding him five times per day when he arrived, then slowly got it down to two feedings per day. He gets his large meal overnight and he stays in an individual paddock by himself. Since he’s so smol (~800 pounds ideal weight), this huge volume of food basically takes him all night to eat. It may not work for all horses, but this guy takes his time and doesn’t scarf it all down, which is why I’ve been able to feed him twice per day. He eats his fill, then “grazes” and goes back to it later, he does that all night long. I’ve determined that he finishes all of it around 5-6am. Then he gets a smaller meal for breakfast, and when everyone is done with breakfast he gets to go in a bigger field with a couple other geldings for the day.
At the end of the day, even though it isn’t ideal, two feedings per day isn’t the end of the world if those two meals pack in all the calories they need. Thousands of horses are fed on such a schedule and manage fine. Probably the bigger issue will be making sure she stays warm during those frigid temps, without being able to chew on hay to generate heat. Lots of blankets and kept inside will help.
Do you have her on your own property, or boarded?
My toothless almost 35 year old has been off hay longer than I’ve known him (he came with the farm three summers ago).
He was doing fabulous on a mix of soaked cubes, soaked pellets, soaked senior feed, and oil… until one day he decided to stop eating it. He seriously looked half his age on it and wish I knew why he became averse to it.
Now he will only eat soaked senior feed with a pelleted fat supplement, and occasionally entertain himself quidding on some chopped hay. He’s full of life, a touch thinner than I’d like, but definitely above average for his age.
While our winters aren’t terrible, we get enough cold weather to make it tough on an old guy. Plus, my life and my facilities prevent me from being able to feed him more than 2, maybe 3 times a day. As a result, I have to load him up at mealtime with as much as he can handle to get anywhere close to his nutritional requirements.
He gets blanketed. He hates being blanketed, but he needs it.
I used to keep him in a paddock alone at night in the winter so I could put an extra serving of soaked forage products out for him to eat at leisure (or until it froze). But last winter he started running the fence line all night, so I was forced to put him back out with the herd for his own sanity.
This poor horse lived with just a donkey friend for many years before I came along with my 3 mares. My girls are wretched to him, but he just puts up with them in his happy-go-lucky manner.
I have an old pony who can not handle hay anymore. I keep her out on grass as much as possible. When not out on grass I give her chopped hay in a very small hole Hay Chix net. For meals she gets senior feed and soaked Timothy Balance Cubes or soaked alfalfa cubes at mealtimes. I am very liberal with blanketing her in the winter, and that makes a big difference in her comfort level and for keeping weight on.
Quality senior feed is your savior. It has extra essential vitamins, minerals, digestives and roughage.
If possible give him a large feed overnight, when he can slowly eat it. break up the other feeding times to as many as your schedule allows.
Jingling for a resolution of the TMJ issue. I have a 35 year old, 850 lb pony who still has all of his teeth, but they don’t work very well at grinding hay. We are in central Va, so the temperatures are no where near what you have to deal with. During the spring, summer and fall (ie when we have grass) he gets feed one large meal in the am. (1 quarts timothy pellets and 1/2 quart of a hay mate cube, aka a hay stretcher). This is soaked and served in a muck tub, since he tries to find the best bits at the bottom of the container. Once the grass is gone and the colder weather starts, he gets feed twice a day. (1 quarts timothy pellets, 1 quart hay mate cube, 1 quart timothy alfalfa cubes). I add the cubes to the mix in the winter to have a bit more chew time to his meal. I haven’t had his meal get frozen, even when we’ve had overnight temperatures around 0. My back up plan for when we have temperatures that would freeze his meal is to use a 16 gallon heated water tub plugged in with water in the bottom 1/8th of it. Then place the muck tub of feed into it.
I have been feeding the pony in an area that only he can access, my 16.1 and 16.3 geldings can’t get under the barrier. The pony will go in the area eat for a bit, go out and graze for a bit, go hang with the 2 geldings under the lean to for a bit and then go back and eat some more of his meal. He takes from 8am until around 1 or 2 pm to eat his summer time meal.
One thing I do prior to the worst of winter is to slowly increase his meals before all the grass is gone and before the coldest temperatures get here. This allows him to pack on some lbs for insulation during the winter.
