Making Your Forage Go Further

Due to the dry weather, reduced yields, and increased demand, there are growing concerns about a hay shortage this winter. It is important to ensure that all horses still consume enough forage to meet their minimum daily requirement of 1.5% body weight. Here are our top tips to help manage your hay supplies without compromising horse health.

Forage Replacers

Good-doers

For good-doers that require a low calorie intake, but still need to meet their minimum forage requirement, low calorie chaffs can be used to replace some of the hay portion of the diet. For hardy types, up to 50% of the daily forage intake can be replaced by an oat straw, to help stretch hay supplies. Oat straw provides fibre for chewing with a low calorie intake but should always be introduced gradually and avoided for horses prone to impaction.

Poor-doers

For poor-doers who would benefit from ad-lib hay but potentially don’t have the supply to facilitate this, additional soaked fibre sources can be given to top up fibre and calorie intake. Beet pulp, alfalfa chaff, soaked grass nuts, Re-Covery Mash, or Super Fibre Cubes are all partial forage replacers that can be used. Forage replacers can either be provided in multiple small buckets in a ‘buffet style’ to provide choice and promote natural grazing behaviours, or they can be mixed in a large bucket for your horse to pick at throughout the day. Incorporating a chaff into the forage replacer ration is a great option to promote chewing and saliva production for digestive health.

Reduce Floor Waste

Aside from using hay nets and raised troughs to reduce hay waste on the floor, keeping the area clean and tidy can also help. Rubber mats or designated corners keep hay clean and reduce trampling compared with throwing it straight onto bedding or mud. Removing spoiled or trampled hay can also prevent horses from rejecting the fresh hay and reduces waste.

Correct Storage

Keep bales covered, dry, and well-ventilated to prevent spoilage. Good storage means less wastage over the season. If horses are not finding the hay palatable, consider steaming to reduce dust and improve palatability.

Match Hay to the Horse

Good-doers and horses in low levels of work have a lower energy requirement compared to harder-working horses. More mature stemmy hays typically have a lower energy content and would therefore be better suited to a good-doer. Alternatively, a softer, leafy hay typically has a higher energy content and is better suited for horses with a higher energy demand. If hay supply is limited and you don’t have a choice of forage, consider soaking hay to reduce the calorie content for good-doers, or topping up with forage replacers to increase energy intake for poor-doers.