Hay Replacers: Options When Your Horse Can’t Manage Forage

Maintaining your horse’s health is essential, and the horse food you provide them with is extremely important. Sometimes your horse won’t be able to manage traditional horse food due to a wide range of different reasons, so what can be done? Thankfully, there are a multitude of different options available if your horse can’t manage forage, so they can continue to live the healthy and happy life they deserve, regardless of what life throws at them. Read on to find out about some appropriate alternatives, so you can make an informed decision when opting for a forage replacer for your horse.

When To Use Forage Replacers

Reasons your horse might choose a forage replacer to include:

Poor Dentition

Conditions such as diastema, or gaps in-between the teeth will mean your horse cannot handle forage. To maintain an adequate fibre intake, horses with less than perfect dentition require a forage replacer to make chewing easier. Good forage replacers for horses with poor dentition can include chop fibre feed in the short term, or an entirely soaked hay replacer in a longer-term scenario.

Issues Acquiring Forage

Whether it is due to a lack or forage, or due to the available forage being of a poor quality, it’s important to find a replacement to ensure your horse gets the food it needs. This is often due to the unpredictability of the British weather, with shortages resulting in alternatives such as forage replacers becoming the norm.

Variety of Diet

Sometimes, offering your horse chopped fibre alongside their usual forage ration can prove to be beneficial in keeping your horse interested, encouraging foraging behaviour within them. The benefits here are primarily for horses with a poor appetite or with fussy feeding tendencies. By offering a variety of fibre sources, you can help your horse meet their overall calorie requirements. 

Feeding Forage Replacers: What you need to know

It’s important to understand that not all horse feed can be used as a forage replacer. Hay replacers must be of high fibre and low starch ratio while having a nutritionally comparable structure to traditional forage.

If you feed your horse an insufficient forage replacer, the lack of fibre can result in digestive issues such as colic, loose droppings, and inevitably, weight loss. It is advisable to provide your horse with a minimum of 1.5% of their body weight on the dry matter when using a forage ration. Many forage replacers are 90% of dry matter, so this must be calculated and compared against your horse’s weight for optimal effects. It’s also important that you do not attempt to feed your horse forage replacers through a net. A wide-bottomed bucket should be used with some smooth pebbles on top, assisting with reducing the rate of intake. 

Choosing The Best Hay Replacer

The best hay replacer should initial be short-chopped fibred, helping to extend the consumption period. If this is inaccessible or unmanageable for your horse, feeds that you are able to soak to create mash are your next best option. Products including sugar beet, ‘pure’ alfalfa pellets or chaffs are only suitable as a partial hay replacer and grass-based products should be avoided for laminitis prone horses. You should also check that your hay replacer contains adequate levels of vitamins and minerals to make sure your horse’s diet is well-balanced, while also ensuring you don’t feed them levels of vitamins and minerals that are unsuitably high, causing potential harm to them. 

As with all dietary additions or changes, you should gradually introduce forage replacements over a period of a few weeks. Once this has been introduced appropriately, you may leave larger amounts of forage replacer within your horse’s bucket. Within the winter months, you may also want to consider supplementing your horse with an additional hay replacer. This is essential if there are any clinical conditions hindering your horse’s ability to feed adequately.