I keep seeing ads for teff hay and that it’s low sugar. Anyone know more about it, personal experience with it?
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We are getting it imported to BC
It is a tropical grass or perhaps a grain grown for it’s seeds in other countries but harvested unripe here as hay. Its annual and needs to be replanted every year unlike typical Northern Hemisphere grasses like Timothy or brome. It is fine textured and seems palatable and is in general lower sugar if made right. I haven’t been feeding it, but know some people who are adding it to their horses diet.
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Emphasis on being made right. It can be too high in sugar just like any other hay.
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GENERALLY, it’s got good protein, and low esc/wsc/starch. The first-time grower isn’t likely to get that quite good enough, as it does have some really finicky requirements to grow well. Here’s a good article you can use to ask questions of a farmer before you decide to consider buying
But, while it TENDS to be great for EMS horses, you still have to test. It can be really high in protein but only because it’s high in nitrates (a problem Teff has over most other grasses). It could be high in esc/wsc/starch.
Most horses tend to like it pretty well, some are meh (which makes it great as a self-regulating hay), some LOVE it, some won’t touch it
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My old barn fed teff a couple different times. They used it to rotate their normally grass/alfalfa hay. Then in the fall would over seed the teff using its stubble as a cover.
I loved when they fed the teff. My horse wasn’t as enthusiastic about eating it but she did always clean it up and it lasted her so much longer/feeding than the standard hay.
I think they would have switched over to teff if it didn’t have to be reseeded every year. 40 F in the fall and it was dead. To rotate the field, it gave them something usable for the horses but to do it every year was cost prohibitive.
Susan
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been feeding only TEFF for three years, all horses of all ages eat every piece, there is very little to no waste
have no idea where it is grown as most of the hay sold around here is brought in from out of state
the feed store we buy from when we started feeding TEFF three years ago was selling two tractor trailer loads a year, now they are selling one to two loads a week.
We also have replaced the majority of grain feeds with TEFF pellets.
Where we once used about 100 pounds of grain a week we are down to less than 100 pounds a month.
From what I have read on hay forums it is hard to put up correctly. I think the stems hold a lot of moisture which makes it hard to cure sufficiently. And if not cut in an early stage can be very coarse and horses don’t like it. It does grow really well in very dry conditions and in an area with low rainfall can be a good crop. I do think there is a learning curve on growing it for hay.
I’ve never fed it, I’ve never seen it anywhere around me. But the feed room chemist did an episode on it.
Used to feed it when my mare was boarded in SoCal. She liked it (as she dis any hay tbh) and ate all of it. She would get a few flakes of that plus one of alfalfa in her net, nibbling at it all day. I liked how soft and palatable it felt. The cutting we had was very fine. The other horses at the barn who were on it also seemed to enjoy it; not as much left in stalls compared to some of the other grasses.
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I bought teff for a few years and this is exactly what they growers said - hard to dry, needs to be cut at the right stage (which is true of all hay but especially with teff), and there’s a big learning curve with prep and planting (seed bed prep is critical).
But they liked it because it’s a warm season grass so does great in the middle of summer when the other grasses aren’t doing much and it’s got great yields. It’s also a good rotation crop for renovating an existing grass or alfalfa fields.
The horses liked it - the reason I stopped feeding it is because I was out of the supplier’s delivery area so would have to borrow a trailer to go get rounds and it became too much of a PITA. But if I had a metabolic horse I’d definitely look into it again as there are more people growing it now.
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This is interesting.
My hay person put it up one year and sold a lot of it for cattle hay, my horses wouldn’t touch it.
Must have been something about how it was put up, the farmer did not continue the experiment.
I talk to people who say their horses love it, clearly there was a difference between what I was feeding and what they were feeding.
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I bought some last year because my hay guy was also trying it out. Got some teff/alf mix and some straight teff. The horses loved the teff/alf mix, especially my picky broodmare. They didn’t really love the straight teff as much but did eat it. I agree it felt very fine stemmed compared to orchard. I’ve heard some people say you have to be careful with it in hay nets that are hung high, as the fine stems can be an eye poking risk.
edited for spelling
Tractor Supply carries Teff pellets. I tried it for my 3 horses, mostly as a small treat. I soaked it and gave them about a cup full. Two horses really liked it, one did not. I’d love to try the actual hay but no one locally carries it.
Mine ate Teff hay at her old barn. She ate it slowly but always cleaned it up.
Teff pellets…no way. Apparently not pleasing to the palette. I had to go back to Timothy for pellets.
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I have fed teff on and off for years. It can be difficult to put up right, as others have noted. I’ve had it be way too headed out (those seed heads got stuck in the saliva ducts under the tongues of some horses - we found out when the dentist was out one year and compared it to cheat grass), baled too wet so it got moldy, or way too weedy (there was in the past no approved herbicide to use for weeds in Oregon - that may have changed by now). But I’ve also had it be beautiful, clean, absolutely heavenly smelling hay that can be a great forage. I always test all my hay so while I agree it is usually low sugar, it isn’t always (I’ve had it test high, mostly due to growing/harvest conditions). It also tends to be high protein, and that can be problematic for my easy keepers and is why I have not fed it much in recent years (I try to stick to ~10% protein overall for my current horses and they do well - some teff I have right now is 17% protein so I’m using it sparingly with other hay to get the average down close to 10%).
One other thing that I have heard from people feeding a lot of horses is they don’t like that it is pretty fine and falls apart - no clean “flake” to feed which is how a lot of barns around here feed. I weigh everything at my own barn (but only 3 horses means I can do that easily) so not an issue for me. I love the smell of it, despite being allergic to all things hay related. I’ve not had a horse refuse to eat it, they usually hoover it up, but again, I have easy keepers so I suspect they’d eat shredded cardboard, since they are “starving!”
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if Standlee, always check the Standlee web sight for printable discount coupons also if you are purchasing from an independent feed store ask if they have Standlee coupons.
VERY often (usually monthly) Standlee has very liberal coupon offers
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My vet recommended I try Teff hay for a gelding who had fecal water syndrome. I had tried everything but nothing helped. A few days after starting the Teff, his FWS completely stopped and never came back until the day he died (as long as the majority of his hay was Teff). He also had Cushings and I appreciated that Teff was lower in sugar (always had it tested).
As long as he was eating it, I started my other horses on it as well (Welsh pony and two minis). They’ve all loved it. I recently got a new mare and she will actually leave her alfalfa and orchard grass hay alone to eat the Teff first.
