I got a batch of bluegrass/alfalfa hay and had it tested. Potassium seems quite high at 3.01 percent.
He gets 8 - 10 pounds a day. Rest of the day he’s in a muzzle on the grass and he gets 2 pounds of Timothy pellets and 2 cups of beet pulp with Vermont Blend Pro and psyllium.
He was just diagnosed with Cushing’s and is on half tablet of Prascend.
I’ve attached the test results, do I need to be concerned?
EQ146955.pdf (71.3 KB)
Does your horse have HYPP? If not, I would not be concerned by that potassium level. It’s isn’t abnormally high at all for an alfalfa mix hay.
Thanks!
No, he doesn’t, I’m used to orchard grass and those numbers are higher than I usually see.
Thanks again.
this is exactly why alfalfa is a blanket NO for HYPP horses - because generically it’s got more K than grasses do. I did see 1 alfalfa cutting that had very low K, due to being highly irrigated, and as a result was safely fed to an HYPP horse. But that much irrigation also causes other nutrient issues, so not ideal either.
So if I were to soak it, it would lower the potassium along with NSC?
Soaking will probably leach some potassium, but not nearly as significantly as irrigation does (that leaches minerals from the soil, thereby lowering them in whatever is grown in it).
Is there a reason you are so concerned about the potassium level in this hay? As I said before, it’s not especially high and is not something to worry about for a horse that doesn’t have HYPP. If you could better explain why exactly you’re worried, perhaps I could offer a more thorough answer.
Oh, sorry…I’m not worried about it for Leif now. Just wanted to see if soaking would help in case hypp is something I might encounter in a different horse.
That and general curiosity.
Okay, gotcha. For an HYPP horse, I would not rely on soaking to lower the potassium content of any particular hay.
And wouldn’t a high potassium level drive the need every more for supplemented salt?
I asked an Ag Agent friend who does a lot of forage testing and diet balancing
No real need for salt specific to the high K issue.
However, high K often means low Mg, which is where she’d be more concerned.
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