So I’ll start by saying I know very little about hay in general. When I was boarding my one horse they fed a grass hay. Never a specific type just grass. I would supplement with a bucket of alfalfa cubes everyday but that’s it.
When we moved across the country and had her in our yard I was in charge of all her needs. Sadly I have very little storage so I can only get about a month of hay at a time. For the area Bermuda is considered the grass hay. So since the move I’ve been feeding Bermuda and alfalfa.
Over the last few months my horse has starting going off the Bermuda hay and is only eating alfalfa. She’s leaving huge piles of the stuff. I’m not sure why but no matter how I feed it the same thing happens.
So I’m looking to change, I don’t like the idea of just feeding more alfalfa since I was always told to just supplement with it. The next option is teff hay. I really know nothing about it. Is it a good alternative for a plain grass hay? Do most horses like it?
i will be calling around to other feed stores to find out what they have as well so any other hay suggestions would be appreciated.
TIA
I’ve been feeding teff for a few years now. I send a sample from every load to Equi-Analytical for testing.
So far, all of my hay has been low in sugars and fairly high in protein. I had one batch that was a tiny bit coarse but the rest has been green and fine/soft.
I’ve heard people say that teff is too coarse/dusty/horse won’t eat it. That hasn’t been my experience and it all comes down to growing conditions and when it was cut. My hay is grown in Eastern Washington and I buy from a local feed store.
Consider the source (location) of the advice you get… many East coasters would be aghast at feeding pure alfalfa. But out west, people do it all the time. And the horses are fine. The Bermuda you get out there from the irrigated fields is also much different than the coastal type we have here, so that’s another angle.
I think of Bermuda as the iceberg lettuce of horse food. If you give them both bermuda and alfalfa, of COURSE they are going to go for the candy!
Yup! My guy gets one alfalfa and one bermuda and if you put the bermuda on top, he flings the bermuda out to get to the alfalfa, then will hoover up every last alfalfa leaf before starting on the bermuda.
Teff is a good replacement for bermuda as a low sugar forage. We have a couple on Teff. One metabolic senior, one with a Bermuda allergy and one who tends to colic on bermuda, but not on teff. They are all doing well with Teff as the bulk forage in their diet.
My barn feeds bermuda and alfalfa standard (you can request different ratios of Berm/alf), but the Teff you have to provide yourself. If the barn switched to Teff and alfalfa, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.
I think this time of year, the quality of the available hay is generally a bit less appetizing, regardless what kind. Bales are a bit stemmy-er and rougher than normal. We even got a couple iffy bales of Teff, which our supplier replaced.
This has been my experience as well - typically low in NSC and on the high end of protein. Most of what I’ve gotten has been very palatable. (We don’t get bermuda up here so can’t speak to how it compares.)
The people I get it from say that there’s definitely an art to growing Teff. This could be why some people have had a bad experience with it–they likely wound up with stuff that wasn’t put up right.
Because it can be such a PITA (and needs to be re-seeded every year in cold climates) it’s much more of a niche crop so isn’t widely available.
There are a few growers that are realizing that it can be helpful to have a field or two because the first cutting is a month or two after the typical grass hay first cutting so it can help stagger the workload a bit.
I used it a few times back when we had an ancient pony staying with us as a companion for my teenaged OTTB and the vet worried about him foundering. The OTTB thought the teff was the biggest tomfoolery he’d ever encountered and basically refused to eat it. It’s low sugar, for sure. I wasn’t aware that it was high protein, but then again, I never had it analyzed. IME, the texture is very different from timothy or orchard grass - it’s typically characterized by long, fine stems.
