What Do You Feed Your Horses?

[near horse]

I think kiwiloggr is feeding palm kernel – the pressed meal that’s left after the palm oil (or most of it) is extracted. Is that correct?

In the US, the equivalent might be SBM soybean meal, canola meal, sunflower meal…. any other oilseed meals. They would usually be fed as ration components in dairies to boost protein levels more than energy since most of the oil has been extracted.

[near horse]

Historically when folks out here in the Inland Northwest were still using stationary threshing machines to harvest wheat, they would overwinter their horses on the straw stacks left over from threshing. Apparently, the threshing units weren’t very efficient and put a lot of grain out into the straw so there was more to it than just straw. Still seems like pretty slim pickings to me but I guess you measured success by how many of them made it through winter. :confused:

[CIW]

We’ve been doing something a little different this year than years previous. We have been feeding 5 gal. of soaked beet pulp. (2 gal. dry pellets) To this I add 1 cup of corn oil, 1 gal. whole oats, 1/2 gal. Safe & Sound. Also 60 lbs. of grass hay.
This is for a team of 1900 lb. open mares. This is working really well.
Where we buy all our winter feed we are finding that the $ output is less with a little additional effort to take the beet pulp to the house and filling the buckets with water for soaking.
We are hitching about 4 days of the week. Working 3 to 5 hrs. in the snow & on the roads. The mares are lean and fit. Its pretty tough to get them to break a sweat.
Only recently have I started adding the corn oil. Its adding a little oil to their hair and skin which in turn helps keep the mud from sticking. It also seems to up there energy a little bit.

I do have to say though. Don’t let J-L kid ya by the way he wrote in his previous post. Just hay and a little oats when its really cold.
I have seen first hand that he should be called the “Candy Man”. He walks around with a pocket load of cow cake. He’s always slipping those mules, Huff & Ruben, 2 or 3 pieces at a time.
Those mules will give a low hu, hu, hu, trying to get his attention each time he walks by. I’ve never seen it, but I wonder if he doen’t give them a little hug now and then.
Straight up, they work hard for him and he treats them very well. And with the highest reguard. I think they have such a high level of trust in him that they would go right off the side of the dugway if he pointed them off of it.
Your friend
CIW

[Jean]

He walks around with a pocket load of cow cake.

Ok, I am from the East, so please tell me what cow cake is and how can any cake be carried in my pocket? I love cake!

Jean

[Robert MoonShadow]

Well, Jean – It’s obvious that cow cake is a magical food… you feed cow cake to a cow, who then magically turns it into cow pie. :p
*geez, ya gotta teach them silly Easterners every darn thing* :rolleyes:

Oh, FYI: You carry cow cakes in your pocket; but cow pies you carry on your boots.

[Jean]

We can be a bit slow, but we are hard workers. Thanks for the explanation.

[Bess]

Regarding waterers and stray voltage: I boarded my mare with a friend for several months in winter. Friend had two open door wooden stalls and we each had 2 horses. The horses could just walk into the stalls one at a time and water themselves any old time of day or night. The waterers were built into the barn stall corners, with metal casings, automatic refill from underground pipe and heated to boot. Her horses were okay with these waterers. But my mare was not happy. She would reach for the waterer with her nose – standing as far back as she could – and then jump back like she was getting a shock when he nose touched the casing. The electric fencer to the paddock had a wire running into the barn and hooked to the fence along the paddock and pasture. I suspected grounding issues. But the other horses drank from the same waterers and did not make a fuss. My friend quietly suggesteed my mare was a little nuts. But she had never had an issue anywhere else. This behavior went on for a couple days, until one morning we were chatting outside the stalls while the horses ate their hay and my mare walked in, tried to get a drink, jumped back, tried again to drink, jumped back again and lglared at me and then reached up with a hoof and started to paw at the waterer and stall wall – still looking at me. How much clearer could she be? I was then convinced it was stray voltage and that the other horses just tolerated it – I guess they figured it was the price they paid to drink or were just not as sensitive. My friends fiddled with electric fence testers, but never came up with a real conclusion. But I know what my horse told me. So, with my friend’s permission, i put a water tub – plastic – outside of the barn and ran a hose and let my mare drink from that tub for as long as she was at this barn. The other horses enjoyed it too. Better safe than sorry with colic! My advice is if you have any inkling of a horse not drinking because they don’t like this or that, give them another source, another choice at another location. Sometimes it can be fear from other horses crowding them that will keep them away from drinking enough water. Impaction colic is serious, expensive, kills and most times it can be prevented. Listen to your horse! I have my own barn now with a heated metal (Nelson) electric waterer that was installed by a licensed electrician and the same mare has no problems with it, drinks from it winter and summer, while still respecting my electric fence big time.

[near horse]

Hi Bess,

Did your friends ever try disconnecting the electricity (either just to the fence or even turn it off for a bit at the service panel) to test the stray voltage idea?

[OldKat]

@Jean 5572 wrote:

Ok, I am from the East, so please tell me what cow cake is and how can any cake be carried in my pocket? I love cake!

Jean

Jean,

I think Robert was pulling your leg just a little. Don’t know what they call “cake” in their area, but where I live it is cotton seed cake. This is the byproduct of what is left after they press cottonseed for the oil. The rest is processed into a slab or cake if you will. Excellent cow supplement, but horses can’t eat it. (it contains degosipol, but I may be spelling that wrong)

My guess is that “cake” varies from region to region as to whatever the locally processed grain (or oil seed) happens to be.

[Livewater Farm]

DOES ANYONE HAVE EXPERIENCE FEEDING LONG STEM 1ST CUT BALAGE TO HORSES with the shortage of good quality hay is it a option
I have read in England it has become common practice
Bill

[HeeHawHaven]

I wonder about feed too. I’ve been recently accused of under-feeding on another forum. Funny, because I’ve also been accused of over-feeding my fjord mule phillies too. My wife and I are transplanted city folks (never going back!) and are only in our 6th year of owning mules, donkeys, and horses.

We grow grass hay, but ran out about 2 weeks ago. I bought a stack of alfalfa/grass mix – 80% grass.

We pasture our mules and donkeys too. The new horse (Fjord) is still penned up so that he bonds with us more than them (another story to be posted soon).

We get winter here in SW Idaho, but not too harsh. We’ve had several 2″ snowfalls this winter, but have had melting in between.

My neighbor is trying to sell his house and he moved already. He allowed us to pasture them on his land. There was a lot of weeds and a good amount of grass too. They’ve since eaten that all down. We also let them eat our grass hay field instead of doing the last cutting. It was only about 8″ long and too rainy at the end of the season to bale up.

So, this winter, our 5 mules, 2 donkeys, llama, and goat have eaten our neighbors pasture down, our 2.6 acre hay field down and about 4 tons of our grass hay. We were able to keep them fed with only 1 bale of hay per day.

I’ve since closed them off our hay field and our neighbors pasture and have put them out on a 6 acre pasture with not much grazing other than to keep them busy.

We feed in the morning and afternoon about 3/4 of a bale each feeding for all the animals above plus the new fjord (overweight from under-use from last owner) and young steer. This is probably about 60 lbs. of hay each feeding for all these animals. The steer gets RBC grain and the 40 year old donkey gets senior equine as well.

They eat for a good 1/2 hour or more and usually end up walking away from the hay near the end and back out to the pasture. The underlings in the herd will usually finish up the hay when the others leave.

Am I starving these animals? I don’t think so. They are not showing ribs. Their coats are thick. There are no hip bones showing except maybe a little in the 40 year old jack. But he is still spunky! They are all energetic and I wouldn’t hesitate to use them for a nice long ride.

I’ll take some pics later for you all to evaluate!

Thanks in advance for your input.

Dave

[near horse]

Hi Dave,

Glad to hear that there is visible land under the snow somewhere in Idaho:( It will still be awhile before that happens up here.

With regard to feeding your animals:

1) it’s hard to believe that they are under fed if you have a 40 yr old mule that’s still alive and doing alright. You must be doing something right
2) if animals are leaving feed and walking away. Again, hard to believe that they’re starving.
3) Rule of Thumb – in cattle, maintenance (not growth) is estimated to be 2% of BW on a dry basis. Example- 1000# animal needs 20# of dry matter. Hay is about 90% dry matter so about 22# of hay for this animal. This gets much more complicated when you talk about feed quality (enough protein/energy) and even more so when you start looking at pasture (what’s their intake AND what’s the dry matter content).

While there are people that suffer from some behavioral anomaly in which they “collect” animals w/o taking care of them (think cat lady but it can be horse person), and those animals and people need help, the less people are around animals the more they seem to think they know about taking care of them:mad: Look at the level of human obesity – many folks don’t even know how to feed themselves let alone horses and mules.

The fact that you are concerned about your animals welfare is pretty good evidence that you’re looking after them just fine.

Good luck.

[HeeHawHaven]

Well said, Geoff! I was thinking the same thing too! I took my hound mix to the vet yesterday for a dental and was amazed that she still weighs 90 lbs. – the same weight we got her from the shelter! She is a huge dog – big enough to put her paws on my 5’10” shoulders for a hug. I’m amazed at folks who say they have 120 lb. labs – these are much smaller dogs. And, as the vet mentioned, look at the owners and you can see what’s going on with the dogs. Maybe this is true with many horses, mules, etc…. I think many people feel that they are “loving” their animals by fattening them up. Kind of like my grandma used to try to do with me!

I suspect my animals are fine too! I think they’re getting their 20 lbs. (approx) of hay and grazing around a little to keep busy. It’s just funny how the internet brings you together with so many different thoughts and ideas. And, I often wonder if many of the people on the other forum spend too much time on their computers and too little time with their animals! It seems like this forum is much more of a “working” mentality as a whole.

Thanks again for all the input so far. I’ll take some pics in a little bit. I’m home today with a cold – kind of hard to teach music when you can barely talk and don’t have much energy.

Dave

[near horse]

I did a search on feeding haylage and/or silage to horses and got mixed results. It does appear that folks feed haylage to their horses (particularly where it is hard to get hay to cure – wet) but there are caveats. There can be some bacterial growth if not air tight fermentation that horses can’t handle.

From reading and what I do know about making silage, I would make these comments: IF you’re going to feed haylage or silage, use your senses. If it smells “bad” (like diarrhea or vomit) don’t feed it. It can smell strong (more of a vinegar odor) but that’s normal fermentation. Obviously, if there’s visible mold, chuck it. Introduce in small amounts and try keeping it to 1/3 or less of diet. Another issue comes up once you “open up” the bale or stack. You have now allowed air into the stack or at least to the surface and that can start to go bad. So, you also need to look at “feed out rate” – how fast are you feeding it? Example- a 5′ dia round haylage bale fed to 2 horses is likely to be fed too slow and thus some (or a lot) of it will be junk.

Good luck w/ the feed situation we’re all in. Sorry I couldn’t give more specific advice. Here’s a link to some papers on the subject:

http://www.dow.com/silage/tools/experts/horses.htm

[dominiquer60]

Geoff has some great haylage points. I know that the largest Thoroughbred breeding farm in NYS, feeds haylage/baleage with great success, they have been making it for years. I also have friends that feed it to 50 head of angus, a mule and a donkey, they never have problems, well maybe the donkey is a little fat. I have never heard good things about feeding horses actual fully fermented silage. At school we learned that air tight well done haylage/baleage is only partially fermented compared to what happens in a silo, similar but not complete. I wish I had my notes with me, but i am sure this could be looked up if anyone is interested. There are also readily available fermented hay products that are sold specifically for horses, Dengie is one from Canada that several show horses that I know are fed exclusively. Once they are used to it they seem to like it and there is less waste, but you have to be careful, because they are more likely to eat bad weeds in a bale because it all tastes the same. Sheep and goats do well on haylage/baleage too.

erika

[Author]

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