Fescue hay - pros and cons for horses

[going_gray]

Hi, all! My husband and I moved from Michigan to North Carolina this last spring having bought six acres of land north of Forest City in Rutherford County.

We are building a house and have finally gotten our property fenced and cross fenced for our two senior mares who we brought down with us.

The pasture grass here is totally fescue. Horses are eating the grass but when we first put them out to pasture, they smelled it, tasted it, and walked around. Over and over again. It was totally new and not what they had been eating back in Michigan.

Their previous hay was a mixture of orchard grass, timothy, with a little alfalfa as well. It took a few days for them to start eating the pasture grass with any enthusiasm.

We have been supplementing pasture grass with some local hay which is a supposedly fescue and orchard grass mixture. Very little orchard grass however.

We have picked up some very nice timothy and orchard grass hay up close to Asheville which is much more expensive than the fescue blend. ($10 vs $5 per bale) Horses like this hay quite a bit.

I know fescue can be a problem for mares in foal but our two mares are 20 and 21 and not in foal. We have no plans to breed them.

Can anyone help me with the pros and cons regarding fescue as a nutritious source of hay? Anyone else feeding fescue or are you feeding more expensive or less expensive hay blends? Thanks for your thoughts on this hay source.

[SusanO]

My horses are like yours - they will not eat it. Even a mix with some fescue is unpalatable as far as they are concerned. They do love timothy and orchard grass which does not grow around where I live. You can always try “mixed grass” hay which is usually a euphemism for mostly fescue. But you might find some that does not have a lot of fescue and meets their standards. I just mostly spend the money and buy what mine will eat.

[going_gray]

Thanks, SusanO. My two horses will now eat the fescue that grows quite well in our small pastures and they will eat the fescue hay that we have bought so far. (They decided not to starve.) They do prefer the timothy/orchard grass mixture that is ten dollars a bale.

The fescue hay is from a hay supplier who is closer to our home and is cheaper. This supplier keeps his fields almost completely weed free which is very nice. Our horses don’t waste any of it and there are no weed stems left over. They are half draft and hold weight really well. (Yea for grazing muzzles that work!) Thank you for letting me know how your horses have responded to fescue hay.

[OfCourseItsAnAlter]

I’ve moved horses from Florida to NC and from the midwest to NC. All of them went through a period of adjustment. Fescue is still their least favorite hay. If you offer something better, like orchard grass, they act like me, finding a chocolate bar that I had forgotten about in a desk drawer .

But, they all adjusted, willingly eat fescue pasture grass and hay, and have no problem staying healthy and in good condition on it.

[Wyndwolfe]

Most pasture in the south is fescue, bermuda, or a mix of both. All are basically lower in calories than either timothy or alfalfa, and have different nutritional content. My experience has been that changing pasture usually takes some time, but most horses adjust. Once they are eating what grows in your pasture, you can assess their nutritional needs and make adjustments. Since both of your mares are older, you may find that they need the calories from the richer hay in the winter.

[LilRanger]

I’ve fed fescue for years, it’s a grass that does well in the desert SW. Never had a problem with it, horses did fine.

[B-burg_Dressage]

My horses have always done fine on fescue hay and grass. It’s mixed with some other things (red clover, timothy, orchard, lespedeza, etc.) but they seem to eat it fine and are both healthy. They certainly pick the alfalfa hay first, but still clean up the fescue mix.

And I’d rather pay the $3.50/bale than the $5-6 for brome/timothy/etc.

[candyappy]

Fescue is something that you really can’t keep out of any pasture or hay field unless you replant it every year. We plant a mixed grass hay in our fields and it has fescue in it but it is the endophyte free. As the years go by I am 100% positive it will eventually have regular old fescue in it as well.

My horses eat anything and I wonder if your horses lack of eating was due more to the quality of the pasture itself? Haas it been consistently mowed and fertilized and cared for before the horses went out on it? Is it all grass or is there a lot of weeds in the mix?

[Montanas_Girl]

Nutritionally, fescue is similar to other cool season grasses (timothy, orchardgrass, bluegrass, etc.). A lot of horses do find it less palatable than other species, but most, like yours, adjust eventually.

Endophyte-infected tall fescue (not all fescue) should not be fed to mares in the last ~60 days of gestation. Otherwise, it is a perfectly suitable forage for horses of most ages and classes.

I did my M.S. research in fescue toxicosis (specifically, looking at exercise response in horses receiving endophyte-infected vs. endophyte-free fescue). I did not find any significant differences between the treatment groups in my study. There were a few - very few - trends that I found that might make me hesitant to feed it as the sole forage to elite level eventers and 100-mile endurance horses, but those horses are going to need more calories/nutrition than any grass hay can supply alone, so that problem generally takes care of itself.

[late_in_the_day]

After 25 years of fescue pasture I give up. NC is now to hot/ for good sweet fescue. my friends are changing fields to use coastal/bermuda in the summer and rye in the winter . They are able to feed psture 8 months a year or more depending on weather. I have fed fescue/orchard grass hay for 10 yrs with happy healthy horses yet now my grower is giving up on fescue actually giving up growing hay in the Piedmont… He always had high quality fescue and states with this heat and the long spring rains he just can’t grow quailty hay anymore.
As we face the need to adjust to the climate emergency we will find that our growing zones have changed. Its just to hot in N for fescue anymore.Also for the past few yrs its rained all spring making it so difficult to harvest good hay and cut before it goes to seed.