My horse recently had to go on chopped hay. He is a voracious eater and goes through it very quickly. Hay nets doesn’t work. I tried rocks in the bucket but he’s too smart and just flips it over. Does anyone have any clever DIY ideas for slowing down you chopped hay eaters?
Is he stalled or in turn out?
I wonder if a feeder ball would work for chopped hay? (they roll it to get the hay to fall out).
Or just many feed piles/buckets or a long trough so he has to move to get all the hay?
We use a 1" slow feed net inside a 2" slow feed bag for my client’s horse’s chopped hay. He shakes it and then eats the hay off his stall mat. It’s a pain to hang, he must grow thumbs at night for all the ways he tangles it up and undoes the carabiners, and it’s noisy and annoying, but I’d rather he shake it than rip at it like he used to!
What about a hay net does not work?
They do hay nets with a small enough hole that it should work for this.
I have the smallest hole hay net (3/4in) and he can just shake the net and it all falls out. The alfalfa/timothy chopped hay is so fine it’s almost dust. The Lucerne brand has some molasses in it so it’s a little sturdier. But the pieces are still very small and any net agitation just shakes it out. Once it’s on the ground in his stall it just becomes bedding. The barn uses saw dust instead of shavings so it mixes up really fast and disappears into the bedding.
The hayballs we have the ports are fairly large, a chopped into small pieces hay would just pour out
I guess I would Try using a larger round rubber feeder bolted to a large piece of plywood where the horse stood on the plywood not letting it toss the feeder around. Add something large something (rocks?) that the horse had to push around to get to the chopped hay
Hmmm what about a small hole hay net clipped into one of the smaller rubber water troughs? We used the 100gal for a 50lb bale, but I imagine the same setup would work on a smaller scale. Since it’s on the ground but contained, it doesn’t turn into bedding.
Screenshots from google of the full size version:
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Porta Grazer?
