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  Discussion on Amount of hay to feed
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Posted on Thursday, Mar 21, 2002 - 11:10 am:

I have read numerous articles on nutrition and how much hay/grain to feed. This is probably a simple question but I would appreciate an answer. Most of the articles, including the one on this web site say to feed 2-3% of the horses body weight in hay per day. How do you figure this out? What is a good way to estimate this?

I am currently feeding my 16hh warmblood cross 1#beet pulp and 2# whole oats plus 8 flakes timothy per day.

He is in exercise daily at least an hour and is in good weight and coat so I feel I am on the right track but would feel better if I could estimate how much the hay weighs.

Thank you.

Posted on Thursday, Mar 21, 2002 - 8:34 pm:

Here's the crude, almost laughable way I developed a working basis for my hay weight calculations. I did this with no one watching.

I took my bathroom scales out to the barn, found a hard, even surface (you could probably use two cinder blocks or some thick planks of wood if you have dirt or stonedust floor), and placed the scales on it. Now comes the worst part, I weighed myself complete with barn clothes and boots on and read the result, this became my tare weight. I then took several bales of hay, one at a time, held each to one side and (it took a bit of contorting -- good stretching exercise)looked to see what the scale now read. Subtract your tare weight and voila, you have the weight of the bale.

My hay bales are very inconsistent in weight, but this gave me a guide to work with with respect to different types of hay (grasses and alfalfa mixes), sizes of bales and ones that seemed tightly packed and loosely packed. The end variations, exceptfor some real outlyers, were within five pounds.

I also took flakes from the different types of bales and weighed them. This didn't work so well because the variations weren't as big. On my never-never list is to bring out my kitchen scales that go up to 12 pounds and figure out a weigh to way, or is that way to weigh?, each flake to get some parameters. In the meantime I've simply divided total weights of my samples by number of flakes to get rough estimates.

After you spend a while measuring out a few flakes you begin to develop a feel for what weighs "right" regardless of volume.

And of course you then have to adjust all those amounts for how much gets wasted due to variations in horse, weather, and where and how fed. I did this by taking a flake or two and spreading it out in a corner of stall and then in paddock and pasture to see how much room it really ended up taking up. This gave me a visual guide for when I get anxious about how much waste there is. I think raking it up and weighing the waste hay wouldn't work because if your horses are anything like mine they have added liquids or solids of their own to the mix, let alone rain, snow, mud, dirt, etc.

And then someone less obsessed with small details, dare I say with more horse sense, for instance Dr. O, would probably say, estimate 10% for waste.

And not strictly on topic, if your horse never leaves any waste hay he probably isn't getting quite enough for his liking -- tho' it may be in terms of weight control to be fine. One thing I do with morning waste hay from my picky eaters is to recycle it that evening to my living out omnivore or the next day out to pasture where it often gets eaten.

Hope this silly story helps.

You can buy spring hay scales for very little, maybe even under $10 but they are would seem unreliable due to temperature and usage effects on spring. Maybe a side by side test with bathroom scales and recalibrating it with bathroom scales every so often would protect against this, but of course by then you will have developed "feel." And spring scales are a less embarrassing way to check weights of your hay from your hay supplier if you buy it by the bale instead of the more reliable by the ton method.

Posted on Monday, Mar 25, 2002 - 10:35 am:

Put the hay in a haynet and weigh it on a fish scales (spring balance with a hook hanging down and a dial) - very cheap to buy. In my experience bales can be from 25 lb to 44 lbs.

Imogen

Posted on Monday, Mar 25, 2002 - 4:11 pm:

I actually weigh all hay for each feeding for each horse. I have several horses who are extremely easy keepers and must have restricted access to hay. I buy excellent hay but still find that the flake weights vary a huge amount. I have found that the only way to ensure that I do not overfeed them is to weigh all hay fed (I feed four times a day to make sure they do not go too long without something to eat). I purchased my scale at a farm and garden store; it is a round hanging scale which is accurate to 1/16th of a pound and cost approximately $50. This type of scale is easily hung from a beam or whatever and then four pieces of fairly light rope branch to the four corners of a piece of plywood (which was cut about 6 inches larger than a flake of hay for easy access). I simply place my flake or flakes (depending on what I estimate is correct for the specific horse I am selecting for) and adjust the amount of hay by adding or removing some. This does take a bit of time at first, but soon you will find that you are very accurate most of the time. However, since the flake weights vary so much I still find times that I am not as accurate as I expected, therefore I simply take the few minutes to do this for each feeding and know I have fed each horse what they really should get.

Hope this helps you come up with a solution that works for you!

Ann
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