my 31 year old mare has lost a couple of molars and is now spitting out those tell tale hay packages…she’s been holding her weight well so far and we have plenty of pasture where she gets fat before winter arrives.been upping her beet pulp/senior pellets,rice brand mix,well soaked and will add hay cubes to keep her from loosing weight again - this happened last winter ,partly,i assume,because of poor hay quality - best to be pro active.i am wondering if there are hay shredder on the market,designed to chop up a bale ( or flakes) of hay to make it more chewable for those old horses as an alternative to the hay cubes.
People often use leaf shredders for just this 
Like this thing…
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Yard-Force-13-12-in-Electric-Leaf-Mulcher/1000116587
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thank you ! will check it out - i found an older post of somebody asking the same question,people suggested hedge trimmers and such hand held devices.anybody has experiences with those or could recommend one ?
I’ve heard of people using weed eaters inside a trash can, but have never tried it myself. I just bought Triple Crown Safe Starch forage for my toothless old guy.
That leaf shredder looks like a good option if it works well on hay.
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yes,heard about the weed eater method,i fear it might stir up too much hay “dust” as i am allergic/hay fever prone.is the triple crown forage those compressed /shredded hay “stretcher” that comes in square bags ?
The leaf shredder idea sounds great! At the ranch we used a hay grinder – but they’re huuuge and meant to grind hay for cattle feed.
haha yes they would be huge and pricey – thinking leaf shredded or hedge trimmer atm
The problem is that shredding hay only makes it marginally easier to chew, so it’s usually a waste of time. What we really need is a grinder, like the feed mills have, to grind the hay up fine enough so that our old toothless guys don’t need to chew it.
Course it’s orders of magnitude easier to just buy a pelleted feed, and isn’t that much more expensive than buying and then shredding or grinding hay. We put up our own hay so end up selling hay to buy the pelleted complete feed, but that’s still easier, and probably more cost effective, than grinding it.
At work we occasionally use a small bale chopper like this when the combine has not been set to chop the stalks. It’s noisy, it’s gas so it stinks up the barn, and I hate it, but it gets the job done.
I own an electric leaf/branch shredder that is similar in design and I bet it would do a great job on hay. The thing is tough (Patriot) and shreds quite fine.
Are you in the US or Canada or ?
If you’re worried about dust, what about something like this?
You can suck it up, it goes through the shredder and into the bag, then you can just unzip the bag in the horse’s stall or wherever to dump it out.
good point …it is not so much the cost actually,it is more the worry that feeding only pelleted instead of feeding “real” forage for roughage isn’t as good for the digestive system .i am not sure about it though,maybe you can clarify ? i’ve always thought horses need to feed a certain amount of hay to keep their guts working properly.not an expert though
i am in canada
interesting idea,yes this could work — but i could see myself occupied all afternoon getting "supper ready " for the beasts LOL
The pelleted complete may or may not be as good for the digestive system, but it does include enough fiber (~25%) so that it can be fed as a complete feed. The hay is included, but is just ground up enough so that it no longer looks like hay. The advantage to that of course, is that they don’t need to chew it.
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I think you’re referring to the long stem fiber. If your horse can eat chopped hay, then that counts as long stem fiber. If not, pellets or a complete feed is in order.
I am going through something similar. I bought a leaf shredder. It’s messy (I wear a dust mask) and time consuming. Sometimes the line breaks and I have to sift through the hay to find it. I then measure it out into 5 pound portions for feeding. All of this while repeating: I love my horse. I love my horse. I love my horse.
If you can find the Triple Crown chopped forage or even the Standlee chopped forage, go for it! The things I would do to have a reliable Triple Crown dealer nearby…
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Wet hay cubes were my answer to enough forage in the diet of my old horse. She did not quid them, they went thru her digestive system fine. She did quid regular hay and pasture grasses. I wanted the roughage that was actually “rough” unlike pellets feeds soaked. Pieces are already cut-to-length in cubes, none more than 2 inches, size of the cube.
I went with Timothy cubes when I could get them or Afalfa and Timothy if they ran out. Horse got the runs on straight Alfalfa, did not need the calories with her other feeds. I thought she looked better with the cubes soaked, over only all mushy foods.
She was getting about 5 gallons wet cubes, split in 2 feedings, plus wet beet pulp, wet Old Kent Senior feed and oats, cracked corn, so she would eat it. Loved her grain, though it mostly went thru her, it helped stimulate the digestive system like the hay cubes fibers did. She was a great old girl, had her since a foal, lived to be 35yrs old.
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Yes, they have several different types and at least two are alfalfa based. I used the Safe Starch forage, which was only orchard grass and/or timothy, and a low NSC for my cushing’s pony. It’s compressed in there pretty good, but is all chopped into pieces no more than 2" long. It has a light oil binder to keep it dust-free (it doesn’t feel oily at all). My pony was unable to eat hay or even grass well at all, but did quite well on this chopped hay for a few years. Eventually, he started picking through it and leaving the coarser parts and only eating about half of it. At the cost, I stopped using it since he was wasting so much and switched to soaked beet pulp with no molasses, and hay pellets. He also ate soaked senior feed the entire time. He did very well on that combo for the last few years of his life.
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thank you @Mango20 @goodhors @LovieBird and again @kande04 as well as the other posters i responded to individually for sharing your experience.i’ll be stocking up on timothy/alfalfa cubes and the hay stretcher ( we can get some good quality fairly local made stuff actually ) for now.i am still thinking of getting some sort of shredding device,maybe a handheld hedge trimmer that was suggested earlier. or possibly the leaf shredder even though it sounds like a messy job.yes ,LOVE LOVE LOVE my horse will be the working mantra !
If you haven’t already tried it, also try putting some regular hay in a small hole hay net. I had a 30 year old who started quidding her hay but when I tried a small hole net she was fine because she could only take such small mouthfuls. This made it easier to move the hay around in her mouth and chew with the molars which were still good. Although this wasn’t enough without upping other sources, being able to still eat some hay made it much easier to keep roughage in front of her all the time.
excellent idea ! will try that today
