01/12/2019
HAY 101: Forage aka hay and pasture grass should be the cornerstone of every horse's diet barring dental issues or age related chewing issues. For the past 25 years my parents' farm has been home not only to our horses but also to mixed grass (lespedeza, timothy and fescue) hay production for 22 of those years. I have lifted over 10,000 bales and watched weather like a hawk as we tried to time the cutting and baling of the hay and smiled with pride breathing an enormous sigh of relief as I grabbed two Advil for my aching back looking upon a full hay barn. Unless you have a large amount of pasture or very few horses on your pasture, hay growing or buying is a reality for the majority of us horse owners. The purchase/production of hay is just as important as what kind of feed to buy and many times even more important. Rapid changes in hay types or rapid changes from pasture to strictly hay can be life threatening to your horse's sensitive GI tract increasing the risk of colic ranging from gassy impactions to twists. Here are some of the most important things to remember about hay: 1) Any change in hay type or even different cuttings (a high quality hay field should be able to be cut 2-4 times a year depending on hay type and fertilizing and rainfall giving you a first cutting, a second cutting and so on) should be made gradually over a week or so to avoid the risk of colic. If you are going from a stemmy hay (for example mixed grass) to a finer hay (Bermuda) take two weeks to switch over. 2) Buy as much hay at one time as you can afford and store so you can get as much of one cutting as you can to avoid changes in hay quality or even type of grass in the hay. 3) Square flakes should be kept under cover on top of pallets, or on concrete with a clean straw layer between the bottom layer and the concrete to allow for air circulation. Round rolls can be kept outside but you need to count on the outer 6-8" being "inedible" due to weather. There are a lot of DIY plans online regarding building a round roll cover to allow your horses to still get to the roll but keep it protected from the weather. 4) Avoid feeding round rolls to horses with any respiratory problems since horses tend to bury their heads in the hay and worsen allergies/asthma. 4) There are different types of hay and availabililty of hay can depend on what part of the country you live in. Bermuda is a very popular hay here but it can be associated with impaction colic, especially ileal (small intestinal) impaction colics if your horse is not used to it and gets a lot at once or if you rapidly switch from stemmier mixed grass hay to Bermuda. Bermuda can provide good nutrition but again the key is not giving a horse who's not used to it a lot at once and not switching to it off a stemmier hay cold turkey. Mixed grass hay is also a popular hay and can contain a variety of grasses such as orchard, timothy, fescue, lespedeza, clover, bermuda, brome and bluegrass. Good quality mixed grass hay is a great choice for most horses. You can also get pure orchard grass, pure timothy and pure fescue grass hay or a mixture of these. Fescue hay and fescue pasture is a big no no for late term pregnant mares due to the endophyte on the fescue. The endophyte can cause a mare to carry her foal too long leading to dystocias in which the baby is too big to be born, a thickened placenta and no milk production. Moral here is if you are breeding your mare, you need to know what fescue looks like so you can keep it out of your hay and pasture. You should avoid feeding hay with Johnson grass, vetch or foxtail. Johnson grass and vetch are toxic to horses and foxtail's sharp seedheads will cut up a horse's mouth like a razor. This is where the importance of when to cut hay comes in. Different grasses grow at different times of the year and depending on which cutting it is you can get this grass and avoid this w**d etc. Alfalfa hay is like manna from heaven to most horses and can be an excellent source of calories and energy but should not be fed to horses with HYPP (Quarter Horses with hyperkalemic periodic paralysis, though it's been seen rarely in other breeds) and you should make certain that your alfalfa is grown out west (Montana, Colorado, Wyoming) to lessen the risk of blister beetle toxicosis. Can alfalfa be grown here? Yes. Would I buy it from anywhere but out west even with some of the safety measures put in place to reduce the risk of blister beetles? No. 5) What makes a good bale of hay? Every bale should weigh about the same as the other bales in that group. If the bale is too heavy, I would suspect the hay was either baled wet or that bale was not stored properly so that hay needs to go to avoid the risk of a hay barn fire or mold. When you cut the strings on a good grass bale (not alfalfa since it is compressed usually and heavy) the bale should "pop" meaning it should widen in length slightly as soon as the strings are cut. Hay should smell sweet, not musty. 6) How much hay should a horse eat? Most hay info states about 10% of their body weight in hay but this can be hard to calculate so I always judge by how much hay my horses can consume just at the point they are leaving just a little in their stalls. For those of you who own a hay vaccuum horse like I do, who will eat a hay barn full of hay in a few days, a slow feeder hay net can really help. The main point here is we don't want a horse to go more than a few hours with nothing to eat. Horses constantly secrete stomach acid so unless they are eating frequently, ulcers can result. On average I feed 100 bales/horse per year but this can vary from farm to farm based on breed, age, pasture size, use of horse....
