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Location: Idaho | Who all feeds more grains then hay? I veed beet pulp, 12% horse feed and mbc....thinking about adding Timothy pellets. I have one horse who is not liking hay! My to colts look great.. .just trying to change things up for the other! Want y'alls opinions on upping grains and lowering hay....he is turned out for a couple hours a day. |
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 The BHW Book Worm
Posts: 1768
  
| Horses guts need hay to digest grain if you cut more hay out of a diet your puting your horse at crisk for weight loss, gut ph imbalance, colic and a slew of other things. Before I would up grain maybe find a different hay |
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 Elite Veteran
Posts: 669
Location: Central Texas | Personally after reading the various posts on this forum, other forums and some articles by vets. I am changing my feeding program to oats, a good mineral/vitamin supplement and all they grass hay they can eat. I have always fed more hay than feed anyway. I read where a horse's diet should consist of at least 90% forage. I am not sure how this change in my feeding program will play out but I am willing to give it a try after seeing pictures of some people's horses who are feeding a simliar plan as this. They look great! |
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 Elite Veteran
Posts: 851
Location: West Texas | Depends on what you call grains. If you are talking the traditional sense, then no, I think it is a bad idea. Horses are not designed to function that way (though they certainly can). It will increase risk of ulcers, founder, colic, and actually decrease his ability to digest forage by altering the ph in the hindgut and decreasing the roughage digesting bacteria.
If you are talking a concentrate that is not grain, you do not want to feed more than is recommended by the manufacturer (however I feel they are on the high side usually, because they want you to use more of their feed and less hay). Even on these types, I feel it is best to never cross the 50% mark with your concentrate.
If you are talking about a high roughage feed or a complete pellet, then yes you can feed more concentrate than grain, up to the complete pellet as a sole ration.
These are my opinion and I hope it helps with your question. |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 851
Location: West Texas | Ampratt, With that diet, I think it is a very good that you are adding a good vitamin/mineral supplement. Most grass hays have less nutrients than you would ideally want and grains such as oats also have limited nutrients. One concern if you feed grass hay and grain is that you could put your horse in a situation where they had an inverse Ca:Ph ratio. This over time would rob the bones of calcium and make the skeletal system weak. Also, you could even be on the low to too low end of protein if your hay is not really good grass. For this reason, I feel it is very important to provide a good vitamin and mineral supplement with this program. If your grass hay is below 12%, I would recommend using a supplement with added protein or feeding additional alfalfa, in any format you choose.
Edited by Tdove 2015-08-06 9:06 AM
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Red Bull Agressive
Posts: 5981
Location: North Dakota | Hay should be the basis on every horses diet. The only exception to that would be senior horses that can no longer chew long stem hay (but they should still be given soaked cubes, chaff, soaked beet pulp, etc. depending on what they can and will eat. Horses NEED LONG STEM fiber (NOT pellets) for digestion. Hay pellets and beet pulp can account for some of their forage, but pasture and normal hay should make up almost their entire diet. |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 669
Location: Central Texas | Tdove - 2015-08-06 9:02 AM
Ampratt, With that diet, I think it is a very good that you are adding a good vitamin/mineral supplement. Most grass hays have less nutrients than you would ideally want and grains such as oats also have limited nutrients. One concern if you feed grass hay and grain is that you could put your horse in a situation where they had an inverse Ca:Ph ratio. This over time would rob the bones of calcium and make the skeletal system weak. Also, you could even be on the low to too low end of protein if your hay is not really good grass. For this reason, I feel it is very important to provide a good vitamin and mineral supplement with this program. If your grass hay is below 12%, I would recommend using a supplement with added protein or feeding additional alfalfa, in any format you choose.
Absolutely, I would never feed just oats and hay without supplementing the vitamins/minerals. I have researched alot before attempting to go this route and there are some very good supplements made specifically for oats/grass hay diet that address the vitamin/mineral supplementation as well as the Phos/Calcium issue. |
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Expert
Posts: 2122
Location: The Great Northwest | I feed Alfalfa no grain. I have for decades and the horses are healthy. I will give a pelleted feed with supplements if needed to get the supplement ate. |
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Expert
Posts: 1409
Location: Oklahoma | What is better whole oats or crimped oats? |
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 Bulls Eye
Posts: 6443
Location: Oklahoma | My horses get good quality bermuda round bales 24/7. I also feed alfalfa pellets. My stud gets Blue Bonnet but I am looking to simplify my program. For vitamins/minerals I love the Adeptus Augment. |
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 Owner of a ratting catting machine
Posts: 2258
| You are in Idaho? You're so lucky, that's where some of the nations best alfalfa comes from! I'd try free choice alfalfa, pull the grain, and see if he starts to looking and feeling better! Check the cutting though, first cutting can be too much for them. also, they don't like to eat what they can't digest, have you tried a course of probiotic paste? It might help. |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 669
Location: Central Texas | Depends on who you ask. I feed whole oats (on the advise of a vet who is also knowledgeable in equine nutrition) and was advised whole oats are not that much lower in nutritional value as the crimped. Whole oats store longer. As stated earlier, unless your horse is out on nice pasture it's best to include a COMPLETE vitamin/mineral supplement when feeding oats and high quality hay or alfalfa hay. |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 669
Location: Central Texas | skye - 2015-08-06 9:57 AM
I feed Alfalfa no grain. I have for decades and the horses are healthy. I will give a pelleted feed with supplements if needed to get the supplement ate.
Are your horses dry lotted or have access to pasture? |
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 Undercover Amish Mafia Member
Posts: 9992
Location: Kansas | Hold on....why would you want to lower the amount of hay they get? |
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Expert
Posts: 1695
Location: Willows, CA | Hay or pasture needs to be the overwhelming base of your horses diet. The reasons why high concentrate amounts are bad could and do fill whole books on the subject. A horse will digest large inclusions of grain based feeds, but at the expense of its ability to digest its most natural source of nutrition, Its hay or pasture. They can not completely digest both at the same time. As to the Cal/phos ratio in grass hay. In almost every test we have run, grass hays today are, in fact, higher in calcium than phos. I know this is not what your text books tell you, but soils, fertilizers and hybrid grasses have changed this. I do still see some grasses in Kansas that are higher in phos, but not many. |
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Location: Idaho | actually no...I moved to S.E. Texas 2 years ago. I have tried different hays and alfalfa...this horse will eat it good for MAYBE a week then nothing. Im getting so frustrated with him! I almost had to put him down this last winter...long story but had a MAJOR reaction to Ivermectin and still working on getting him back up to parr!
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Location: Idaho | Im not wanting to lower it....he simply WONT EAT IT!!! like I said...he will eat it good for about a week then NOTHING.....I have HIGH quality hay...been tested etc...my other two are doing great but this one is throwing me for a loop!
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 669
Location: Central Texas | winwillows - 2015-08-06 12:15 PM
Hay or pasture needs to be the overwhelming base of your horses diet. The reasons why high concentrate amounts are bad could and do fill whole books on the subject. A horse will digest large inclusions of grain based feeds, but at the expense of its ability to digest its most natural source of nutrition, Its hay or pasture. They can not completely digest both at the same time. As to the Cal/phos ratio in grass hay. In almost every test we have run, grass hays today are, in fact, higher in calcium than phos. I know this is not what your text books tell you, but soils, fertilizers and hybrid grasses have changed this. I do still see some grasses in Kansas that are higher in phos, but not many.
Thanks for sharing the information on the Phos/Cal in regards to grass hay. My vet told me the same thing but its nice to hear from someone else as well. She also stated that most of the COMPLETE vit/min supplements made to be fed w/ grass hay contain alfalfa meal, soybean meal, distilled grains, rice brans etc which are a great source of protein. I understand that the demands we put on our horses have changed but I often wonder if some of the issues we have with horses today can't help but result from all the concentrated feeds etc. We occassional fed oats and our horses were on pasture while I was growing up and it seemed like they were always healthy with the bulk of their meal being forage. |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 669
Location: Central Texas | keep'nup - 2015-08-06 12:23 PM
Im not wanting to lower it....he simply WONT EAT IT!!! like I said...he will eat it good for about a week then NOTHING.....I have HIGH quality hay...been tested etc...my other two are doing great but this one is throwing me for a loop!
That must be frustrating for sure. I know it's not the ideal feeding program but I have a senior horse that can't sustain himself on just hay as his only forage. I feed his regular grain ration and in an attempt to at least try and get as much forage in him as possible, I feed beet pulp and rotate out timothy or alfalfa pellets, Standlee chopped hay in a bag (timothy or alfalfa), when he stops eating one. He does what your horse does. He eats one type for a while then stops, so I rotate. Probably not a great idea but its kept him alive and looking decent for over 6 years. I also still give him regular hay and he eats some. |
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Expert
Posts: 1695
Location: Willows, CA | When were his teeth last done? |
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 Take a Picture
Posts: 12842
| Everyone who feeds horses needs to get the book THE HORSE NUTRITION HANDBOOK. I took a horse nutrition course in college years ago. This book really was a short refresher course. I suggest that you get a highlighter and highlight important info as you read so you can go back and quickly browse through important things. It has a chart of the requirements for horses and other charts. I keep mine by the bed and go back and read through it at night on a regular basis. |
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 I Prefer to Live in Fantasy Land
Posts: 64864
Location: In the Hills of Texas | Our neighbor use to feed more grain then hay and he lost about one horse a year to colic... |
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Red Bull Agressive
Posts: 5981
Location: North Dakota | Turnburnsis - 2015-08-06 10:01 AM
What is better whole oats or crimped oats?
Whole. Horses digest them just fine and because the hull is not damaged, they retain more nutrients and fat. |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 618
| I completely took my horses off grain in January. I feed alfalfa only and a ration balancer between 1-2 lbs a day depending on horse. I do feed soaked alfalfa cubes with loose salt sprinkled on top under the balancer to help encourage more drinking and they get flakes of alfalfa as well. They are turned out 24/7 except for my 2 young horses who I put in a stall w/run at night. They all look fabulous. My open horse is more focused and clocking faster than last year in same pens and patterns. When he sweats it's not that foamy white it's clear. As a human nutritionist I apply the "clean" eating philosophy to my horses. |
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 Expert
Posts: 5293
| iloveequine40 - 2015-08-06 11:27 AM
I completely took my horses off grain in January. I feed alfalfa only and a ration balancer between 1-2 lbs a day depending on horse. I do feed soaked alfalfa cubes with loose salt sprinkled on top under the balancer to help encourage more drinking and they get flakes of alfalfa as well. They are turned out 24/7 except for my 2 young horses who I put in a stall w/run at night. They all look fabulous. My open horse is more focused and clocking faster than last year in same pens and patterns. When he sweats it's not that foamy white it's clear. As a human nutritionist I apply the "clean" eating philosophy to my horses.
The only problem I could see with this hay only diet is some horses that are used very hard would not be able to hold up energy wise. For example if your trying to make the NFR and traveling lots of miles and hours and making 80-100 rodeos a year, hay is not going to cut it. Horses are evolved to be grazing animals etc but horses were never meant to go thousands of miles a year in a trailer and compete in 100 rodeos either. Soooooo something has to be added to the diet to fulfill those energy requirements. Having said that I have switched to whole grains and natural fat courses from processed feeds and molasses. |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 851
Location: West Texas | It is not the grass hay that would be the issue, as yes most all grass hays have more calcium than phosphorous. It is feed only oats or any grain along with it that can put your ratio dangerously low or inverted. With calcium, I personally prefer to have more than too little.
If you fed 15lbs of grass hay with a 1.5:1 Ca:Ph and added only 6lbs of oats daily, that would put your total ration at 1:1 approximately. If you hay didn't quite have 1.5:1 or you fed more oats, then you would be inverse with Ca;Ph and that in the long run would cause you problems. Therefore, in that situation you would need to supplement protein in some form, either with a protein/mineral supplement or a high calcium feed source.
How many people have their hay tested and know if it has enough calcium? |
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Expert
Posts: 1314
Location: North Central Iowa Land of white frozen grass | My horses are on a pasture that we seeded down to a pasture mix and also added alfalfa to it. They are on it 24/7 about seven months of the year. The rest of the year they are on a round bale the same way. I also have our feed mill make me up my own mixture of feed that they get once a day at 2.5 # per head. I do this so they come to me and they are also getting all their minerals, vitamins, salt and daily nutrient needs.
Whole Oats 1,200 #
Cracked Corn 300 #
Hy Pro Soybean Meal 200 #
Kandy Treat Molassis 100 #
Alfalfa Pellets 100 #
Bran 50 #
Monocal 2 to 1 Mineral 20 #
ADE vitamins 15 #
Soybean Oil 32 #
Beet Shreds 100 #
Trace Mineral Salt 20 #
Limestone 6 #
Total of ration 2,143 #
Total cost of ration $ 411.13
Cost per # $.192
Cost per hd per day @ 2.5# $.49
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 618
| Most people do not work their horses that hard though or travel like that. Adding fat and energy is the cheapest/easiest form of supplementation ie with oils or stabilized rice bran. If when I decide to haul heavily I may need to reevaluate my feeding program but after dealing with an ulcery horse I will not feed processed grains as it is a leading cause of them along with hauling and stalling.
To the original poster, my ulcer horse was a very picky eater before we treated him and would nibble at it and walk away. He never finished his grain or hay. Now on an almost all forage diet he eats it all. |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1131
| All any horse needs as a base feed is oats and a good multi-vitamin. No special grains or anything, it's shown that oats are the best fillers.
We feed whole oats, essential K/alfalfa pellets mix (50/50 mix), and farrier formula as needed with free range alfalfa hay. Our horses look great. The 3 year old eats a bale and half of alfalfa, 3 quarts of oats, and 1 quart of essential k/alfalfa pellet mix a day, plus free pasture. He looks fantastic.
Edited by FlyingHigh1454 2015-08-06 4:28 PM
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Take a Picture
Posts: 12842
| BS Hauler - 2015-08-06 2:42 PM
My horses are on a pasture that we seeded down to a pasture mix and also added alfalfa to it. They are on it 24/7 about seven months of the year. The rest of the year they are on a round bale the same way. I also have our feed mill make me up my own mixture of feed that they get once a day at 2.5 # per head. I do this so they come to me and they are also getting all their minerals, vitamins, salt and daily nutrient needs.
Whole Oats 1,200 #
Cracked Corn 300 #
Hy Pro Soybean Meal 200 #
Kandy Treat Molassis 100 #
Alfalfa Pellets 100 #
Bran 50 #
Monocal 2 to 1 Mineral 20 #
ADE vitamins 15 #
Soybean Oil 32 #
Beet Shreds 100 #
Trace Mineral Salt 20 #
Limestone 6 #
Total of ration 2,143 #
Total cost of ration $ 411.13
Cost per # $.192
Cost per hd per day @ 2.5# $.49
Would are the nutritional values of this mix? |
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 Warmblood with Wings
Posts: 27846
Location: Florida.. | ampratt - 2015-08-06 12:41 PM Depends on who you ask. I feed whole oats (on the advise of a vet who is also knowledgeable in equine nutrition) and was advised whole oats are not that much lower in nutritional value as the crimped. Whole oats store longer. As stated earlier, unless your horse is out on nice pasture it's best to include a COMPLETE vitamin/mineral supplement when feeding oats and high quality hay or alfalfa hay.
whole is more nutritional.. the more processed the more nutrients it loses.. |
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 Money Eating Baggage Owner
Posts: 9586
Location: Phoenix | FlyingHigh1454 - 2015-08-06 2:26 PM All any horse needs as a base feed is oats and a good multi-vitamin. No special grains or anything, it's shown that oats are the best fillers. We feed whole oats, essential K/alfalfa pellets mix (50/50 mix), and farrier formula as needed with free range alfalfa hay. Our horses look great. The 3 year old eats a bale and half of alfalfa, 3 quarts of oats, and 1 quart of essential k/alfalfa pellet mix a day, plus free pasture. He looks fantastic.
Bale and a half of hay a day? |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 669
Location: Central Texas | Bibliafarm - 2015-08-06 10:49 PM
ampratt - 2015-08-06 12:41 PM Depends on who you ask. I feed whole oats (on the advise of a vet who is also knowledgeable in equine nutrition) and was advised whole oats are not that much lower in nutritional value as the crimped. Whole oats store longer. As stated earlier, unless your horse is out on nice pasture it's best to include a COMPLETE vitamin/mineral supplement when feeding oats and high quality hay or alfalfa hay.
whole is more nutritional.. the more processed the more nutrients it loses..
Thanks! I knew I would get that wrong. |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 851
Location: West Texas | Crimped oats are slightly more digestible. However, their cost of processing is more than the increased digestibility. They also have lower fat, less nutrients, and do not keep as long.
Whole oats have more fiber and are a very good concentrate. My experience is if you can slow the consumption of them down or feed small feedings, you will get their benefit and minimize their potential problems. |
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 Jr. Detective
Location: Beggs, OK | hammer_time - 2015-08-06 11:37 PM FlyingHigh1454 - 2015-08-06 2:26 PM All any horse needs as a base feed is oats and a good multi-vitamin. No special grains or anything, it's shown that oats are the best fillers. We feed whole oats, essential K/alfalfa pellets mix (50/50 mix), and farrier formula as needed with free range alfalfa hay. Our horses look great. The 3 year old eats a bale and half of alfalfa, 3 quarts of oats, and 1 quart of essential k/alfalfa pellet mix a day, plus free pasture. He looks fantastic. Bale and a half of hay a day?
I saw that too....and if you're feeding free choice alfalfa, why would you need alfalfa pellets? |
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 Pork Fat is my Favorite
Posts: 3791
Location: The Oklahoma plains. | We would love to feed great alfalfa hay only if it was native to our area- or we could count on a consistant safe supply.
May I ask what is everyones thoughts on where the line is drawn on the best states to buy alfalfa?
Are blister beetles a concern way north? Or is that just certain states?
We have always been a hay primary barn with feed added for working horses horses or growing horses. We have been fortunate to have two hay contracts a year. Obviously a few years we have used more and needed to find hay, especially the drought or when we were hoarding project horses. We have only used 4 feeds in 20 years so we dont make changes quickly, often or without reason. I think our horses have always looked well. |
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Owner of a ratting catting machine
Posts: 2258
| I really, really, really, really suggest a 10 day course of ProBios Equine Paste or Gel, 1/2 tube, 2X a day. |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 669
Location: Central Texas | keep'nup - 2015-08-06 8:24 AM
Who all feeds more grains then hay? I veed beet pulp, 12% horse feed and mbc....thinking about adding Timothy pellets. I have one horse who is not liking hay! My to colts look great.. .just trying to change things up for the other! Want y'alls opinions on upping grains and lowering hay....he is turned out for a couple hours a day.
Sorry your thread kind of got hijacked (although all the information provided is great). I think I may have started it's de-railment. I sincerely hope you find a way to get the fiber and roughage in your horse (which is what I think you were asking about) and get him on the road to being a healthy happy horse! |
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Warmblood with Wings
Posts: 27846
Location: Florida.. | Beet Pulp -Fiber
but horse needs hay more then grain.. roughage .. or Good pasture...winter you will need to feed HAY no matter what.. |
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Blessed 
Location: Here | Bibliafarm - 2015-08-07 10:34 AM Beet Pulp -Fiber
but horse needs hay more then grain.. roughage .. or Good pasture...winter you will need to feed HAY no matter what..
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Grains vs Hay