Looking for creative ideas/suggestions or experiences for keeping soaked hay cubes and beet pulp from freezing in the middle of a Canadian winter. Possibly going to have a mare requiring this type of diet (with no hay or coarse feeds) after a tooth extraction and packing of large periodontal pockets. She lives out 24/7 and doesn’t deal well with being inside (breathing issues, stress and weight loss). I’ve been looking into using the heated buckets (hearing mixed reviews about feeds in these buckets) or possibly a bucket insulated cover. She would basically need feed out all day and night to keep her weight up, so needing it to stay unfrozen for several hours at a time! Any ideas would be great!
How much are you feeding?
Her entire diet in mash?
I don’t know how you could feed let’s say 20 lbs of beet pulp and alfalfa cubes as a mash. It would be huge in volume and weight.
My mare gets a mash twice a day that is currently one lb beet pulp and 2/3 lb alfalfa cubes and that makes a 2 gallon mash which she slurps down immediately. I’m trying to keep her hydrated to avoid more impaction colic.
But if I was trying to feed 20 lbs dry weight of this it would be what, 15 gallons mixed? Huge.
I don’t think you could put a mash in a heated tub where the water contacts the heating element for the same reason you couldn’t heat up porridge in an electric tea kettle. The stuff around the coils would scorch and the rest not heat because the water flows but the mash wouldn’t.
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Scribbler,
im not 100% in final amount she’d actually need to keep her weight up but it would be more than just a feed bucket twice a day if she isn’t to have any hay at all to help keep her weight on. This is what I’ve heard as well about the heated buckets, I’m kind of stuck for ideas as to how to keep it from freezing!
Possibly an insulated bucked held off the ground and out of the wind? Mix with warm (not hot) water?
You could possibly add a large, hot/warm rock in the bucket?
I was trying to think if you could add something to it to change its freezing temperature, but I have no idea what that would be.
I keep my beer in the house but do occasionally share with my horse (he likes wheat beer – ew).
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Does she definitely need to be on mash only? My oldest mare had a molar pulled a few years back, it was packed but the packing came out very soon after. We didn’t pull her off hay, just soaked and increased her feed. It was -30 the week it happened but the tooth had to come out 
it was tough of her and she did have an infection but came around after antibiotics.
Anyway, my barn is not heated in any way and the mare also is very much the outdoors type. I brought her feed soaked in hot water 4/5 times a day and just threw away any left over feed at the next meal (a hammer may be needed LoL). Any chance you can feed her many small meals?
I’ve done it for an old mare I used to have. I took an old tire and stuffed the rim with straw to help insulate. Then filled a water bucket with mash made with hot water. When I set the warm mash in the tire stuffed with straw, The tire kept it from being tipped over and the straw stuffed inside insulated it from the cold while she finished her food. It would take her up to 2-3 hours to finish a meal and this method mostly kept it from freezing
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My mare is on 100% alfalfa/timothy cubes to manage her heaves. I do mix beet pulp in when she needs extra calories. She is pastures 24/7, and I have not had an issue with her food freezing under her current feeding plan. I think breaking up feedings really helps. And I don’t add too much water, instead I add enough water to cover, then let it soak for 20 min before feeding. So it is nice and soft, but not soupy.
I feed her 3x a day, 10lbs morning and night, and 5lbs in the middle of the day. I use one of those home depot buckets to let the hay soak up the water, then dump it into a rubber feed tub. She eats most of it out of the tub and then dumps the tub and eats the rest off the ground.
Good luck!
I was going to suggest a large box to put your feed tub in then pack the heck around it with straw/hay or some other insulating material. Even some old towels/blankets might work, assuming the feeding area is covered so it doesn’t get wet.
We feed an old guy 100% soaked feed. He gets two 8 quart buckets in the morning and two at night of beet pulp, alfalfa pellets, with one pound of equine senior active at each feeding. He is plump coming into winter. He gets no hay as he has no teeth. It gets sub zero here on a regular basis in the winter. We have a large black feed tub that he eats out of. He will eat his two buckets within a short amount of time. We try to keep his buckets (and him) out of the wind to eat. If the sun shines on his bucket it will melt the scraps that he didn’t finish and he will snack. Occasionally we have to bring the bucket in for a thawing but not as often as one would think. I’m thinking of trying to make a bucket coozie for the coldest of days to see if it makes a difference.
