Lisa Unleashed: Hay Is For Horses, Part I
With the recent cold snap I’ve become nostalgic for hay. That’s right, hay. Whenever sub-zero wind chills make the news, I take a deep breath and can recall that sweet smell of alfalfa and timothy on crisp winter mornings.
My old horse would eat copious amounts of hay when the mercury dipped below freezing. Hay is what kept him warm and each winter it seemed all I did from sunrise to sunset to moonrise was fill his hay net over and over and over again.
Experienced horse people know the centuries-old animal husbandry tactic: when it gets colder, feed your horse more hay and he will stay warm. When a horse lived in the backyard, my life used to revolve around this winter hay ritual — check the temperature, adjust the flakes delivered. In addition, I gained expert knot-tying status as I hung the string hay net on the inside of his shed every morning, noon, and night. An added benefit, my biceps and triceps became shapely from hoisting heavy hay-laden nets over my head to secure the net.
Keeping Warm Outdoors
My old horse, Speculation, was a outdoor horse. He lived in a paddock with a two sided run-in shed attached to the corner of a small cottage that doubled as the ‘barn.’ The barn held two tons of hay for the season.
Horses kept and fed hay exclusively usually do well in winter, when they have enough crude protein, nutrients, and water to meet their needs to stay warm. This can be accomplished with 100 percent forage diet if the horse is allowed to free-fed hay to adjust to his needs. Plus, there is a low risk of founder (laminitis) when feeding hay exclusively versus too much grain or green pasture.
But most people today keep horses on what’s called a ‘limited feed’ diet of hay and concentrated feed, usually a commercially prepared grain mixture that has all the crude protein, nutrient, vitamin, and mineral balances.
So when is it too cold for horses? Horses living outside exclusively have adjusted to the cold weather throughout the season — usually it takes about two to three weeks to adjust. But when you have these cold snaps, you have to be mindful of the low critical temperature (LCT) for horses. The LCT is the outdoor temperature at which the horse can no longer maintain his energy needs to stay warm. This threshold is usually, at its lowest, at about 5 degrees. Brrrrr.
It can vary for individual horses based on age, health, and condition. For some horses that could be as high as 32 degrees or even 40 for one that is already thin, very old, or sick. It seemed that 32 degrees was the benchmark to increase forage for my old horse, who was in his late 20s.
Hay Formula for Warmth
When looking at the temperature don’t forget to take into account the wind chill temperature since that is what your horse is feeling. Once it’s this cold, you need to step in and make sure you start feeding your horse extra hay to help him produce more energy to keep warm.
The only way to keep horses warm is through extra energy production in their diet. Adding extra blankets, if housed outside, will do nothing for warmth. In fact, it will hinder his ability to stand his hair on its end to capture his body heat close to his skin to stay warm. Just like when we get goose bumps when we are chilled, it’s the same response in a horse.
Wearing a blanket flattens the hair and keeps it from sticking up. Horses may also run around to try and keep warm, or they may stand still to conserve energy when they have little energy left for heat production.
The easiest way to make sure your horse gets enough hay to stay warm is to free-feed him. They will eat what they need, when they need it. If your horse is on limited feed, use this quick guide: For every ten degrees the temperature dropped below my horse’s LCT (32 degrees), I added about 2-2.5 percent of his body weight in hay. For example, he weighed about 1,000 pounds, so that meant I would increase his hay by 2.5 pounds per ten degree decrease. Depending on the bale of hay, that could be anywhere from one big to several small flakes of hay per day. In fact, during a rather nasty blizzard this method worked so well, that as the snow melted off his coat from the heat it formed icicles on his jowls and belly. The icicles actually clinked like little champagne glasses as he ran around in the paddock bucking.
This calculating method works well only when you know what your horse’s maintenance feed requirements are, and his LCT. Next week, I’ll explain how to figure out the optimal amount to feed your horse and the benefits of hay testing to achieve this goal.
Lisa Peterson, a lifelong dog and horse lover, has worn many hats as a communications professional: writer, journalist, columnist, blogger, podcast host, pet safety and dog breed expert. She has won numerous writing, public relations and journalism awards. She lives in Newtown with her husband and three Norwegian Elkhounds. Contact Lisa via Twitter @LisaNPeterson or elvemel@gmail.com, or visit her blog www.lisaunleashed.com.