Why do we feed grain and not a hay-only diet?

[Heinz_57]

@gumtree

[B]

It is well studied and documented that TBs have a much higher metabolism. Anybody that thinks the majority of them can do well on just hay alone regardless has never worked with, bred, raised, trained a lot of TBs. Even TB pasture pets on good grass alone can and do end up very ribby with rafter hips. They would be skin and bones on hay alone in the winter, Even if they ate 40 lbs a day. Hay is not grass, it does not have nearly the nutritional content they need to carry decent weight through the winter.

You are a wealth of wisdom, gumtree. :tickled_pink:

As for the original question… my (pasture pet, retiree) TB gets grain. He’s on 24/7 pasture, and I give him as much hay as he will eat. I give him grain so he doesn’t wither away and die. He gets fancy high-end alfalfa because the grass grown locally is low quality and he won’t touch it. His favorite is actually a nice green timothy, but that runs a good $5+ dollars per bale more and is harder to find, so he settles.

Now, the Connemara x TB I just bought, she clearly inherited the pony metabolism. She’s got the opposite problem… confined to a dry lot and rationed out her low quality hay in evil nets with tiny holes. Very thrifty.

[JB]

Hay has almost the same nutritional content that the grass had when it was cut. What’s all but missing is Vitamin E, and what’s low is Vitamin A unless it’s a still-green grass hay, or good alfalfa. Everything else is more or less the same.

I have an OTTB mare who rarely needs more than a RB to maintain pasture puff condition even in Winter, and the hay I get isn’t super quality - good but not great.

I had a non-race bred TB gelding who, once allowed sufficient turnout and grass, needed very little on top of that to maintain weight as a pasture puff.

But I agree that there’s something about Dr Green which hay rarely has, and I suspect it has a lot more to do with pro/prebiotics than actual nutritional value.

[quietann]

@tabula rashah

He is already getting about 4 lbs of good alfalfa per day along with the orchard grass and pasture and Ultium. I prefer not to feed alfalfa much above that amount because of the skewed calcium/ phosphorus ratio. 5 lbs of Ultium is not a lot by any stretch of the imagination.

Just another “not so easy a keeper” Morgan owner speaking up here – when my mare was in full dressage training (5 training rides/lessons and one “fun ride” per week), she needed extra, too. I don’t remember what concentrate she was getting, but she was getting a lot, for a small horse, so we added soaked beet pulp, 1.5 quarts morning and night, and that helped. Plus 20-ish pounds of grass hay, though the default at this trainer (second-cut Canadian that we were tempted to eat as salad!) was much too rich for her and she developed “laminitic changes” so she was switched to first-cut. So there you had to balance the hard-keeping with the metabolic issues.

She was 10 at the time, and now at 19 she is a much easier keeper, though still not as easy as your typical Morgan. She’s ridden 5 times per week, but the 3 rides I do are pretty leisurely. She’s getting a good quantity of hay, 20-25-ish pounds per day, and a pound of ration balancer and a few supps. There is a little grass to nibble in her paddock. She’s in very good weight, not at all fat, I can feel her ribs easily but only see them in certain lights.

As for OP: I agree with those who say it’s hard to get “enough” hay if you board, at least in some areas. We don’t have enough land to have a lot of pasture in my area, so most horses get hay year round and a small amount of grazing. Hay is expensive and takes up a lot of space, so I think a lot of places limit it.

[candyappy]

@mydogs

Excluding the need to provide horses with vitamins/minerals that they may not be getting in the grass and hay, why aren’t more horses on a hay-only diet or a mostly-hay diet?

When horses need to gain weight, why do people increase the grain amount instead of providing better quality hay or more hay?

ETA:
For those that have horses that need the grain for energy/weight, assuming you had access to high quality hay & your horse ate all/most of the hay provided, how would your horse react to being provided more alfalfa hay or pellets?

Every one of my horses ( 17 so far over 40 years) have had a diet of probably 98% hay. The 1 exception was a severely underweight 21 yr old TB Broodmare I adopted. She was fed Strategy to aid with weight gain needed. Once she was at her desired weight I significantly reduced her amounts and successfully kept the weight on.

I feed grain, but just trace amounts usually. My broodmares did get a few pounds while nursing their foals. Youngsters I raised got a pound or 2 for a while if needed. If in heavy work I fed a bit more. I haven’t had one in heavy work for years .

One thing in my favor has been the access to excellent quality hay. When I boarded ( 14 yrs) we fed it ( alfalfa) and then for the last 26 years we have grown our own( grass mix).
I am also of the mind that feeding large quantities of “bagged feeds”( grains) to replace forage is the reason we see ulcers like we do today. Sadly some need large amounts to hold their weight despite good hay 24/7.

[dani0303]

As just about everyone here has said, it really depends on the horse.

I have a teenaged (17) WB mare in moderate work who does wonderfully (actually, she’s a bit overweight) on a solely roughage based diet. She gets a handful of ration balancer for her supplements and vitamin/minerals but otherwise needs no concentrates.

I also have an aged (24) warmblood and teenaged (15) TB who cannot hold enough condition on roughage alone. All of my horses have free choice (in the form of a 700lb bale) beautiful, leafy, tested high quality orchard hay. They’re also supplemented with alfalfa flakes. They still need a concentrate to keep weight. After much research, trial and error, and researching what is adn isn’t available in my area I settled on TC Senior for them. The TB gets 3 lbs per day and the aged WB gets 5 lbs. That’s really not much as far as concentrates go but it helps add that little extra “bloom” to them.

[tabula_rashah]

@mydogs

Can you elaborate on this? What is the current ratio? How much is too much according to the ratio?

Shouldn’t you know the answer to this if you are the one suggesting everyone add alfalfa?

[Renn_aissance]

My family has two horses. My horse could live just fine on forage alone three seasons out of the year while in light to moderate work. We are lucky to have excellent pasture. He gets 1.5lbs TC Lite daily, as a medication vector. In the winter I add supplementation for macronutrients, and additional grain, when our good grass is not in season. He will graze all day but is a middle of the road hay eater so if he doesn’t care overmuch for whatever hay we have, he might snooze instead of eating and makes use of the extra calories from grain in winter.

My sister’s horse is active, athletic, a cribber, and a picky eater. He also is a “poor doer”- he doesn’t seem to get as much nutritional value out of his food than mathematics suggests he might. She does everything short of shove forage down his throat- although she’s been known to put soaked alfalfa cubes in his mouth- but there’s a point at which he’s just done eating and doesn’t want to eat any of anything anymore. He needs a nutritional payload he can’t get without more forage than he will consume.

We are all individuals. I could live on a forage diet too but I would need iron pills! I’m a big believer in more turnout and more forage as the first line of defense for a variety of equine ills, but one size does not fit all.