The problem with having your horses live on pasture during the winter is how best to feed their hay. The easiest way to feed is to just drop the hay on the ground in piles. The problem with this is the hay a) blows away and b) gets pooped on. Even at $3 a bale, hay is just too darned expensive to waste that way.
There is a hay feeder in the pasture that looks sort of like this:
 |
| Too much metal |
The problem is that it's WAY too small for four horses and it's made of metal, not to mention that it forces the horses to eat with their heads in the air- not what I want for Gwen. We had a similar feeder when I was younger and it rusted out, creating nasty edges for horses to cut themselves on. I don't even want my horses near something like that.
Because of that, I decided to experiment with slow feeding this winter. The idea behind slow feeding is to simulate grazing by limiting the amount of hay the horses can get in their mouth at one time, minimize hay wastage, and make the hay last longer. Ideally this way your horses have hay at all times. There are a bunch of options for slow feeders, many of which I found really interesting, but given my current situation, boarding, I decided to go for the easiest option possible: Haybags.
I found some fairly inexpensive bags with 2" holes to try. Unfortunately there aren't as big as I'd like, they can only fit about 4 flakes of hay and I was really hoping to be able to fit a half bale in them (I'll keep looking to see if I can find some larger bags), but they still seem to do the trick. I fill up the bags every night and 24 hours later there's usually hay left in them (Mark feeds loose hay in the morning). I call them hay balls because that's what they look like:
 |
| Gwen is concentrating |
 |
| Nom nom nom |
 |
| Rocky and Butch chowing down |
It took them a few days to get used to the bags. Interestingly, the mares went for them much sooner than the boys did. Coriander gave me some ugly faces at first. I've been using them for a few weeks now and they all seem to have accepted the bags. Sometimes they'll even choose them over loose hay on the ground. They must like the challenge.
If you're considering slow feeding there are a TON of options out there, even for round bales. If you are concerned about hay wastage it's worth it to check them out.
 |
| A bagged round bale |
Here are some links I found helpful:
One last thing: my horses and Mark's horses are barefoot, haybags on the ground might be an issue for those with shoes.
