How many times a day does your barn feed stalled horses?

[S1969]

@Palm Beach

I’m really surprised at the number of people who hay multiple times a day instead of putting hay in nets once a 24 hour cycle.

I think setup makes all the difference. One boarding/lesson barn where I took lessons gave hay 5x/day - it was easy for them to zip down the aisle or along paddocks in a Gator every 3 hours versus filling hay bags/nets. Less waste than 2x day, and super quick. They could feed 20 horses in about 5 minutes…one person driving, one person walking alongside.

In other barns - this would never work because of the setup. My horses are in/out 24/7 and I give hay 3-4 times depending on weather. Usually 3 but if it’s very hot/cold or rainy I try not to stuff their stalls with a lot of hay because they will walk on it or sleep in it.

[khall]

Palm Beach because my horses can eat through 3-4 flakes of hay out of a hay net quite quickly. One ate 2 flakes out of 1 inch square hole hay net in 30 min. I have found that the slow feeder hay nets don’t work that well. I am usually around during the day anyway so not a problem to throw hay or have a boarder throw hay.

[Ainsley688]

My personal horses are out in a pasture with a run-in, and get about 2-3 flakes each in the AM (6:30-7), usually late lunch hay when my mom feeds between jobs, so maybe 2 flakes (2-4pm) and then I feed dinner around 5-7pm, and they get 2-3 flakes each then. Everybody also eats grain AM and PM. Although the retired guys only get about 1 cup, and the 4 year old gets about 3.5lbs.

I don’t do the small hole hay nets for a couple of reasons- the retired mare has sensitive older lip injuries, and she prefers to not have to grab too much, and I don’t trust the 4 year old to keep everything in one piece. She’s too dang smart, lol.

[Goforward]

I have slow feed bags for my own horses and boarders. A couple can eat out of them super fast. I end up filling the bags 3 times a day so they always have hay.
I’ve been a boarder. I couldn’t stand the long nights my horse endured without hay when the barn help couldn’t be bothered to show up until 10am.
The horses don’t go crazy at grain time when they have hay all day. And, if I’m late feeding grain, they dont really notice. I feed grain 3 times a day, at 8 hour intervals.

[TequilaMockingbird]

Many facilities around here only feed hay 2x per day on days with turnout. This includes grain and 3-4 flakes. Some do an additional feeding of hay on days with no turnout.

My current barn tries to keep full hay bags in front of them whenever the horses are in their stalls. They are very rarely kept inside during the day. They refill hay at least 3x a day but usually 5-6 flakes at a time. There is a morning feed, an afternoon feed when the horses are brought in and again at a night check.

[rubygirl1968]

@Palm Beach

^^^ This.

My lazy barn worker only feeds hay once every two days. But she stuffs a huge slow feed net full of hay so the horses always have hay in front of them.

Sounds like a smart barn worker to me! Lol

[Guilherme]

@khall

Palm Beach because my horses can eat through 3-4 flakes of hay out of a hay net quite quickly. One ate 2 flakes out of 1 inch square hole hay net in 30 min. I have found that the slow feeder hay nets don’t work that well. I am usually around during the day anyway so not a problem to throw hay or have a boarder throw hay.

True enough, but excess calories in have two effects:

Manure out.

Fat.

So just “free feeding” is NOT the sign, necessarily, of high quality husbandry. If the horse is working off the calories that’s one thing; if they are not, then it’s another.

G.

[MysticOakRanch]

I am curious, for all those whose horses are getting 6 to 10 flakes of hay/day - how much do those flakes WEIGH? We have large 3 twine bales, typical flake is about 4 to 7 pounds - which means if you are feeding 10 flakes/day at 5 pounds/day, that is 50 pounds of hay! The recommended forage for a horse is 1 to 2% of their body weight daily - or about 10 to 20 pounds of hay daily. Are you feeding smaller flakes - 2 twine bales?

As for hay nets - no boarding barn I am aware of would be willing to (a) buy those nets, (b) pay someone to fill those nets, © deal with the liability of a horse getting hung up in a net. I’ve known people whose horses have hooked a shoe in a small hole net, caught an entire hoof in a regular hole net, and hung up teeth in both. And those nets were hung, not on the ground. Hay bags are safer, but also a lot more expensive. And there is the time to fill them - a boarding stable pays staff - if they have to stop, unhook hay bags, fill them, rehook them, that is about 3 times as much time as tossing hay into a feeder? And you are still having to feed multiple times daily, since every horse I’ve known could empty a slow feed within a few hours at the most?

And no one here would ever use slow feed grates - the vets all warn against them…

[trubandloki]

@Jumperwannabe

This is how I feel it should be. I don’t feel like a horses digestion is supposed to be fed every 12 hours. I’m going to take care of this today.

You seem to be missing the point that it does not matter how often they are fed but how much. And a flake is not a universal size.

I feed mine every 12 hours, with that they usually have hay in front of them 24/7.

[zakkandtoto]

We have round bales in the field so they’re only fed hay in their stalls when they come in for the day or night, depending on the season.

The amount is up to the horse owner. Part board = boarders buy their own square bales.

Judging from how many times I’ve seen horse owners on here getting upset that their horse doesn’t have hay in front of them 24/7, I think a lot of full boarders don’t realize how expensive hay is.

Here in Houston coastal is at least $8 bale and there are about 12 skinny flakes in a bale. The bales probably weigh about 40 pounds, so in theory, a horse could eat half a bale, or $4 worth of hay a day.

$120 for hay, $100 for decent grain, $50 for bedding, then you’ve got labor, maintenance and overhead.

And that is why nobody makes money boarding horses…

Personally, I have an old hard keeper that I stuff a hay net for every day. He mostly just pulls the hay out of the net and leaves it in a pile.

I also have a very easy keeper that finishes off his 15lbs in his stall within an hour. He’s mastered the art of the slow feed hay net. I’m going to try to find a smaller holed hay net for him. He’s obese; he doesn’t need more hay, he just needs to make it last longer.

As for hay net stuffing difficulty: use a muck tub - even the kind you get from Walmart will work. Open the net in the tub, drop in your flakes and pull the net back up by the drawstring. I hang them with carabiners and use hay string to secure them to the wall so the horses don’t fling them into the aisle/neighboring stall.

I’d rather spend an extra 60 seconds doing that than spend an extra 5 minutes trying to get strewn hay out of bedding. The latter drives me nuts.

[trubandloki]

@zakkandtoto

As for hay net stuffing difficulty: use a muck tub - even the kind you get from Walmart will work. Open the net in the tub, drop in your flakes and pull the net back up by the drawstring. I hang them with carabiners and use hay string to secure them to the wall so the horses don’t fling them into the aisle/neighboring stall.

I’d rather spend an extra 60 seconds doing that than spend an extra 5 minutes trying to get strewn hay out of bedding. The latter drives me nuts.

I feed in small hole hay nets.
I think filling them is no big deal too.
The difference is I am willing to admit that it is a burden for the average boarding barn.
I make about 30 hay bags at a time, using a muck bucket like you describe. The process takes me about an hour. That is with all the hay bags being right there (so not having to get them from stalls, not having to take them back to stalls).
Sometimes the strings (which are not knotted) get twisted wrong, sometimes the bags do not cooperate, etc.
I am just saying that the thing that takes no time at all (filling the bags) does take more time when you are doing many of them, which is the situation most boarding barns are in.

[findeight]

Those that board out often don’t choose nets or not. You pick the exsisting barn culture when you pick a boarding barn.

Im surprised at the number of people who think all flakes are equal in size and weight when sharing what their horse eats. Flakes range from less then 3 to more then 12lbs each so describing 3 flakes 2 tines a day could be anything from 9 to 24lbs so it’s worthless information to give a meaningful opinion on. So is “scoop”, need weight not container size.

My horses generally over many decades have gotten 20-25 lbs of hay daily split into 2 or 3 (preferred) feedings governed by each individuals need.

[Libby2563]

My horses have been on stall rest the past few months so hay is their primary source of nutrition (both just get Triple Crown 30% ration balancer as far as “grain”). I work during the day so I can only hay them three times a day: in the morning before work, in the afternoon when I get home, and right before bedtime when I do night check.

I feed them in nets to cut down on waste and theoretically to slow down their consumption, but they can actually empty those nets pretty quickly. On weekends if I’m in the barn around noon I realize that they have already eaten most of their hay that was supposed to last the whole day. I feel bad that they’re without hay but they are in good condition and do not need to gain weight. Also, they typically do have piles of rejected hay underneath their nets so I think if they aren’t bothering to eat that, they must not be starving!

I use a luggage scale and feed each horse about 40 lbs per day, which is pretty close to one $8+ bale (yikes). These are 1,400-1,600 lb warmbloods…the pony and the donkey obviously eat a lot less.

The barns I boarded at before bringing the horses home would throw hay in the morning, around noon, in the afternoon, and at night check. Twice a day seems less than ideal to me too, unless you are hanging nets that actually slow the horses’ consumption down significantly. But the main issue, OP, is that your horse is not in good condition and is losing weight. Consider hay quality and quantity, not just the frequency of feeding.