Does anyone have any insights? I suppose someone would have to first analyze the hay and then feed a measured amount, and then pick up all the quids and analyze them, but what I’m wondering is if a horse who quids his hay is likely getting enough fiber? IOW, would it be better/healthier to just skip the hay altogether and just feed the pelleted complete feed?
I have no idea the actual answer. That said, we have an old horse that has few teeth and quids badly. He would not be able to survive on hay alone at this point. He gets a huge bucket of soaked cubes every night and is still quite thin.
He only gets hay because he is turned out with others who get hay.
That’s a great question, that I wonder also. We have an oldie at the farm with no molars. She is my mare’s companion. She eats the alfalfa leaves from my mare’s hay, but grass hay is total quids. When in her stall she is fed soaked senior and cubes and does quite well on that. I only put hay in her stall overnight to give her something to do/keep her tummy happy.
@JB – what do you think?
If your horse is quidding his hay he isn’t chewing it enough to get the nutrients he needs out of it. He’s also at a high risk of choke. I would try chopped hay, hay pellets or soaked hay cubes instead. I’ve fed soaked hay cubes (they need to be soaked so they don’t choke) and I’ve fed pellets. Both work really well.
If he’s quidding, he’s chewing and wadding and spitting it out. There’s no appreciable fiber going down.
The leafier the hay, the more nutrition he’s getting (think good leafy alfalfa), but it’s still pretty insignificant.
Letting a horse have grass/hay if he’s quidding is risky. If he tries to swallow any of that, it’s a choke risk.
I also wouldn’t go straight to pellets. Soaked hay cubes will be much more easily swallowed even if they don’t get properly chewed and will provide more beneficial fiber.
But if he proves he can’t do that safely, then it’s a complete feed diet for him - pelleted/textured/extruded feed of high quality, and hay pellets to help keep costs down a little.
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I’ve had two older horses who quidded hay, very different from each other. The Arab was very particular about picking out the tiny pieces and sucking on them until he spit them out, like old bubblegum. He got all his nutrition from other feeds and only had a net of dairy alfalfa for entertainment. It would take a week or more for him to shake out all the leaves from a flake or two. My TB was different. He would try to eat hay that he probably shouldn’t have been eating, and he would quid some and must have been swallowing some because it disappeared. He would get really obnoxious in his stall if he didn’t have hay available. Both had missing molars and really ineffective teeth, both had choked. The Arab had choked enough over his lifetime to have strictures and also to learn to avoid most hay - seriously wouldn’t touch it.
The OP asked about fiber: the Arab ate a weird diet due to other health problems and I always worried about fiber because his main source was beet pulp. The TB lived on Purina Senior and um, something else I’m not remembering, probably alfalfa pellets. Both tended toward gas colics and mushy manure.
I’ve had young horses do this periodically during teething issues. We’ve just put them on soaked pellets for short periods because they’re really not getting nutrition/calories/anything lol if they’re quidding. If it was something more permanent, I’m sure we’d have to figure out something else.
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I would think it would be equivalent to you chewing on your food and spitting it back out. Is he getting any hay down? Soaked alfalfa cubes or pellets or going to a soaked senior feed is probably in his very immediate future.
isn’t there something called soluble fiber?
Letting a horse have grass/hay if he’s quidding is risky. If he tries to swallow any of that, it’s a choke risk.
The two I have who quid haven’t had a problem with choke (or if they ever did I missed it), but that may be because they’re getting enough calories so they don’t try to swallow?
I also wouldn’t go straight to pellets. Soaked hay cubes will be much more easily swallowed even if they don’t get properly chewed and will provide more beneficial fiber.
Hay cubes give one of them the runs, which I expect is because she can’t break down the hay stems enough?
Before I realized how bad her teeth were she produced copious amounts of saliva, which with 20/20 hindsight I’m thinking was because it somehow helped her get more out of the hay. She also produced quite a bit of liquid with her manure, enough so that her (white) tail was always stained with it. As soon as we started feeding her enough pelleted feed the excessive saliva production and the manure stains on her tail disappeared.
Yes - but this doesn’t mean it’s dissolved in the mouth, as it’s still inside the plant material. Most of the soluble fiber gets digested in the stomach and small intestines. Even then, soluble fiber is a small % of the forage, so take a small % of the small % of hay he’s swallowing, and it’s insignificant. Cellulose and hemicellulose are insoluble fiber and get digested in the hind gut. Lignin is another insoluble fiber that doesn’t digest at all. All those are needed for nutrition, and gut health and mobility.
The two I have who quid haven’t had a problem with choke (or if they ever did I missed it), but that may be because they’re getting enough calories so they don’t try to swallow?
Horses have no idea how many calories they are getting - that doesn’t make them swallow or not. Most horses ARE savvy enough to not try to swallow something that isn’t small enough, like quids
Hay cubes give one of them the runs, which I expect is because she can’t break down the hay stems enough?
Tons of horses get some or a lot of soaked hay cubes without any diarrhea. Not all horses can tolerate alfalfa, or a lot of it, some don’t do well on Timothy or Orchard.
Before I realized how bad her teeth were she produced copious amounts of saliva, which with 20/20 hindsight I’m thinking was because it somehow helped her get more out of the hay.
Or, she just spent a lot more time trying to chew that hay down - chewing produces saliva
She also produced quite a bit of liquid with her manure, enough so that her (white) tail was always stained with it. As soon as we started feeding her enough pelleted feed the excessive saliva production and the manure stains on her tail disappeared.
Sounds like you have your answer - no hay, no hay cubes (or try a different variety), lots more complete feed and/or hay pellets.
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I think if a horse is starving he’s much more likely to try to swallow poorly chewed hay than if he isn’t. My mare was a good case in point, as she wasn’t leaving quids when she was losing weight, because she was swallowing the hay. As soon as I got her on enough pelleted feed then she started quidding her hay.
Or, she just spent a lot more time trying to chew that hay down - chewing produces saliva
That could be.
So if the hay cubes are cut fine enough so that they can swallow them, why would they need to be soaked?
@kande04 - Because they are so very dry, and usually quite hard. They present a very real choke risk.
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I’m currently feeding my elderly, dentally-challenged pony:
twice a day
2 pints haystack balanced hay pellets
1 pint beet pulp
1 pint Timothy cubes
1/2 pint triple crown equine senior
soaked in hot water for half an hour. The cubes a VERY hard.
Free choice second cutting grass hay for nibble time.
You are right, truly starving, or not getting enough chew time, makes some horses eat in appropriate things, or try to swallow things in a condition they shouldn’t. But not all. And they might do that too if they are getting enough calories.
So if the hay cubes are cut fine enough so that they can swallow them, why would they need to be soaked?
If a horse can’t chew hay, he isn’t going to be able to properly bite and chew hay cubes. Most of them are really hard. Even if teeth are good, most of those cubes are quite hard and need to be soaked anyway.
What I’m looking for is something that provides more fiber than what they suck out of quidded hay, and more chew time than they get from pelleted feed. Pelleted feed has enough fiber, but possibly not when it’s combined with what they suck out of quidded hay.
Chopped hay is where you have to go. Whether that’s bagged chopped hay (which is likely to still result in quidding as it may be too long), or hay cubes which need to be soaked, is up to you and whatever you find works.
I’m not sure I understand this comment:
Pelleted feed has enough fiber, but possibly not when it’s combined with what they suck out of quidded hay.
Whether it’s combined with anything has nothing to do with the fiber in a pelleted feed.
Pelleted hay, and a complete feed (fiber at least 18%) of whatever form (pelleted, textured, extruded), has enough short-stem fiber if fed in high enough quantities. It’s not long-stem fiber, but it’s beneficial fiber nonetheless. Chew time is an issue if that is most of their food intake.
Beet pulp - also needing to be soaked for a horse like this - behaves as long-stem fiber and provides more chew time than pelleted hay, and technically you can feed up to about 40% of the forage requirements. You’d need to account for the high calcium.
