Hi Kirsti, I free feed hay to my horses and ponies. We have eight, on a dry lot. It was difficult trying to get enough feed into the skinny ones ( a starved tb and the young horses) while not allowing the "easykeepers" to get too fat.
It's taken me a few years to really get the system sorted, and understand what I'm doing, but the last year, things have been really good. All horses are a good weight, no hoof problems.
Please beware, you cannot tell the sugar levels in grass hay by just looking at it. I had the good luck to attend a Katy Watts (safergrass) seminar a few months ago, and one of the things that she stressed was that many of the things that are commonly said about grass and hay are myths.
Two common myths: late cut hay, hay that has been left to stand in the field, brown looking stemmy hay, has less sugar. She told us that in actual fact, this hay can be much higher in sugars, depending on how it has been grown. The sugar is stored in the stems, not in the leaves, and when the leaf is no longer growing, the sugar is not used up in the growth process, so just remains stored. ONly if the dead grass get's repeatedly rained on, some of the sugars MAY leach out.
And conversely, the myth that "lush" green grass is high in sugar. In fact it is usually much lower in sugar than grass that has been stressed by drought, lack of fertilizer, or temp fluctuations (Cold nights, warm sunny days) as it's growing. Horses will get laminitis in a lush field, but that is more likely because the grass is growing faster, and so they are able to eat more, (and probably walk less than if they're having to search out the higher sugar sparse grass) thus their overall sugar intake is higher. Grass in the shade will also be lower sugar than grass growing in direct sunlight.
So a laminitic horse is better turned out for a few hours in the morning in a nice greeen grass paddock, with a grazing muzzle to limit intake, and fed on low NSC hay the rest of the time, than housed in a sparse poor grass paddock where it's nibbling away on the sugar rich stems as they grow, with no way of monitoring or limiting intake.
When you are choosing hay, it is much better to choose low sugar varieties (like Bermuda) that have been grown under optimum conditions - sufficient fertilizer, sufficient water, cut at optimum time, while leafy.. best is cut in the morning, before the sugars have been taken up during the sunshine hours, but not many can control that.
If you are unsure of the NSC value of the hay you are feeding, or you know that it is too high (above 8%), or your horses are obviously having trouble with it, gaining weight and showing white line separation, you can soak the hay for thirty or forty minutes before feeding. This will remove up to thirty percent of the sugars.
This is what we do with our hay, as we are not able to control the quality. Soaking has made a huge difference, and makes free feeding possible without any of the hoof and weight problems we were experiencing before. Even our cow has nice hooves now!
We also feed extra magnesium to help them metabolize insulin.
One other things that has made a difference to the amount of hay the horses consume is to adjust the protein and fat in their diet.
We feed a twice day mix of a little rice bran, flax seed, canola oil, alfalfa, and mineral supplement, even to the fatties.
Surprisingly, this reduced the fatties appetite for hay, and they actually lost a little weight, whereas the skinnies put weight on and got nice shiny coats.
The last factor is exercise.. excercise excercise.
Just twenty minutes of exercise three times a week significantly reduces blood sugar levels, and the effects last for a couple of weeks. The more exercise your horses get, the less you will have to worry about the effects of the sugars in their feed.
If you want to learn more about grass and hay for horses.. fatties, IR horses, laminitis prone horses.. have a look here:
www.safergrass.org And if you ever get a chance to attend a Katy Watts seminar, GO! It's a great learning experience.
Cheers,
Sue
Register
Login
FAQ
Search
!!
)
).
).
