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.