How to choose the right hay for your horse

hi I'm Erica from inside out equine health today I'm going to talk about hay so people like to talk about premium quality hay to me premium quality hay is hay that is clean dust free and mold free aside from that all hay has a place in the equine diet and is not necessarily one is necessarily premium quality over the other premium quality hay is the hay that is right for your horse so let's talk about a few hay that we've got here so let's start off with the really obvious one so we've got your loops of hay which is really really high in protein and calcium really really high in calories and really really palatable so all horses love the taste of loosen well all that I've come across so very very easy to get them to eat it but certainly not appropriate to be the only form of roughage in the it fried diets just too high in protein and calcium and sets the whole diet out of whack however it's really low in non-structural carbohydrate throw perfect for insulin resistant horses or even laminated horses to have a little bit of it to get their calcium and protein content and as you can see very very palatable even to the fussy thoroughbred and as you can see this is a very very grassy loose and very very lots of leaves and hardly any stalk so this is really really high in calories and to get rid of these calories you would have to shake off all the leaves like this leaving the stalks or you could of course soak it as well and get rid of the water that it is so amusing we go to the other end of the spectrum now so this is a native grass hay this is Road take really really low in calories sugar protein everything like that but a fantastic source of roughage and if you've got a horse locked up if you've got a laminated course if you've got a really really overweight horse this is the perfect thing to feed it horses need between one and a half and two and a half percent of their body wait in roughage every single day so for a 500 kilo horse that's about 10 kilos of hay each day or through today so if you've got a left up horse and they need to eat 10 kilos of hate and this is the perfect stuff for it and it's very very clean okay we've got a right here so a fairly green right again depending on the horse and its needs this could be appropriate it's got a tiny little bit of clover in it to make it a little bit tastier but again this is a fairly standard rye and it would be impossible to tell it's sugar content without doing a hay test and then up here we have a bit of a mixed Hey now this was perched as purchased as a grass hay however you can see that it very obviously has potent hay and in fact the whole oat still in it so if you've got a horse that has issues with sugar so if you've got an insulin resistant horse or horses even a horse that ties off this kind of hay is not going to be appropriate yes your grass here is okay but it's got quite a lot of open hay in it so again I wouldn't be providing too many horses with this as their major source of roughage but a biscuit here or there no problems at all so as you can see the type of hay that is is premium really depends on your horse and your horses names but if you look like encourage everyone to feed their horse high it's a fantastic addition even in spring you know if you wants to eat a whole lot of this in spring you really sorted it helps they've got and all that kinda thing so it's a small variety of the Hays that are on option

Channel: Erika Gough

Views: 18,573

Keywords: horse, equine, nutrition, hay, diet, feed, lucerne, alfalfa, oaten, grass, rye, clover

Id: Pwqr846bzeo

Length: 4min 19sec (259 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 27 2016