Who gives a grain ration? How much?

Right now, mine gets about 12 pounds a day performance feed (low NSC, 12% protein, 10% fat). Over the winter, she was up to about 15 pounds a day with some added oil and supplemental alfalfa hay, but I worked her through the winter months. Some people say this is alot, but she works hard and isn’t getting fat in the least bit. The horse I had before her ate probably 1/3 of this and no alfalfa, but was always kinda slow and never put out the effort of the one I have now. In my limited experience, the most important thing is the quality of the hay and how much work they are doing.

I don’t know if I can really defend the economy of my feeding practices, but I think it might have evolved from two factors. First, I only have one draft horse so the cost of the increased feed is not as painful as it could be. Secondly, only having one biases me towards making sure she is as strong a fit as she can be so I can squeeze the maximum power out of a single. Maybe it also makes me feel like I am working an athlete and helps me to expect an athletic performance. You are definitely right though, Erik, this is probably not a pathway to self sufficiency. I’m not sure that it’s truly practical now, but am pretty sure it wouldn’t be practical if there weren’t huge tractor farms churning out great gobs of pretty cheap grain. I like to think that I’m going to trade small amounts of carefully made crops suitable for humans for larger amounts of not very carefully made crops suitable for animals. I think there is some truth this this…

Here is an article I found a while back that might be of interest..I know it doesnt detail amounts of corn as such but might alleviate some worry for some folks regards economics of keeping draft horses..
John

when we bought this farm, the fields were run out, and we could barely mow three acres for the pine and alder. my neighbor urged me to plow up some, and i worried over lost hay. we put down an acre of oats underseeded with grass. i was going to make oat hay, but another neighbor wanted the straw, and we went into the straw bussiness, cause we could not get the grain without lots of tools. anyway the acre of hay under the oats was more than the two acres of poor grass, so i never worried about that one again.
planting grain on your own soil improves your farm and feeds your critters. all you need is a plow and a harrow to get it in. collecting the grain is the trick. four of us went in on a binder and thresher. worked great until we started moving equipment back and forth. that arrangement stopped working, so i got an old small combine and do alot of tinkering. john, i read your amish study. very interesting. i have some thoughts, maybe later. mitch

This is just my opinion on the subject, I feel that young horses still growing and horses under heavy work need grain. Idle horses usualy don’t need grain, but it depends on the time of year and if they are on pasture or hay. One thing I dont think anyone touched on was hay quality we always bought hay and ware I live good hay is hard to make the soil needs lyme and fertilizer people trying to skimp have poor quality hay. I have seen hay from Canada and up state New York that was so high quality with almost all tymothy that you could get by feeding just hay, but if you are feeding a lesser quality hay you might have to ad a little grain especially in the winter. Another thing not touched on is the horses fast digestion rate now I am no expert on the internal workings of a horse but with a single chambered stomach the horse does not digest food well like a cow. If you feed whole grains like oats it is best to feed a crimped grain to speed up the breakdown, I have also seen horses fed hay first then grain to slow the grain and kinda stop it up so it is digested better. You can be wasting alot of money if your horses are pooping out un digested grain. The green grass is definatly the best thing for any grazing animal the vitamins, minerals and protien can’t be beat. My friend who has a darry farm across the street from me has a huge jump in milk production when his cows go on spring pasture and they get fed alot of grain, soy, hay and silage through out the year. Grain is a good tool to get horses in the barn even just a hand full but to many people think they are doing thair horse a favor and feed to mutch grain if they are not burning it up it just makes hot horses.

We’ve gone from feeding whole oats to “naked oats”, and are extremely pleased with the results…especially with some of our older horses. They sure seem to be processing and utilizing the naked oats much better than they did with whole oats, and feeding less volume has made it even a bit more economical. I plan on putting a chunk of ground into them this fall. There are a couple farmers who grow them in the valley here, and they’re always almost sold out. The people that try them are all very happy.
http://www.geertsonseedfarms.com/Pages/NakedOats.htm

John