I feed each of my horses 2.5 pounds of Standlee brand alfalfa pellets daily as part of their forage-based diet. I add hot water and soak the pellets. The end result weighs weighs 10 pounds per horse. They love this wet stuff and finish all 10 pounds in under 10 minutes.
Is this soaked mass too much to offer them at one time? And, when adding up daily forage intake, do the soaked pellets count as 2.5 pounds of forage, 10 pounds of forage, or something in between?
I believe forage is measured in dry weight. All soaking is doing is adding the poundage of the water, it’s not adding the nutrients that would be in 10 lbs. of alfalfa. The water counts towards the horse’s daily water intake, but it does nothing to increase the actual nutrition of the alfalfa, just softens it, so it counts as 2.5 lbs of alfalfa.
You weigh your dry feed before soaking.
If the horse can eat ten pounds of soaked pellets that’s fine
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