This year in Western Australia most horse owners are asking themselves the same question. How they’re going to make the hay they’ve got or can get, last until next season’s harvest becomes available.
For the first time in a long time, everybody’s having to make hay buying decisions based on what they can get, not what they want or what they think their horses need. Most importantly, how to make the most of the hay that they do have.
We’ll work on the assumption that horses do best on ad-lib hay. Not all types of horses and not all types of hay obviously, but generally speaking this is thought to be true by most people. We’ll also assume that what follows won’t suit every person, property or horse and it’s not meant to, it’s one person’s opinion shared to get others thinking about different ways to tackle the same problem, which is less hay than they’d like and horses needing to be fed.
Types of hay
Over the last ten years in Western Australia, low sugar meadow hay (predominantly rye grass) has become the more popular choice than the previously favoured oaten hay, because it’s gentler on the teeth and kinder to the metabolism. Meadow hay also been the first to run down in stock levels everywhere, leaving most people with a choice of low-calorie but often unpalatable barley straw, expensive Rhodes and Teff hay and delicious but high octane oaten and wheaten hay (with some exceptions) if those choices are still available at all. Other variations of hay exist but these are the most commonly found.
So if we can’t feed what we’ve previously fed, which for many people in Western Australia, is a big round bale of meadow or oaten hay in the middle of the paddock covered by a net and a hut, what are we supposed to do?
We’re supposed to adapt, which is what humans are pretty great at.
Like humans, modern horses now live a more sedentary lifestyle than they were designed for, which was a nomadic life, covering enough ground to find and eat a sufficient quantity of low-quality food and water to sustain life.
Domestic livestock on the other hand, like sheep and cows, have a different origin. From the start of human agriculture in around 12,000 BCE, their living conditions were designed to maximise their calorie intake and minimise their calorie expenditure, to arrive at a net result at the end of their relatively short life, of as much plump and juicy goodness as possible. Which incidentally, is the same strategy used by sumo wrestlers who live ten to twenty fewer years than the average man.
While horses have traditionally been included in the term domestic livestock, our goal for them has never really been plumpness or juiciness, rather, a long life, characterised by usefulness to us, leanness, athleticism, trainability, calmness and physical soundness.
Conditions designed for sheep and cattle
Because it’s how it’s always been done, is the reason that we still keep our horses in living areas that incentivise consumption over movement and ensure an animal will get from birth to plumpness and juiciness in the shortest amount of time.
It’s the reason that many of our horses are plagued with modern metabolic ailments like EMS and laminitis to name just two that are becoming more common all the time.
Why can’t our horses just stop eating so much then?
That’s a great question and one that might be easier to answer if we put ourselves in their shoes. They might have been designed to eat constantly, but they were also designed to move constantly.
We weren’t designed to eat constantly but we were designed to move constantly, so what do you think would happen to us if we changed our own living conditions from what they currently are, to an indefinite, seated holiday in the middle of a self-refilling all-you-can-eat buffet?
That’s the equine equivalent of living in a relatively small yard or paddock, with a massive hay roll for company and an empty schedule to fill with eating.
What do conditions for horses look like then?
Like many of the animals you’d see on an African safari, horses are grazers and browsers. Their default setting is to roam in a circuit around a defined territory or home range, that includes elements like fresh water, grazing and safe places to rest and foal.
They will move through this circuit in such a way that they get to the water at sundown each day and the safe places to rest, by nightfall. They will repeat this again and again until there is a reason for them to change their route, like a water hole drying up or there being no grazing left in their area.
They will be mindful of not overstepping into the territory of neighbouring herds or encountering predators, so will always be on the alert for danger, always thinking, and never staying in the same place for very long.
If you haven’t already read Paddock Paradise by Jaime Jackson, it’s a quick, informative read.
Contrast this with the life of the average, modern day horse or pony
We can’t magically turn our five-acre semi-rural oasis into the Kruger National Park but we can incorporate elements of this way of living into the environment we create for our horses, because that’s really what our role as a horse owner is, to influence the environment our horses exist in, to ensure better outcomes for everyone. And this year, to use the minimum amount of hay possible without affecting the health of our horses is an outcome we’re all interested in.
Shaping environments to influence outcomes
Shaping environments to influence outcomes isn’t a new thing. Advertisers have been doing it for years with the design of supermarkets and casinos, to get us to do more of what they want us to do which is to hang around and spend money.
When Google, the global leaders in anticipating human behaviour, became aware that the design of their new staff canteens was contributing in a massive way to the ill-health of their staff through dramatic weight gains from access to unlimited, healthy but all-you-can-eat canteen food, they took notice. The Google Food Team and the Yale Center for Customer Insights partnered to observe, analyze, and present the same food choices to staff in a different way.
“The salad bar was moved to the front entrance so it’d be the first thing people saw. Plates were reduced to smaller sizes to encourage better portions, and desserts were made into smaller portions and moved to a far corner of the cafeteria. Fruit is available on counters, while candy is in the drawers. Finally, water bottles were placed at eye level in fridges, while soda and other sugary drinks were placed lower, behind frosted glass.”
What this look like in the context of horses
We could recreate elements of a home range, by instead of providing unlimited access to one bottomless supply of hay located in one place, distributing the same quantity of hay in a way that would make movement and more natural behaviour likely.
We could also be killing two birds with one stone, because based on my experience, hay consumption will decrease.
Since moving from rolls to squares this year, I’ve started experimenting with the placement of hay at night. I already offer hay spread around a large area during the day, but for convenience, I’ve always fed hay from a roll in a net and a hut at night.
So far, I’ve noticed a significant decrease in the quantity of hay my two horses will go through at night – at least 30% – when it’s spread around, compared when when it’s in one place. By spread around, I mean when smaller quantities of hay are put in nets spaced out in the furthest corners of the same 40m x 30m paddock, compared with in a hay box or hay hut like the one above. I’ve also noticed a difference in the placement of their manure. When the hay is in one place, so is their manure, usually just a few feet from the hay. When the hay is spread around, so is their manure which means they’re moving a lot more too.
Keep a look out for a future article sharing the details of the difference in their hay consumption and movement using a tracking device and objective measurement.
So if you’re short of hay this year, what can you do or where can you start to get the most from your hay?
Here are some ideas that could help you get creative. It goes without saying that everything worth having comes at a cost. The cost to us of the convenience of having horses on a hay roll, is the additional hay we will go through, but the cost of doing something else, is the time it will take us to do it. We can have everything we want, just not at the same time.
Consider the following alternatives to 24/7 hay in a single source if you’re not already don’t these things:
· Limiting access to ‘hay in one place’ to just part of the day or not at all.
· Spacing out essential services like food, water and resting areas, to give horses a reason to move – even within a small paddock or yard.
· Investigating the creation of a sacrifice paddock/area/track to keep your horses off your grass areas until they’re well established and you can manage the horses access to them.
· Investigating ways of feeding small quantities of hay in your yards or paddocks – including hanging nets on trees, from poles, on fences or on gates, or putting them in smaller feeding boxes like plastic fruit crates.
· Investigating whether you could incorporate elements of the Paddock Paradise or Equicentral method of horse keeping into your property – join the Horse Track System group for ideas.
· Providing horses with things to do that aren’t eating, which includes company and enrichment activities like water buffets, puzzle boxes with treats in them and natural areas to investigate and explore – join this group for ideas Enrichment For Horses Facebook page .
· Combining hay of varying qualities into a ‘hay salad’ to encourage consumption of less palatable but more readily available types of hay.
· Feeding all hay in small-holed hay nets.
· Investing in good quality hay nets – I love the Greedy Steed nets.
· Having plans in place for different weather conditions to reduce waste – some horses won’t eat wet hay and nobody will eat spilled hay that gets trampled into mud.
· In cold weather, lightly rugging horses to reduce the amount of hay they need to keep warm.
· Emptying the dregs of hay bags out onto the ground for horses to nose through.
· Recycling plastic barrels to make mini hay huts to keep hay out of the rain (if that causes you to waste hay) – see the Home Track Facebook page for pictures.
· Offering a low-sugar, high-fibre soaked feed like Thompson & Redwood Lupin Fibre Cubes morning and night at times when stomach acid production is at its highest and horses would eat more hay.
These are just some of the ways that I use to make the most of hay at my place. I’d love to hear about some of yours.