I have a neighbor that sells very nice coastal. His hay is usually less mature (1st cutting) and my old horse could eat his coastal even with her poor teeth. It is rather fine stemmed though.
I have heard that Tifton is better (more digestibility, reduced colic risk) but the Tifton available is usually more mature, more leafy and in some cases, almost too mature. This farmer has a much larger farm so the consistency isn’t there. The hay is beautiful, but again it’s a more mature hay. My old horse can’t chew it, but everyone else eats it well.
What do you think is better? Maybe get both types?
I do have beautiful perennial peanut hay but my air ferns do not need anything that rich. Especially with summer coming and pasture access.
I usually stock the barn full of hay now, and don’t usually buy more until November.
I’d avoid coastal for horses unless you have absolutely no alternative. This hay has a nasty tendency to cause ilieal impaction requiring colic surgery. Some horses handle coastal just fine. When they don’t, it’s expensive.
If Tiftom is cut at 3 weeks, the optimum time, it is highly praised for horses. When it is cut later, it can get very very stemmy but is still good for cows and from what I hear, some horses. It caused impaction colic in one of my horses on two separate occasions and a friend’s horse. I now stay far away from it. Other people swear by it. If you want to try it, try to make sure it is cut at the optimum time and not later. I usually feed a good quality coastal and a little alfalfa. I have fed Timothy as well and even got to try blue stem once. I’ve also fed bahaya and native grass hay. No problems on any unless they are stemmy or the horse is losing teeth or worm them down to the gum. Almost any hay, including alfalfa, can cause problems if it is too stemmy (too mature with a thick stalk when cut). Good luck. I hope your horses do well in whatever you choose.
I live in an area where coastal is grown and is used by everyone I know. Alternatives are trucked in and expensive. The tales related to coastal and colic may or may not be true, as there are many factors involved. Colic and coastal is more likely associated with feeding coastal which is allowed to mature too much prior to cutting.
OP is referring to feeding first cutting, tender coastal from a known grower. I’d feed that in a heartbeat over trucked in hay I know little to nothing about. My guys and gals all graze on coastal bermuda grass, too.
Studied, and true. BUT, it’s also not that black and white.
The issue is how fine the blades are, which inherently makes it harder to chew well. It’s also high in lignin, and it’s also much easier to cut when too mature which further increases that lignin (indigestible fiber). All that increases the chances of an ileal impaction, further increased in horses who don’t chew hay well enough. It’s less of an issue to not thoroughly chew coarser hay.
Add in lack of dewromign for tapeworms, which like to hang out in the ileum area, and the risk goes up even further.
So yes, more mature Coastal increases the risk, but the risk is higher by default because of the inherent nature of the grass.
That said, I boarded for many years, with 30-ish other horses, who all ate just Coastal from SC. It was brought in regularly, it was nice and “young” and soft, and even despite little turnout, there were really very few colics in all the years I was there.
Coastal grass is very different, the higher water content makes a world of difference.
Coastal is a concern because it will wad up into an cloggy mat so easily. That softness and shortness IS the concern.
I feed coastal to my own horses as it is local, inexpensive, and mine do well on it. When I’m traveling or putting them in stressful situations I feed Timothy or alfalfa/Timothy mix. They ear it well and I feel.better about it being safer. YMMV.
You’re not really interpreting that article correctly. A number of years ago, when I lived in Florida, I read a bunch of papers on the subject and also consulted with my vet after reading something here on the forum about coastal causing colic.
The problem is that coastal is mostly grown and fed in areas where there are also a number of other colic risk factors present and that makes it very difficult, if not impossible due to study design, to tease out the relative contribution of the various factors. Those factors include things like a greater likelihood of internal parasites because of the limited winter weather, grazing on sandy soils, and rapid, wide temperature swings during the winter when a cold front blows through and you go from hot to frost on the ground overnight.
Most people in many areas of the south feed coastal because it’s what they can get. It’s what is grown where they live. If you practice good horse husbandry to eliminate or reduce the effects of the other risk factors, feeding coastal isn’t a problem. If you don’t, feeding expensive shipped in from up north not-coastal hay isn’t going to keep you from having colic problems.
that doesn’t make sense at all, and yes, it was still a valid retrospective study.
Note that the risk of NOT deworming for tapeworms raise the risk of Coastal contributing to an ileal impaction. Deworm your horse properly and that aspect is taken out.
What is “limited winter weather”? Do you mean the mild Winters of the general South? Again, deworming properly, and this includes 2x a year for tapeworms, reduces the risk.
But on that note, the same issue exits for “limited Summer weather” in the North, where they don’t have the heat and dryness that kills eggs in the pasture, like much of the South does.
A LOT of the South has nothing to do with sandy soils. A whole lot of NC is red clay, and that goes well into Va, SC, and GA. Besides, sand ingestion has nothing to do with ileal impactions
Neither do wild weather swings, have anything to do with ileal impactions.
The study and connection is specifically about ILEAL impactions. Not impactions anywhere else.
I never said don’t feed it, and in fact, I said my horse, and 30-ish others, were fed excellent quality Coastal for several decades. AND they were regularly dewormed
When you have 78 horses WITH confirmed ileal impaction, and 100 other colics that did not have ileal impactions, and it showed that feeding Coastal created a 2.9 odds ratio of an ileal impaction over not, AND that not having dewormed for tapes in the last 3 months created a (only slightly higher 3.1 odds ratio, it confirms the increased risk. You cannot refute the numbers relative to the husbandry.
There are a lot of Tifton hays - Tifton 44 which is/was a better quality bermuda sold down here, Tifton 9 and several other varieties that were developed in the Ag center in Tifton Georgia. And there are also several other varieties besides Tifton like Alicia which my horses hated. I don’t feed any sort of bermuda right now - I am feeding cool season grasses grown in Tennessee and other more northern states.
I have heard that it is better to feed the coarser bermuda because it doesn’t impact as easily as the fine stuff, don’t feed the coarse hay because it doesn’t digest as well and will impact. I don’t know which one is true. It does seem the horses that have colic problems with it are horses that did not grow up in this area and are used to cool season grass hays. But not always. And a vet here suggests if you have to feed it add in some alfalfa for “scratch factor” to avoid problems.
It is extremely hard to get anything besides bermuda hay in Alabama where I live unless you have a truck to go north to Tennessee to bring back hay, want to spend $30 a 50# bale for Standlee Grab and Go at TSC or close to $20 for Canadian hay shipped in. And don’t even mention Bahia - it has very low protein and a very high lignin content which some horses have problems with. Mine won’t touch it
“I have heard that it is better to feed the coarser bermuda because it doesn’t impact as easily as the fine stuff, don’t feed the coarse hay because it doesn’t digest as well and will impact”
Is it coarse because it’s too mature? Then that increases the risk of general impaction
But coarser, quality hay (like Orchard), vs finer, quality hay (like Coastal) decreases the risk
All Bermudas other than Coasta, are more coarse than Coastal is.
Any time you can feed a different type of hay in addition to Coastal, you’re reducing the potential risk of the ileal impaction as well. That doesn’t have to be alfalfa, it can be any other grass hay.
It depends on the horse. Young to middle age horses can get by on about anything if they get enough water, mineral and movement. The oldsters, not so much. Had one old, wave mothed guy that could only eat spring grass and 3rd cutting alfalfa and beet pulp. Peanut hay may be your guy’s thing…
The state extension agencies have good published species and harvesting info, organized by climate zone.
I live in Coastal country, and after a couple of colics, including a bad one that required an extended stay at NC State, switched to more expensive hay trucked in from points north. No other husbandry changed. (I deworm regularly, take measures to increase hydration, etc). Have had no further impaction colic incidents since switching hays 5+ years ago.
I know thousands of horses live their entire lives eating nothing but coastal bermuda and do just fine. However, it’s also true that if you call any local vet and tell them you have a horse with colic, the very first thing they ask you is what kind of hay the horse gets. Interpret that as you wish.
Agree. I’ve had to switch a colic prime horse to Timothy and alfalfa. I’ve always heard the same from vets. As she aged even the alfalfa would be plug her up if it was stemmy. She made it into her thirties watching out for any stemmy hay. I didn’t hear about tapeworms from vets though, it was an article in the Equus magazine in the 90s. I called the vet when I read it and then he said told me about panacur power packs.
A Power Pack uses fenbendazole, which doesn’t target tapeworms. You need either praziquantel (only paired with ivermectin and moxidectin in the US), or a double dose of pyrante pamoate (ie Strongid paste).
Thank you. Yes. I know. I was a told by the same vet to do a triple of Strongid before the days of praziquantel because of the daily strongid became less effective. My point, which was not clear and not made at all was that that the first horse and only horse so far started chronic colicking and when I asked why, the vet would shrug. I learned from a magazine, not my vet, about worming for tapeworms with the two pyrantel pamoates (strongid). When I asked him about the article, THEN he told me about using three strongid and also worming for encysted strongyles with the Panacur power pack which was not yet a commercial power pack. I had to just buy the wormer-two a day for five days. It was frustrating because I had always wormed as instructed, tube working 2X a year, then the vets pushed the daily strongid, then more wormers became available and we rotated.
Now, some of the younger vets push fecal counts but they don’t tell new owners that tapeworms and encysted strongyles have no fecal count and can be a cause of colic. So if a horse is colicking and it is suggested that it could be a tapeworm or encysted strongyle issue, the response is that they test the fecal count and everything is ok.
You were very right to correct me as my post was very poorly worded.
It’s insanely frustrating that NEW vets are not taught the proper Strategic Deworming strategies that are 20+ years old at this point, and READILY available on the AAEP public website.
FEC-based deworming is used to determine if a horse needs additional deworming beyond the 2 times a year most do for bots and tapeworms.
Encysted strongyles aren’t a problem if 1) FECs are regularly low/clean, and 2) you’re using moxidectin once a year
