FAQ

You want to buy the best hay for your horse. But how do you find it? Here are some points to consider:

Use all of your senses when buying hay. Does it look good? That lovely bright green that is attractive to our eye also means the hay is fresh and full of the vitamins and protein your horse needs for a healthy diet. Although the outside of a hay bale may be bleached and yellow from exposure to the sun, the interior should always be green.

Grab a handful of hay and feel it. Does it feel coarse? Are there little twigs or even prickers in it? If it feels bad in your hands, think of how it would feel in your horse’s mouth.

Good hay is free of extraneous material and has a fine texture, feeling soft in your hands. It should also have a high leaf-to-stem ratio, as the majority of digestible nutrients are found in the leaf portion of both grass and legume hay.

Take that handful of hay and bring it up to your nose. Breathe in. Does it smell fresh and clean? Or do you detect dust or mold? Obviously, that clean, fresh smell is what you want your hay to have.

The result of your careful examination when buying hay will be that sound that is music to the ears of all horse lovers: the sound of your horses happily munching on hay.

A good place to start your search for quality hay is with your county extension agency or state agricultural department. Generally, they know who the hay growers in your area are and what the quality of each grower’s hay is. To have a good selection of hay, buy early in the season while the crops are being baled.

It’s always a good idea to have your hay analyzed. Knowing the nutrient profile of the hay will allow you to make wise decisions about what to feed, which will save you money. Good hay has a protein value of 9 % or higher, as this will meet the protein requirements for a variety of horses. Other values you should have analyzed are the Neutral Detergent Fiber (NDF), which should be at 60% or lower (otherwise your horses will stop eating the hay), and the Acid Detergent Fiber (ADF), which should be under 40% to ensure high digestibility.

Follow these guidelines for hay, and you will have happy, healthy, well-fed horses with little wastage of hay.

Making sure horses are comfortable in their stalls is important to all horse owners. Here are a few things to consider when bedding your horse down for the night.

Does bag size matter, or do you measure the number of bags per stall? Bag sizes vary from 2.5 cubic feet offered by one major retailer to 3.5 cubic feet. Prices should vary along with size, allowing you to calculate the cost per cubic foot, but you should measure bags to verify the size claimed on the label because there is no independent legal standard required for shavings. If you are bedding stalls by volume, then pricing per cubic foot should be the determining factor.

Habit often comes into play, and for many of us the bag measure is used: one or two bags per stall per day. If you have bought the 3.5 cu ft bags and the stalls are still being bedded at the same per-bag rate, it may be a smart decision to buy a smaller bag to reduce daily cost.

Absorption by shavings is also a major factor in bedding. The finer shavings tend to absorb more but can also be dustier. Larger flakes are more attractive in stalls and are generally quicker to muck, but do not absorb as much.

Disposal of bedding has been debated recently: the wood shavings take a long time to break down, and compost from barns is generally only usable after 6-12 months of intensive turning. Straw breaks down more easily, and in some areas, local farmers collect straw bedding for free. Although it is more environmentally friendly, straw is not easy to use in a barn, both in terms of transporting it and the mess it leaves.

Finally, as if you were at the checkout counter: “Paper or Plastic?” Paper shavings bags are generally cheaper but less popular because many barns have to store shavings outdoors. It may be worth checking whether your local authority can recycle the paper to help reduce disposal costs.

Last year’s hay is nearly gone from your hay lofts. The farmers have been busy growing and harvesting their hay crops, and fresh, new bales have just arrived at your farm.

It should be a beautiful sight, right? Those bright green bales riding up the bale elevator to be stacked in your loft, ready to be greedily consumed by your horses.

Yet some people have concerns about fresh, new hay. Will the horses colic or founder from the fresh hay? We’ve all been warned against feeding grass clippings to horses or hay that’s just been mowed. So isn’t new hay dangerous, too? Shouldn’t it sit for a while before feeding?

The answer is, not if it’s been appropriately cured. To check the new hay in your loft, open a bale, take a look, smell it, and feel it. If it is dry and smells good, you’re fine. Dry hay is fine; if it wasn’t dry, it should not have been baled. So if it is wet and smells musty, it has not been properly cured and is not safe to feed.

If the hay has been treated with a preservative, it will not have that sweet smell; instead, it smells a bit like vinegar. In this case, ensure it is dry and mold-free, and you will be all right.

Another thing to keep in mind is the importance of transitioning your horses to the new hay properly. New hay is full of protein and nutrients. Mix a little of it in at a time with your old hay and gradually replace the old hay with the new. This way, you can progressively acclimate your horses to the new hay.

Feed less of the new hay due to its higher protein and nutrient content. It’s similar to transitioning your horses from grass hay to alfalfa. You wouldn’t just take away the timothy and throw alfalfa at them. You would switch gradually to allow their systems to adjust.

The extra protein and nutrients may be one reason some horsemen became nervous about new hay. Their horses might have had additional energy or reacted adversely to a sudden switch. But it’s not the hay (again, if it is properly cured), it is the process of adjustment.

So feel free to use that new hay in your loft. Just be sure to check that it is dry, and feed it according to the parameters suggested above.

While your hay may be delivered in perfect condition, how you take care of your hay loft may determine the condition it’s in when it reaches your horses’ mouths.

Hay lofts need to be clean. Old hay, insects, heat, and moisture will be very detrimental to the new hay stored in the loft.

It’s a great time of year to inspect your loft. Does it smell like somebody’s musty attic? Horses like, and therefore eat, clean, fresh-smelling hay. Hay soaks up odors like a sponge, and a smelly bale of hay is not going to appeal to any horse.

We like fresh-smelling hay, too. When we go to buy hay for our horses, what’s the first thing we notice after checking how it looks? The smell. So why put nice new hay in a dirty, smelly loft?

Take the time now to give your hay loft a thorough cleaning. Sweep out the old hay, checking carefully for insect nests or mold, and remove any found. Also, be sure to check the integrity of the floor in your hay loft. Is it strong enough to support the amount of hay in it?

It’s also essential to examine your hay equipment. Are the chains of your hay elevator adjusted to the proper tension? Is the electrical cord in good condition, or is it showing signs of wear? Have rodents chewed on it?

Hay elevators need to be lubricated, but be sure to use vegetable oil so you don’t contaminate the hay. Products designed for greasing most farm machinery are ineffective on a hay elevator. Yes, they lubricate the elevator, but the same petroleum-based product will also rub off onto your hay and into your horse’s stomach. So think before you grease!

One last thing. Look up. The roof. Do you see any holes? Unnoticed holes in hay loft roofs often lead to mold growth in hay! Give your hay loft a cleaning and inspection now, and the hay you store in it will remain fresh and sweet.

A constant problem in horses, parasites can result in unthrifty condition, ulcers, respiratory problems, anemia, chronic colic, and even death. Yet with the development of de-worming products that can be given orally rather than by tubing, allowing more widespread and frequent use of de-wormers, parasite infection has diminished, and the pot-bellied, fuzzy-haired “wormy” horses that used to be commonly seen are rare sights.

The pendulum has, however, swung, and wormers have unfortunately become too much of a good thing. Widespread use of wormers, along with the infrequent introduction of new anthelmintics, has created parasites that are resistant to many of the drugs. So how can we free our horses from worms without constantly giving them drugs and creating resistant parasites?

First, don’t worm indiscriminately. Have fecal counts done on your horses before de-worming, and then decide if you need to worm.

Proper pasture management can help tremendously. Paddocks should be cleaned regularly, and pastures should not be overcrowded. If possible, feed hay in bunks or mangers rather than on the ground.

Grazing a cow or sheep with your horses can make a big difference in parasite control. With a trend today towards keeping a few cows or sheep for meat/milk/wool, multi-species grazing becomes a possibility. And since cows and sheep don’t share the same parasites as horses, when they eat the eggs or larvae of a horse parasite, the life cycle of the parasite is broken.

In addition, cattle and sheep graze the tall grass (the rough) around manure piles that horses avoid. This grass helps protect parasites from heat and drying, shading them from direct sunlight and holding moisture. When the grass is grazed down, the parasites become exposed to the heat and drought, killing them.

Using these techniques can help diminish your horses’ parasite load without overusing wormers. The result is fewer drugs in your horse and fewer drug-resistant parasites.

Is your pasture looking like a herd of elephants stampeded through it? Or are you cultivating a robust crop of weeds instead of proper forage for your horses?

Fall is the ideal time to care for pastures and begin reclaiming them for healthy, nutritious grass for your horses. Why fall?

Rain in the fall, combined with snow over the winter, ensures that any lime applied to the fields has a chance to leach in. The ground is generally not too hard in the fall, which allows the rainwater to carry the lime with it down to the roots of the plants. And the fact that it will most likely be snow-covered for months means that the snow will continue the leaching process, and the ground will be insulated for a period from the impact of stamping, tromping hooves.
Now that you know when to provide tender loving care for your pasture, what should you do?

Start with a soil test. The Cornell Cooperative Extension can provide this service for you, or you can do it yourself. Additionally, we would be happy to do it for you.

A probe will be used to extract samples from various areas of your pastures or hay fields, and the combined samples will provide a mix that can give an accurate picture of the health of your soil.

You will receive a report from the lab detailing the pH of your soil and what rate of limestone (lime) is needed to bring your soil up to the correct level for the pasture crops you are growing. Most horse grasses require a neutral (7.0) pH for healthy growth.

This soil sampling should be done every year so that you can determine just what effect the lime is having on your soil pH and remain on top of things.

With the trend towards organic, healthy solutions, lime is perfect for bringing your pastures to optimum health.

Lime is not a fertilizer (many fertilizers are petroleum-based, not the healthiest solution for the environment). Lime is organic. The proper application of lime to your pastures will make a dramatic difference for your horses and the environment.

You may not see an immediate difference if your pasture was severely depleted. But keep applying the lime every fall, and soon the lush pasture of every horse’s dream will be yours!