How Hay Helps Your Horse Keep Warm When It's Raining
With all this rain has your horse’s condition dropped? Is he looking tucked up and ribby?
Most horses tend to lose weight during cold, wet periods as they burn more energy to stay warm and often don't graze as much as they normally would.
So, what can you do to help maintain your horse’s condition and keep him warm while it’s raining? The answer is hay, hay, hay!
The fibre in hay and other forages is digested in your horse’s hindgut via the process of bacterial fermentation. A by-product of this fermentation process is HEAT!
So, by feeding extra forage you are topping up the calories (energy) your horse is burning to stay warm, whilst also giving your horse’s gut bacteria more fibre to ferment, which means they will generate more heat to help to keep him warm!
Because of the ‘warming’ properties of forage, your horse will benefit more from an additional feed of hay (or any other type of high fibre feed) than an extra feed of grain or pellets in very wet, cold weather.
Where possible bringing your horse in for a break from the rain to dry out will also help keep him happy and give his soaked feet the opportunity to dry out.
We have lucerne, compressed lucerne, compressed grassy lucerne, compressed meadow, compressed oaten and compressed teff hay available.
Chaffs and your super fibre feeds such as Benchmark’s Perfect Mash and Super Fibre Mash, and Pryde’s EasiFibre will also be beneficial to your horse whilst it's wet!
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