After reading the other hay thread, it got me thinking, does your horse go without hay throughout the day, not including turnout? If so, how long are you okay with your horse being without hay (usually in between feedings)? At what point (hour wise) would you be concerned that your horse isn’t getting enough hay? Obviously, if a horse is dropping weight due to not enough hay, that is a concern.
Free choice hay is ideal, but not absolutely required for all horses (also not safe for some horses) and not feasible in some situations (especially boarding barns). I do not worry about not having hay for a period each day unless a horse is dropping weight or exhibiting significant behavioral issues such as pacing, constant pawing, weaving, etc.
ETA - I have my horses on my own farm and mine get free-choice hay. All of my current boarders provide their own hay and grain, and none of them get it free choice per owner instructions.
Mine are very easy keepers. They get a set amount of hay. Normally it’s spaced out in two feeding, morning and early afternoon. Sometimes they’ll get extra but that’s rare. If I can’t be around for a noon time feeding I’ll put their hay in slow feeders so it lasts longer. They’re at home with me so I can control everything. Free choice hay maybe ideal but if I gave mine free choice they’d both be extremely overweight and since both have a history of founder, though neither directly connected to weight, I do try to maintain their weight.
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My horses get free choice hay and are usually never without hay. If your horse is in a stall with no hay I would be mainly concerned about being bored. I believe that the exact amount of hours a horse should be eating is 14 hours every day. So if yourhorse is in stall and let’s say you feed at 9 am and 5 pm, your horse should generally have hay the whole day. During the night they may not have hay the whole time. The reason horses require this amount of grazing food is because their producing some kind or acid that digest the food/hay/grass they eat. When they aren’t getting food they still produce that acid and it will just end up making them colic. If your horse is getting less than 14 hours a day then I would be concerned. Sometimes I have to feed my horses square bales instead of just giving them a round bale in their pasture, it’s important to know how long it takes them to eat and how much they’re eating and feed them accordingly.
Nope. They have hay (or grass) available all the time. But they’re hard keepers. It’s also more convenient for ME to just stuff a large net and know they’re set until whenever I’m able to top it off the next day.
I can’t even imagine taking care of those “get fat on air” horses! Hard keepers get a bad rap, but the ones that have to be micro managed down to every scrap of hay seem so much harder.
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always have haynet or grass. After having one with ulcers, I never would allow them to go without. the fat ones get small hole net and maybe get short periods of up to an hour before I give more. I read in an article that in the wild they graze for about 17 hours a day of the 24. the rest is napping, running around, playing. Obviously the 7 hours not eating isn’t continuous.
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Mine have access to hay 24/7, but they don’t spend huge amounts of time eating. I have hay huts, and there’s always hay in them, but the horses will eat for 20 minutes and then stand around sleeping, or cruising around in the pasture. They are turned out in 5 acre pastures during daylight hours year-round, regardless of the weather, but there’s almost no grazing available except in May and June, it’s just recreational space. At night they have hay bags in their stalls, and often leave hay in the bags.
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I have an easy keeper. She has an automatic feeder and gets a set weighed amount of hay in 4 or 5 feedings a day. She is in a stall with runout.
She gets 15 lbs of hay a day and that keeps her at a 5 or higher. If she got free choice hay she would be a solid 7.
She has adapted fine, and isn’t showing any anxiety or stress.
Since each feeding is 3 or ,4 lbs, sshe hoovers that up in about 20 minutes. Hay bags don’t really slow her down. So she is without hay most of the time.
As far as feeding free choice to easy keepers, I’ve watched a few folks create obese horses and even founder that way. I think for our recreational barn environment, obesity is a huge health risk.
I understand all the arguments for 24/7 hay and constant eating. But that has to be weighed against the equally serious problem of creating an obese, metabolic horse
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I’ve always been under the impression that 4 hours with an empty stomach can lead to ulcers. So that is my rule of thumb.
Generally speaking, the longest my horse is without hay is overnight. He’s been having trouble chewing and I just started re-introducing regular hay yesterday, so he’s been having chopped hay and mashes 4x a day. Honestly, he probably ends up without food overnight for around 8 hours. Not ideal, but probably the reality in most barns.
When he ate hay normally, I’d stuff a giant hay net (with giant holes, probably 6" - not to slow him down, just to keep it from getting trampled so he didn’t waste so much) and it would last 12ish hours. So he never went without.
Managing the air ferns? Well, we use some slow feed nets to help their hay last a bit longer, but I still imagine they are probably out by midnight (nightcheck is 8 or 9pm), and breakfast is at 7, so at least 7 hours.
We have “air ferns.” They get fat on sawdust and air. They get an appropriate hay ration when they are stalled (which is a rare occurrence as they are out 24/7 on a not overly rich pasture). It’s usually morning/night but we might break it up more depending on circumstances.
Free feeding of hay to a horse working it off is not necessarily a bad thing. Feeding like that will make a “weekend warrior” fat and unhealthy.
G.
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My 18 year old WB is still in moderate work (ridden 4-6 days/week, W/T/C, small courses, dressage, slow hill work or trail rides). He was previously on the barn program of 3 flakes AM, 3 PM (total about 15lbs). He would be without hay from about 7pm-8 or 9 AM. Way too long to stand in a stall with nothing to eat and nothing to do. He was struggling to maintain weight, even on 5lbs of a high-fat, quality grain, and developed symptoms of ulcers.
Vet recommended free choice hay. It took some work to find an arrangement that suited both the BM and me. Now he is never stalled without hay. I purchase my own supply of hay to supplement the 6 flakes that are included in the board. I also bought two Hay Chix half bale nets. Fully stuffed, they hold around 20lbs of hay. One goes in his stall, and the other is left outside the stall door for the barn staff to hang when the other one is low. This seems to be working well. He’s holding weight, seems happy and relaxed, and has been clear of ulcers for a year.
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All of my horses have hay in front of them all.the.time.
I have a 21 year old easy keeper with metabolic issues. His hay net has extremely small holes to limit his consumption, but it’s always full and always in front of him so he can pick as he feels like it.
Even on turnout, if we are without grass in the winter the horses have quality round bales.
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I’m with Simkie here… LOL. I was just thinking about this yesterday, and I wonder, do ponies even get ulcers? I was wondering to myself how I would manage the needs of “grazing” and the health of an air fern…
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In the winter, my horse goes without hay an estimated 8-10 hours (after he’s eaten his evening flakes and before he gets turned out in the morning). Some days this makes me super uncomfortable. I wish he had hay in front of him a lot longer, but he’s in good condition and doesn’t seem to suffer from it. I board and it’s the best we can do. It’s pretty standard for most mid range boarding barns around here, I actually think he gets a bit more hay than standard (I’ve seen places who only give 1 flake!).
If my ponies had free choice hay, they’d explode.
They get a set feeding morning and night and usually finish their hay in 30-45 minutes tops.
They seem fine, even if they’d probably argue about it.
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Mine get 2 generous feedings twice a day (an occasional snack when my SO is home in afternoon). In the summer, there is some grazing which keeps them busy between feedings. In the winter, they wait between 4-5 hours for their next meal.
My horse is ulcer prone but I’ve never had success with the keeping food in front of them constantly as a prevention method. My gelding still got ulcers last summer when our grass was even better and he appeared to eat about 20 hours a day. I’ve found managing other stressors to be much more effective than constant food.
With the quality of my current hay, mine would be obese if they were free fed. The major barrier for me to free feed is I would be feeding all the elk and deer within a several mile radius. That is a bit too expensive and I’d rather not have a herd of animals jumping over my fence every night. I am considering doing hay nets this winter just to slow them down a bit but overall, they are in good condition and able to maintain good weights.
Mine are without hay for some period of time each day. In the summer, they can graze all night, and get hay given in the morning and at lunchtime in their stalls. They are usually out of hay by the evening feeding, but often there is still a little left. In the winter, they go for some unknown period of time without hay between when they finish what they’re given at night and the morning feeding. They’ll get hay outside twice during the daytime unless I have a round bale. I have four easy keepers between 12 and 15.3 hands. None have shown any signs of stable vices or ulcers, and the two smaller ponies would be blimps with unlimited hay.
My girls, both easy keepers, get 6-8lbs of hay stuffed in a small hole haynet 2x a day. They usually finish it within about 90 minutes. They get breakfast + hay in their dry lot at 7am, turnout on pasture for 3-4 hours at 5, and then dinner + hay in their dry lot at 8-9pm. I wish that they could have free choice hay, because I do feel bad about them standing around bored most of the day. Besides being a little grumpy, they seem just fine.
I’d rather have them go no longer than 6 hours without hay, but… yeah. Gotta work so that I can buy their hay!
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Another with an easy keeper here. (And possible Cushing’s but that’s a tale for another time.) She has almost always gone without hay for some number of hours each night, and between feedings in the daytime. She thinks she’s dying of hunger, but she’s not … She’s fat!
Have tried small hole haynets, but she attacks them and hurts her neck from grabbing them and yanking them around. Right now she gets a large flake in the late afternoon in a Nibble Net, but otherwise the hay is fed loose. She eats every scrap in her stall, including the inch-long tiny bits.
The only time she’s had free choice hay since I bought her was the awful winter of 2015, when she was living outside (with a shed.) She basically stood on a pile of hay and snow and nibbled all winter. It’s the only time she wasn’t a fiend about her hay… Once she realized it wasn’t going to ever be gone, she calmed down a lot. However, that was really extreme conditions, and in fact the barn kept up the free choice hay for too long in the spring, and she got a huge belly and had to go on a diet.
Note every place where I have boarded her gives extra hay when the weather is really cold.
No ulcers, just a horse who is absolutely sure she is starving unless she’s eating. It’s a bit of Morgan horse history; back when they were working horses, the ability to “get by” on little forage was an advantage. Almost every one I’ve met has been a hay hoover.
When younger, and in full training, she was a hard keeper.
I also have air ferns, two of them. I tried the free-feed hay thing and they never slowed their consumption, just got fatter and fatter. They get tested, low carb hay three times a day in the small 1" hole nets and supplements once a day. About seven months out of the year they have daytime sparse pasture with muzzles.
I’m not concerned about them getting ulcers but I think I’ve given myself ulcers coming to terms with not providing an all-you-can-eat buffet.
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