Forage is the most important part of any horse's diet, and most horse owners understand this. When we get in a drought situation like the Midwest has been in the last couple of years, finding (and affording) quality hay can be quite difficult, though. Knowing how to make your hay last can save you a lot of money and stress in a situation like this.
If you're like many horse owners, you may feed round bales for their convenience and more affordable price. Horses are notorious for wasting round bales, though--so are you really saving money in the long run? I've found that when I feed a round bale on the ground, my horses waste almost half of it. I had the opportunity to write an article about the economics of round bale feeders for The Horse last winter, and according to the study I wrote about, using round bale feeders can save you quite a bit. I decided to give it a try.
I looked at buying a round bale feeder, but we decided to convert a homemade cattle hay feeder into a horse one instead. It's pictured above. Boy, did it make a difference. Instead of having a round bale last two weeks before my two geldings stomped, peed, and pooped on it, I found that it now lasted nearly twice as long. I'm not sure we would have made it through the winter with enough hay if we hadn't used it. The only thing I would watch out for with round bale feeders is making sure they are horse-safe.
If you really want to save money though, I'm convinced that square bales are the way to go. Sure, they're a little more work, but you can control how much each horse gets and have very little wastage. A horse needs to eat approximately 2% of its body weight a day, so if you can get a fairly accurate estimate of how much your horse weighs, you can determine exactly how much hay you need to feed. I bought a fish scale that I can weigh my hay with so I don't have to guess. My 1200 lb gelding needs to eat about 24 pounds of hay, whereas my 900 lb mare only needs about 18 pounds of hay.
Ta-ta!
No comments:
Post a Comment