Hay steamers

[ayrabz]

awaiting early am vet swinging by to pull blood. weird cough / no nasal discharge, no temp that my gelding has been having not getting better. been on cough free for 8 days so far. now we’ll evaluate blood work as vet feels its COPD but has to rule out pneumonia so we know which to treat.

I had one winter a few years back my nice hay bought that year at second cutting had started to get dusty by winter. I struggled with soaking hay in freezing temps. its always such a mess. especially if this is established as a diagnosis and a ‘forever’ on need. So please speak to me of hay steamers if you have one/like and endorse it? I have a tiny farmette. my retired gelding and his evil mini me. So its not as if I need one for a barn full of horses. Thank you and prayers and jingles for my old friend and heart horse please.

[walkinthewalk]

Soaking hay is for metabolic horses, not horses with COPD so you’re safe there:)

Unless you want to pay $600 and up for a commercially made hay steamer, you can make your own for $100 or less - probably with stuff you already have at home:)

if you Google “home made hay steamer” you will get a lot of good hits:)

I am forum acquainted (a different forum) with someone who made her own with a metal garbage can, a grilling rack, her son’s old vaporizer that was stored in the basement, a heavy duty extension cord, and a hay net. There was no timer on the system but that’s and easy fix:)

[GoodTimes]

I don’t totally agree with this. Soaking hay can be super helpful for horses with respiratory issues. It doesn’t need to be soaked for long, just enough to reduce any dust. Even good hay has small particles that get inhaled. This is also why hay nets and round bales aren’t recommended for horses with breathing issues.
Steaming becomes helpful when it’s the mold or bacteria in the hay that’s triggering a reaction. I’d be hesitant building a DIY steamer. To actually kill mold spores and bacteria the temperature needs to reach at least 90C for 10 minutes.

I’ve boarded where a haygain was used. They have great customer service. The only tricky part was using it in the winter. You have to be careful that everything drains between uses so it doesn’t freeze.

[PaddockWood]

I’ve got a mare who had severe (meaning emergency calls) respiratory distress - heaves/COPD…whatever. I was soaking hay etc but have found none of that is necessary.
What DOES matter is keeping hay from getting trapped under mats etc and decomposing. That’s her trigger.

I planned to get a steamer liking the idea for several reasons BUT did read recently they found the process strips the minerals from the hay. Did you see that?

[ayrabz]

@walk…thanks.I am aware of the do it yourselfers but I am gettin old and I’ll be buying one.
Good times: thanks. I’m looking at Haygrains mid model. Looks like 2k plus. The freezing thing is an issue it ‘seems’ they all have. (would love to know of one that isn’t) so I’ll either have to transport back to house and store inside (no climate controlled tack area in littlebarn) or, keep inside and pull outside for steaming and transport steamed hay back to barn.

[ayrabz]

will have to check that out. thanks.but I guess with him needing forage, the steaming will still be necessary for the COPD and I’d have to vitamin/mineral supplement.

[PaddockWood]

I’m wrong. It was regarding protein digestability.

Effect of Hay Steaming on the Estimated Precaecal Digestibility of Crude...

[Angela_Freda]

The steamers I’ve used aren’t necessarily a panacea that is easier than soaked or rinsed hay.

The hoses can freeze in winter for one thing, if they’re not in a heated or at least not freezing room.

[ayrabz]

thanks. I am aware I’ll have to deal with that in freezing weather (see my recent responses) still looks important for my guy and i will have to deal with that reality.

[Angela_Freda]

I wasn’t saying not to use one, just suggesting “location, location, location” may apply.

[ayrabz]

yeah. and I agree with you! thanks.

[LCDR]

This reminds me of an old VHS tape about British eventer Ginny Leng. Her mother, Heather Holgate, managed the stable . She soaked hay in a couple of old reclaimed bathtubs, weighting the hay with cinder blocks to keep it submerged. She said she was doing it to keep haydust and pollen and spores from getting inhaled by the horses and “bunging up the works.” A smart lady.

[ayrabz]

so funny. exactly how I handled it when I had to soak hay in the past…cinder block on top…but mine were in mucktubs, not bathtubs.

[Pico_Banana]

If you decide to stick with just soaking/rinsing (to remove dust you don’t need to soak for very long), one idea to make things easier is to soak right next to a dry well.

I soak when my hay is too high in NSC for one horse. To make things easier, I have a small dry well that I put an old metal window grate on top of. I soak in a muck bucket right next to the dry well and when it’s done, I just tip the bucket over on top of the dry well and let it drain. I let the net drain right on the grate. It’s still a PITA, but at least there are no pools of water on the ground to freeze.

[ZuzusPetals]

@ayrabz

… and his evil mini me.

I’ll jingle if you tell us more about this one!

[LCDR]

What is a dry well?

[ayrabz]

I have a couple plastic pallets I set in wash rack, they have ‘holes’ and when I DO soak, Iay the flakes out on those.

[ayrabz]

hahaha. my ponies are all black. when I was gonna bring my gelding home I found a mini mare , she’s black with a little white star. and she is QUEEN. Sassy lil self will run my gelding off any hay in turnouts. She is terribly sweet but she’s a force!! My other two are Dallas and my gelding is Dillon…so when we got her we named her Demitasse (small strong cup of coffee) and she’s Demi for short. (no pun intended) I’ll add a pix or two if I can figure it out!

[Pico_Banana]

A dry well can take different forms, from really basic to more sophisticated, but it’s basically something that you can drain into when you don’t want to connect to your wastewater system.

Mine is of the very basic type. It’s a hole dug into the ground about the size of 2-3 muck buckets, lined with geotextile fabric, and then filled with drainage rock all the way to the top. I added a grate on top and then surrounded the gate with cobblestones, so it’s obvious to people that they should not put dirt on top. (You have to keep dirt out because otherwise the dirt will fill in the gaps between the rocks.)

You can then dump water into the dry well and it fills in the spaces between the rocks and eventually seeps through the fabric into the soil. Because of all of the space created by the rock, you can dump quite a bit in before you fill it up. I can soak hay in two muck buckets and dump both into the dry well at the same time and not overflow it.

This addresses what I think is the worst part about soaking hay – what to do with all of the water when you’re done soaking – especially in the winter in a cold climate. It gives you a place to get rid of it without causing a huge puddle that then freezes.

[trubandloki]

I find that soaking right in the small hole hay net is very easy. Pull the whole net out and hang for a bit to drain and then hang it to feed.