I’ve had horses on free choice dairy quality alfalfa and they’ve not gotten fat. Now they eat free choice very high quality mix, supplemented with a significant portion of alfalfa, and grain. Also not fat. All depends on the horses and the situation.
I’ve had horses on free choice dairy quality alfalfa and they’ve not gotten fat. Now they eat free choice very high quality mix, supplemented with a significant portion of alfalfa, and grain. Also not fat. All depends on the horses and the situation.
Boutique-anything has a market somewhere, for some length of time, at some sustainable business model. Some will use it part-time, some full time, some seasonally. As a business owner, it’s up to her to figure out the middle ground where she can supply the best product, at the best price, with the best service. Free markets are great systems for showing what it will sustain in a given situation, and the best entrepreneurs figure out how to ferret out the details.
Why? It’s even more important for stalled horses, who cannot walk around or socialize, to be able to have constant access to chewing on things we want them chewing on - hay. Whether they choose to at any given time is up to them, but barring an hour or 2 here and there, they need just as much access to hay in a stall, as horses in a field need access to hay or grass.
“Free choice” doesn’t have to mean a buffet, certainly there are horses who need a weight amount to keep from getting fat. But a lot of horses are perfectly happy weight-wise with buffet-style hay in their stalls, and some of those even need additional concentrates for more calories
Horses fed on free choice hay get fat and make work for their connections in the form of manure to be removed. If the horse is working then the issue becomes different. As in humans, if the horse burns more than it eats it will lose weight; if it eats more than it burns it will gain weight. The good husbandryman seeks the right balance. Since the vast majority of horses in the U.S. today are, at best, “weekend warriors” who have very low work loads you’ll see many that are obese.
The garrison ration for the U.S. Cavalry light horse (less that 1150 lbs.) was 10 pounds of oats and 14 lbs. of hay. These were working horses, not “weekend warriors.” The Field Ration added two pounds of oats. They were most assuredly NOT provided “free choice hay” and routinely lived long enough in peacetime to be “surveyed” at age 16 and sold at auction.
IMO the argument for “free choice” forage is based upon human assumptions, not demonstrated fact. There is a deep well of historical information from U.S. and other sources demonstrating that these assumptions are highly questionable. Thus my comments.
G.
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1400lb+ WB on stall rest for an injury was eating close to 40lb of hay a day, not netted, and not fat.
Quality matters. You can feed high quality - high DE, higher protein, higher calories - hay that might make the average horse fat, or you can feed a lower quality but still good horse quality and allow free choice but not fat. It’s not all or nothing - the details of the hay matter.
I know a growing number of IR horses who are getting free choice buffet style low NSC, moderate protein hay, and are in great weight, where before, even 1.5% of their weight in high quality hay was still making it a struggle to keep weight off. Details matter.
I fully understand the arguments about horses being trickle feeders and stomach acid, etc. But I also think the number one health hazard to pet horses these days is obesity, leading to IR issues as they age. I’ve watched a few horses especially ponies age into obesity related health problems, and then you really have a project on your hands managing the founder.
I totally agree, but it’s still not all or nothing. Free choice really means “available when the horse wants it”. It doesn’t have to mean “all you can eat”.
I think obesity is a bigger long term danger than the problems associated with only getting fed every 6 hours.
It’s never about how many times a day they are getting fed. It is always about how many times a day are they going more than a couple of hours without anything to eat. On average, they need to be eating 16 hours a day. That’s 8 hours they would not be eating left to their own devices - sleeping, napping, playing, wandering, whatever. Having them without forage for 8 consecutive hours every single day is a fantastic recipe for stereotypies and ulcers. But having 4 2-hour windows without is, or may be just fine. The problems tend to come when there’s no hay when the horse wants it, rather than just doing the math. A horse who wants hay, has an urge to chew, and doesn’t have any, starts to eat stalls.
Even if you have a slow feed net, if your horse is eating 30 lbs a day of alfalfa mix , he is going to get fat.
So don’t give him 30lb of alfalfa (30,000-ish calories). Using that example of why a horse shouldn’t get free choice hay is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. 30lb of decent (not top of the line, but not low quality either) grass hay is going to be around 24,000 calories, and that’s a significant difference. And most horses don’t need 30lb of even grass hay, not unless they’re 1500lb, so make it 20-25. Nets can be really good at slowing consumption. And that might mean using several nets to put out at various times.
Anyhow, I look at the mares who live on pasture. They eat themselves up to a nice fertile 7 on the Henneke scale over the summer, maybe drop down to a 5 in the winter. I don’t think many horses on good free choice feed maintain at a 5.
Difference again between all you can stuff your face with, and “always available” . Muzzles are the equivalent of small hole hay nets.
This sounds super familiar so I’m pretty I know what company it is. If she is in lower mainland canadian west coast. She knows her stuff. We have sent people her way if they really really need low sugar hay. I work at a local feed / hay store so it interesting to see what other people are doing.
We we won’t be doing this - already to busy to be that personalized. But we do do the individual small loft orders ( try to get more than one at a time) . We sell hay by the bale rather than the ton since our customers generally are buying less than a ton at a time.
P.
Ps if my location is correct I wonder if I may have talked to you before 
@Guilherme not all of us have really hearty Brazilian stock horses that get fat on air. I free feed alfalfa and alfalfa mixes to horses that are not worked and are stalled at night and they’re not overweight. Shockingly, different horses have different needs. How weird!
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No need to be snarky or to nitpick people to death.
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I understand that general rules have exceptions. That does not invalidate a general rule, it just validates the concept of “exceptions.”
Like all good husbandry-men you want to “feed to need.” If free feeding is what you need to do then God Bless You. But for most of the equine world it’s the short route to obese horses. So as you feed to need, so do I. 
G.
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IME, the issue is less about free feeding, and more about choosing suitable forage. A horse may very well over-eat forage in order to get enough nutrition. Or he’s just a pig. Or he’s leptin-resistant and is or is on his way to being IR and it’s not recognized.
If you can’t choose lower quality forage for the easier keeper, then no, it can’t be a free-feed situation. I wonder how many overweight free-feeding horses are also getting 5+lb of a fortified feed?
Walk into a barn of Thoroughbreds, and your hearty little fat on air horses are the exception. It’s all where you’re standing, G. There are plenty of horses out there that do really well on free choice hay. It’s not just rare one offs.
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All I have to say is DAMN am I glad I live where I live. I’m paying $5 a bale for ~50 lbs of slightly stemmy mixed grass. And that is buying from the BO who had to buy the hay from the producer.
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That’s because of a lot of difference in genetics. I’ve granted that you feed to need (of the individual horse). Beyond that what do either of us KNOW? We’ve both speculating. What more is there to say?
G.
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A “general rule” of horses get fat on free choice hay is just plain wrong, Guilherme. I certainly know that. SOME horses might. A whole lot don’t. A whole lot of horses do really well.
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See, this for me is the dilemma. I know and understand the rationale for free choice hay, and I’m sure my mare would appreciate it. But then she’d be obese with worrying fat pockets.
My barn is a useful place to observe horse care outcomes because it is almost 60 privately owned horses in self care, everyone feeding to their own best idea of what their horse needs. And lots of people willing to chat in detail about their hay, their feeding regimes, their horse’s needs, etc.
It’s primarily a recreational barn, and the forage-first, low grain, diet is accepted by probably everyone. And the 24/7 hay feeding plan also is attractive to people. A few people are now on the boutique plan, but lots of people make up giant overnght hay bags or feed more than their horse will eat, and throw out the leftovers.
We do usually have one or two giant warmbloods around, and generally a handful of OTTB of various ages. They are the exception, as sometimes they even need more calories than they are willing to eat.
Otherwise, for the stock horse breeds, the Arabs and Arab crosses, the Morgans, the smaller warmbloods, the draft crosses, the ponies, the Iberians, even the Standardbreds, if people don’t restrict hay to some extent, the horses get fat, to the extent the vets make comments when they come to do shots and teeth.
Our horses are in stalls with small runouts. They all get out almost every day, if only to handwalk or longe, but none of them are in heavy or strenuous work regularly. People are more likely to complain that their horse is hot or naughty, than that he lacks energy.
My comment upthread about a horse ganing weight by eating 30 lbs of alfalfa blend a day wasn’t meant to be reducutio ad absurdum. That was actually what the horse in my barn ate on his first delivery of the boutique plan: 320 lbs of alfalfa mix in under two weeks, with additional loose hay on top of that.
On thing people don’t do here, is regularly test their hay. I’ve done it a couple times in the past, it was a good way to learn that I should avoid a specific type of hay. But getting a ton at a time, probably different fields of the same grass type, not being able to test until the hay is delivered, and not having any plans to change anything dependent on the test, I haven’t this past year.
In general if people are testing their hay, they are looking at sugar levels, but that is not necessarily the same as calories levels. I think including alfalfa in a mix could be a way of getting a lower sugar level on the reading, but not necessarily a lower calorie level.
So free choice premium alfalfa blend hay isn’t an appropriate choice for those horses. But that doesn’t mean that those horses absolutely cannot be free fed hay. This isn’t an all or nothing question. Those horses might do just fine free fed a coarse first cutting, for example. Or free fed in a smaller hole hay net.
But it’s pretty well established in the literature, I think, that when you start restricting forage, you see more health problems like ulcers, and destructive behaviors like wood chewing, and more stereotypies like cribbing or weaving. We want to avoid those, right?
In an ideal world, we’d all have a variety of hay available, from low nutrition “rice cake” hay all the way up to high octane “rocket fuel” hay, so everything from the easiest keeper to the hardest keeper could have appropriate hay all the time to eat at leisure. But no, it doesn’t work like that, so some horses need to be restricted or they turn into blimps. But that’s FAR from guilherme’s edict that ALL horses will become obese if free fed. All horses will become obese if free fed hay that exceeds their caloric requirement. That requirement is an incredibly broad spectrum, and there are plenty of horses out there that can free feed on widely available hay and not get fat.
The woman who is running this company you’re asking about would be well positioned if she offered a wide range of hay options–sure, import that beautiful alfalfa mix for the harder keepers, but also have a low NSC first cut grass available with a minuscule DE for your easy ones–with a wide range of hay net sizes. If she’s not doing that, and is positioning a rich alfalfa mix as appropriate for all, then sure…she’ll have a lot of fat horses and customers who quickly grow weary of nutty horses they can’t ride. The niche here (as I see it, anyway) is custom fitting the hay and the net to the horse–which is certainly not going to be alfalfa in a 2" hole hay net for all.
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Free choice doesn’t have to mean stuff your face. Free choice simply means “available at (nearly) all times.” That’s what slow feeders are for, of whatever variety.
If she can’t have all-you-can-eat, then limit the amount with a slow feeder so it’s still “free choice”, but a limited amount.
Or, scatter an appropriate amount around whatever area she’s in, at various intervals, so there’s never more than an hour or so with her standing around with nothing to eat.
It’s less about volume in the stomach, and more about as many hours as possible with forage in the stomach.
Well, my mare gets 4 or 5 feedings a day, about 3 lbs each, hoovers them up in about half an hour. Haynets don’t slow her down. She gets mad at the hay and rattles it all out. The 4 or 5 feedings is the best we can do.
As far as low cal hay, one of the local complications is that our coarse cheaper first cut pasture grass hay turns out to be freakishly high in sugar, low in everything else. Like 25% NSC. I’ve watched people founder a pony feeding it thinking it was “good low nutrition pony hay.” Well, it is low in protein and minerals!
Probably commercial Timothy from the dry belt is our best bet.
Mine have the metabolism of Shetland ponies but I still try to have hay in front of them all the time. But not unlimited super premium orchard grass. They got some of that and then some stalky mixed whatever ( OG, fescue, timothy, who knows what). It smells good but they are not wild about it. When the good stuff is eaten they have that to keep their gut full. I am sure it has some nutritional value but not enough to make them obese. I would rather do that than make them go for hours with no forage.
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This woman sells a variety of hays, including tested low sugar “low calorie” hays. She is a big believer of free choice with the correct hay choice.
it has been tempting but it is far too much $$ for me, plus I don’t like it takes so much space in the stall. My horse is pretty large for his stall and he sleeps in it, so would be worrying.
He too gets fat on air. I’m sure with the perfect low calorie hay he could probably do ok, especially now he is working significantly harder. But he still inhales hay and would just eat me right out of my wallet!!
but one of my coaches uses her and shes pretty happy.
