Controlling Hay Intake
Several of our horses have one problem or the other with their diet. At least one of our miniature horses has a sugar problem, where she can’t eat fresh grass because of the levels of sugar in the grass. She also must take daily medication to help offset the issues. In humans, we would call it diabetes, but in the equine world they call it, Equine metabolic syndrome (EMS), which is described as a disorder associated with inappropriate blood insulin levels (insulin dysregulation) along with a combination of increased fat deposition and a reduced ability to lose weight.
We have a horse that has a problem eating her food, where she gets what is called Choke, and choke is just what it sounds like, the horse is choking on their food. Some days they can clear it themselves and other times it requires human assistance either helping to move it or a veterinarian to put a tube down the horse’s throat and clear it that way.
Since she has this problem, we must ensure that her daily grain is soaked in water and that she drinks her grain. However, she still has problems eating hay.
One of our miniature horses has a weight problem so we must limit his intake of grain and hay.
Because of this and the fact that miniature horses should not have much grass, we keep the two miniature horses and the horse that gets choke really easy on what is known as a dry lot. Strange name as it has nothing to do with wet or dry, it has to do with grass, vs dirt. A dry lot is all dirty or mostly dirt. This, however, means that we need to feed them hay since they don’t have grass.
A horse will graze all day long, and the running joke for our full-size horse who gets choke really easily, is that she will pull her lazy boy up to the hay rounder and sit her fat ass down and not move all day. She is part draft, which is where the lazy part comes from as draft horses are known to be lazy.
We no longer feed them like that, where they would have a large 1,000-pound round bale of hay at their access all day long. Now we feed them their hay in a large, netted bag that holds about one square bale of hay. This method slows them down a little which helps control their weight.
Here is one of our miniature horses eating out of a hay bag.
