Does anyone feed their horses fermented feed? It seems to be all the rage with chicken owners and I have read of some with goats and hogs also feeding fermented feed with great results.
I am finding very little information on feeding it to horses, though. If they get the same benefits that other animals do, it sounds like it could be very beneficial.
Thoughts?
Iāve been feeding Chaffhaye for about 6 months now, and its making a big difference.
My hard keeper mini is finally body scoring a 5, on just 1/2 cup Chaffhaye a day.
I also have alpacas, and its made the biggest difference there. Dramatic improvements in body score and digestion in my pregnant girls. My blind old lady also is showing a big improvement. Much better digestion and body score. Sheās getting a 1/4 a day and the others get 1 cup a day. I really like that Iām seeing such a big difference from feeding so little.
Its also the only thing I can hide my old mareās pill in so sheāll take it.
Getting them to eat it is a little tricky, for both the mini and the alpacas. If I mix it in with other feed, they eat it much better.
It does require some special handling, but its not too hard.
Fermented grain feed is NOT a good idea for equines, their digestive system is not suited to managing it.
Distillery giveaways of their fermented grains left over from the brewing process is often available for the hauling, but totally unsuitable for ANY EQUINES.
Even free, this grain product is not good food for horses!!
You would not feed them silage, which is fermented forage. Not suitable for their digestive systems unless you want to hurt them with gas colic, founder.
I also am hearing about fermented feed for OTHER SPECIES of animals, cattle, hogs, chickens as you say. NOT horses! Cattle have several stomach areas in their digestive systems, so they get all the nutrients, manage gases created with fermentation, when eating both rich and poor feeds. Pigs digestive system breaks things down also, to get all the nutrients with strong digestive juices. Still not like a horse digestive system.
Horses canāt digest that, not made to manage that kind of food. Probably will colic on you pretty quick if fed fermented grains.
Folks paying attention, check horse feed tubs daily, to make sure no grain, wet feed, wet beet pulp is left that might have fermented in heat, because it can make the horse sick. You donāt leave wet beet pulp in front of horse in hot weather for more than an hour or two, fermentation has started by then. Horses usually will refuse to eat that, it smells bad. But some folks āare not wasting money on more feed he turns his nose up atā, so they leave horse to eat it anyway. Maybe nothing else is around for eating! Or a piggy horse/pony will stuff themselves on fermenting food because it is available, then get sick.
My BOās Friesian stallion died of colic after being fed apple peelings that had started to ferment.
I am not talking about feeding left over grains from brewing. I am talking about fermenting the grain the horses are already eating. Fermenting it, at least in the case of other animals, increases digestibility and has natural probiotics.
People using it for their chickens report a healthier, more robust chicken, sheen to feather, chicks feathering out quicker, hens laying eggs with bigger yolks. People who process them say there is less smell to the meat.
It sounds like such a great thing, I wondered if it could be used for horses.
The hindgut of the horse does an excellent job of fermentative digestion.
[QUOTE=dacasodivine;8147400]
I am not talking about feeding left over grains from brewing. I am talking about fermenting the grain the horses are already eating. Fermenting it, at least in the case of other animals, increases digestibility and has natural probiotics.
People using it for their chickens report a healthier, more robust chicken, sheen to feather, chicks feathering out quicker, hens laying eggs with bigger yolks. People who process them say there is less smell to the meat.
It sounds like such a great thing, I wondered if it could be used for horses.[/QUOTE]
An uncle fed silage (corn) to his horses, and didnāt have a problem.
Another uncle thought he was crazy/cheap/lazy (he ran a few hundred cattle, the silage was easily diverted from the main pile, which was at one point easily 2-3 stories tall!)
But the equine digestive system is so very tricky. Just because we never had a problem feeding unsoaked beet pulp pellets does not mean it was safe (my dad started soaking them after he talked to a guy, hearing about how a handful had killed a horse thereā¦)
Feeding silage is an excellent way to kill a horse. Silage can contain many things like listeria, mold growth and mycotoxins. Many Amish horses get botulism from being fed silage.
I wouldnāt risk my horse with playing around with fermented grain.
Noā¦you canāt compare horses to goats, chickens, alpacas, cattle, etc. Their systems are NOT designed the same way. :no:
NO fermented anything!!! I donāt care that someoneās uncleās cousinās farmer neighbor down the road fed silage to Dobbin who lived until he was 35. There is plenty of good feed out there so donāt tempt fate.
We lost a 2 y/o filly to colic caused by bad hay. The very next season, my father bought all of the equipment and leased fields to make our own.
I think this might be what sheās getting at:
[h=4]Predigestion[/h]A fermentation initiates in the bag, transforming the alfalfa into a āsuper solubleā forage. This āpredigestionā process closely mimics the digestive activity in the hindgut of a healthy horse. In the bag, yeast, enzymes and other beneficial microorganisms unlock viable nutrition from the plant fiber and convert its nutrition into a form that is usable and more readily absorbed by your horse. The result is greater assimilation of energy, vitamins, and essential nutrients. Free of dust and mold, Chaffhaye alleviates the most common digestive and respiratory ailments that often plague horses
Boyle, yes!! But not just chaffhay. People are fermenting the feeds they normally feed to get the enzymes and other beneficial microorganisms.
It would be helpful if the OP would be more specific about what type of edible (to equines) material the question is in reference to. Anything horses eat is can be referred to as āfeed.ā Yet āfeedā is a term regularly interchanged with āgrain.ā However, the vast majority of a horseās diet is most ideally composed of āforageā or āroughage,ā which are certainly considered āfeeds.ā
In Ireland, itās quite common to provide silage to horses (as one might imagine, itās not always easy to produce hay there). I cared for one horse here in the USA with colic issues that was fed silage exclusively (it was called āHaylageā), which was packaged in bags. It was different stuff than the Chaffhaye product, more grassy, with a white (yeasty?) patina on the outside of the flakes. This horse could have that, or grass, but no hay after two colic surgeries, and lived a long while into his old age.
I am referring to fermenting bagged feed (SafeChoice) with perhaps some alfalfa and timothy pellets. Keep it simple.
For the chickens, most will ferment layer pellets for the layers and chick starter for their chicks, etc. Some get really into and throw all kinds of stuff in there. You cover with water, stir a couple times a day for a few days and it is ready to feed. Yes, you do have to be careful not to let it get dry or it will mold.
Once it is going, you wait until there is only a serving or two left and add more feed and water. What is already there will work as a starter to ferment the new feed faster than the original.
[QUOTE=dacasodivine;8148013]
I am referring to fermenting bagged feed (SafeChoice) with perhaps some alfalfa and timothy pellets. Keep it simple.
For the chickens, most will ferment layer pellets for the layers and chick starter for their chicks, etc. Some get really into and throw all kinds of stuff in there. You cover with water, stir a couple times a day for a few days and it is ready to feed. Yes, you do have to be careful not to let it get dry or it will mold.
Once it is going, you wait until there is only a serving or two left and add more feed and water. What is already there will work as a starter to ferment the new feed faster than the original.[/QUOTE]
Because most of the animals that you have listed in the original post āfermentā before they ādigestā and horses ādigestā before they āfermentā, I am going to say āno way in hellā. Most of the animals you have listed are capable of vomiting, burping, digesting naturally produced toxins from grain/plants, and so on and the horse is not I would say it is a safe bet that you should not attempt to do this with a horse.
It sounds smelly, messy, and a great location for the flies to gather.
I would like to see hard evidence that the process increases digestibility and nutrient availability significantly in horses before I even considered it.
MHOāmore likely than not the risks significantly outweigh any benefits.
I, too, have fed Chaffhaye for several years. I definitely think the fact that itās fermented is a plus. But, no, I would not attempt to ferment my own feed.
Once the Chaffhaye bag is opened, it needs to be fed within a week and/or refrigerated. If the bag gets a tear in it (so itās exposed to oxygen longer than that), it turns nasty! Fermented food needs to be handled carefully.
I am going to revive this topic because I find it very interesting.
Before I dive deeper into the discussion, Iād just like to point out a factoid that is relevant to what has already been posted.
From BioStarās blog:
āĀIf a label states ādried yeast fermentation product,āĀ then it is not āaliveāĀ and is not considered an active microbial.āĀ
The ādried brewers grain solublesāĀ that we find added to many commercial processed feeds are byproducts of the alcohol distilling industry. The grain from which they were made was not grown to be animal feed and not processed to be animal feed. The microbes that were cultured in them were not intended to produce a healthful product for animals, but to produce alcohol.
To draw a human analogy, just because bread is made using fermentation and wine is made using fermentation doesnāt mean that you would take leftover grape must and try to make a nourishing loaf of bread out of it for your family.
And as the folks at BioStar pointed out, there are no active microbes in these industrial grain byproducts, which means that they lack what is typically considered the primary health benefit of a fermented food: living beneficial bacteria aka probiotics.
So, just because we may not want to put byproducts from the distilling industry in our animalsā feedbuckets does not mean that there might not be other types of fermented feed that could be beneficial.
After all, any probiotic supplement you give your animal was cultured by someone somehow.
Also, there is potentially a big difference between fermenting grain and fermenting a mature vegetable product like hay, the need for a starter culture to produce an environment of safe microbes being a major consideration.
Merely as an aside, however, horses in the UK, pasture aside, are fed nothing but haylage for forage - wet, steamy, and wrapped in plastic. How and why exactly that works is currently beyond me to explain. I do think that it is easier to keep a horse in top condition on the excellent legume and grass hays available to us in the western US.
I donāt mean this offensively, but the above post is a bit ignorant. No, not all horses in the UK are fed nothing but haylage! Some feed good quality hay, just like in America. @WhiteFence
It is not really fed in America but that doesnāt mean it is wrong or not ok. In Germany haylage is also fed to horses with no issue. There are a few things to be mindful of, such as once you open the bale (the plastic wrapping), use it within a few days. If there is a lot of yeast, just remove that patch and feed the rest. Sometimes there can be white patches here and there, a little does not harm the horses, but it is easy to just remove it and feed the rest.
Haylage is a good solution for our horses with allergies as it is not so dry and dusty like hay. Yes you can soak or steam hay, but the haylage is directly ready to feed. Iāve fed it to my horse with allergies (dust, mold, trees, grass, life, etc) for years and heās done well. With easy keepers I feed it in a slow feed hay net.
Haylage in some cases can he āricherā than hay, so it depends - you can maintain a horses condition wonderfully on haylage, hence why you must be mindful with feeding it to easy keepers. It can also test lower in sugar than some hays. As per any forage, you must test to know exactly. So no, it is not necessarily easier to āmaintain good condition on legume hayā whatever that may mean.
When horses come off of the pastures in the late fall, most barns feed haylage all winter. Hay is available also. No one has any issues. Maybe the odd person does here and there, because, well, stuff happens, especially if youāre not mindful, and all horses are individuals.
While Brewerās Yeast has no active microbes, it still contains B vitamins, other minerals, and is a decent source of protein. In some cases if your horse cannot have soy or alfalfa, Brewers yeast may be a decent solution for protein. Itās not the best, but it is not incredibly harmful either.
If one wants active cultures/microbiotics, etc. The one would feed a probiotic.
I can probably dig up some articles on this.
I donāt know who or what Biostar is. Iād have to look into them, but Iād do some more reading on haylage v. hay if you really want to know more about it.
http://castlehorsefeeds.com/hay-v-haylage-right-horse/
There is one summary of differences.
Have you done a comparison study of the gut of the horse and the chicken? Their relative nutritional needs? If so then what are your findings?
If not, why would you even consider this until you have?
G.
By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. You may also receive promotional emails from The Chronicle of the Horse. You can opt out at any time.
For Customers
Company
Terms of Use
