Soaking feed in heated buckets

[SugarCubes]

I have a senior horse that gets his grain and hay pellets soaked for each meal. We make up his feed ahead of time, so his morning feed is soaked the night before. With the recent cold snap, his feed was starting to freeze, so I thought soaking it in a heated bucket would solve the problem, but his feed is still frozen in the morning!

I’m wondering if it’s possibly just an issue with the bucket (brand new green heated bucket) or if they just don’t work well when temps get this low?!

Any ideas what could be going on? We’re in the single digits and below zero Fahrenheit at night.

[Highflyer1]

I’m hazy on the science, but my guess is that unless the feed is pretty much liquid, the heated water buckets wouldn’t work.

[Texarkana]

I have heard of people using heated buckets in this manner or similar, but to me, it sounds like a huge fire risk.

[JB]

The ones I know using heated buckets, use a big bucket with water in it, then put the feed bucket in that. This keeps the heated bucket with water in it as it’s designed to have, and the water helps keep the feed from freezing as quickly. I don’t know that the water’s warm enough to keep soaked food from freezing at 0*F overnight though.

How long do the grain and the hay pellets tend to take to break down to be safe/edible for him? You might just have to soak an hour or so before, not 8-12

[SMF11]

I soak all the horses’ feed here (in feedbags mostly, but also in 2 small buckets) in my unheated barn in large coleman coolers. Fill the cooler about 1/8 full of water, put the feedbags in). Or, you can just put the small bucket inside a cooler. This works well even when the temp is below zero. I also soak (and then feed) soaked hay cubes in a smaller cooler.

ETA you could always use hot water to soak the feed, it breaks down super quickly. If you don’t have hot water at the barn you can always use an immersion heater in a bucket to heat some water.

[luvmyhackney]

I just put the food in a cooler if it needs to soak for more than 20 minutes or making ahead of time.

Lately I’ve been premixing then bringing feeder in the house. Then 30 minutes prior to feeding, I add hot water, then go feed when its ready.

[LCDR]

The heating element in the bucket is typically in the bottom. When the water in the bottom of the full bucket is heated, it rises to the top. Colder water in the top then sinks to the bottom to be heated, so there is constant motion of the water in the bucket.

That warm-cold water cycling doesn’t happen with solids in the bucket, which happens as the feed and hay pellets absorb most of the water, and the feed mass then starts to freeze from the top down.

[NaturallyHappy]

How interesting! Thank you.

[SugarCubes]

Aha - makes sense! It does seem to be more frozen at the top of the bucket than the bottom

To others suggesting to soak it inside a cooler, I was doing that before this cold hit, but it’s so cold that even inside the cooler the feed was freezing solid! Was hoping the heater bucket would do the trick.

I just bought an immersion heater so I think we’ll just have to use hot water and soak before feeding until things warm back up!

Thanks for the replies.

[trubandloki]

Thank you for explaining this so well!

[MorganMaresVT]

@SugarCubes

Was hoping the heater bucket would do the trick.

I just bought an immersion heater so I think we’ll just have to use hot water and soak before feeding until things warm back up!

If you have power where you’re feeding (sounds like you do if heaters are involved), you could bring an electric kettle with you. A kettle full of boiling water will soften pellets/cubes pretty quickly.

[LCDR]

Every barn with power available should have an electric kettle, if for nothing else than a hot cup of tea on a freezing morning.

Here’s another fact for those of us with deep wells. Mine’s 150 feet. The water coming up from the well stays a constant temperature year-round. For me that means the water from my faucets and hydrants is 60 degrees when it is below zero outside, and it is still 60 degrees on a 95 degree day in July.

If you run the water long enough to flush the colder water out of your supply lines, you’ll have warmer tap water to add to feed. Then a small amount of boiling water from the kettle will kick the temperature up from there.

[Simkie]

I also soak feed, and I’m blown away at how much better pellets soak inside with hot water vs that same hot (or even boiling) water in the barn. Night and day difference, no contest.

Is there any space at all that you can toss a safe heater in to maintain above freezing air temp? Can feed be soaked inside?

I do thaw oil by tossing the jug into a heated water tub, so if you can suspend the feed bucket in water that’s warmed, that might work.

But I have not found that using hot or boiling water and soaking in the below freezing barn to be the solution here

[Larbear]

I use a cooler and on the really cold nights (like -15 - - 20C), I put my bucket with soaking beet pulp in a Smartpak bucket cozy and put all the in my cooler (it was big enough for it). I put a plastic shower cap on over the bucket as well and that really helped.

[SLW]

I feed soaked shredded belt pulp to my equines. I take 3/4 of a gallon of hot tap water when I walk out back to feed. I let the BP soak for maybe 10 minutes while I readjust blankets then it’s ready to feed.

I’ve never fed soaked hay so not familiar with the time required to soak. I don’t feed BP pellets because they do take a long time to soak.

[trubandloki]

I had a thought on using the heated bucket for the soaking over night - Did you try covering the bucket?

I clean/fill my heated buckets while the horses are outside so they spend 12 hours full with no one to drink from them. I have pieces of rigid insulation cut to fit easily on top. It probably does not save me a ton of money, but I feel like it reduces the heat loss some. (And yes, clearly, I have to take the time to remove the covers before I bring the horses in.)

I wonder if your overnight soaking might not freeze on top if you covered the bucket.

[SMF11]

I forgot I tried soaking/feeding hay cubes in a heated bucket back in 2016; here’s the result:

[JesseG]

I would agree