From: Lesley
Jessica, as usual, I feel I must thank you for all your hard work in answering the many questions and sharing the answers with us.
My question is to do with feeding hay. Your recommendation (and that of most of the veterinary manuals/horse texts I read), is that the staple diet of the horse ought to be roughage ie hay, with grain to supplement as needed to maintain weight due to the amount or type of work done.
My mare gets a huge "hay belly" though if we feed her more than 4 flakes of (good quality) local hay a day (divided into 3 feeds). (she is outside in a paddock 8-10 hours a day and ridden about 5 times per week). I would like to cut down her grain feeds (6 cups of complete horse pellets 3 times per day) and increase the hay, but she gets too fat. This isn't over the ribs fat, but a very round barrel behind where your legs hang. The manager at the barn where I board her says this is a hay belly from feeding too much hay. (we were giving her 6 flakes a day).
She has started to chew the wood in her stall at night, presumably from boredom. We have tried stall toys, but she isn't interested. She is a real piggy, so if we give her more hay to keep her occupied through the night, she would have it all eaten in the first hour.
Please help with suggestions of how to feed her properly by increased roughage and decreased grain without her looking like she's pregnant! as well as any suggestions about keeping our stall intact.
Thank you so much. I hope you get time to answer this before she chews her way out of her stall, but if we feed her enough hay she won't fit out the door!!!! :)......hmmmmmmmm........
Lesley
You've tried giving her more of the same hay -- but if your vet thinks that she is too fat, then you won't want to increase her overall feed by giving her more good hay. You have other options, though -- and I strongly suggest that you talk to your vet about all of them.
1) You can offer her more hay if you find a hay that is less nutritious than the present hay. If, for instance, she is getting four flakes of alfalfa, you could offer her the same weight of mixed or grass hay -- which would provide a great deal more bulk.
2) You can add roughage to her pelleted feed, in the form of chopped stemmy hay or chopped clean straw. This too will add bulk and roughage.
3) You could do either or both of the above -- and cut back on the pellets. If your mare is getting eighteen cups of complete pelleted feed every day, she might do much better on more hay and just a bare handful of pellets or oats. Check the feed bag and see what the suggested amounts are -- and how they compare to what she is getting. If the pellets are "nutritionally complete when fed alone" or "nutritionally complete when fed with stemmy hay", and you are feeding them with high-quality, "high-octane" alfalfa, the mare is simply being overfed.
4) You could try to slow down her eating. Keeping her in her paddock at night might help, depending on the size of the paddock -- if it's an acre or two, she may not lose weight if the grass is good, but if it's a smaller paddock and the grass is NOT so good, she will at least keep moving around all night, and that is good for her health and digestion. If she must be confined to a stall at night, why not double- or triple-net her hay? A few flakes of hay take very little time to eat if they are loose on the floor; they take longer if they are in a hay-net, and longer still if they are in two or three haynets, placed one over the other so that the holes are quite small. It doesn't take more than an extra minute or two, you tie the haynets up as usual, fastening the top AND the bottom securely so that the horse can't catch a foot or leg -- but it will take the horse much, much longer to tease all the hay out, bite by bite. This will keep her happily occupied for hours, and save a lot of stall wood. Chewing can indeed mean boredom -- it's just one more good reason to keep horses turned out 24/7 or as near to that as you can manage. But in cases when horses are deprived of roughage, it may mean that the horse needs more "chewing time". After all, horses are designed to walk around and eat small amounts of high-fiber food around the clock -- hence the benefit of a nice field or paddock! If you can, put her out and leave her there; you'll preserve your stall and her health and sanity. ;-)
If I were you, I would have a word with your vet about the mare, and perhaps have her looked at. Not all large bellies are "hay bellies" -- sometimes a large belly means a large load of parasites, and sometimes a large belly means a pregnant mare. In any case, your vet will be in a position to do a fecal exam or a pregnancy check, and to offer good advice about the feeding program that would best suit your mare, based on the type and quality of the feed, the grazing, and the mare's actual needs.
Good luck!
Jessica
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