Rambling on about hay...
I had an interesting conversation with a local hay guy yesterday. If you live in New England, you know it's been raining almost every day for a long time! A minimum of 2 clear days is necessary to cut and bale hay, and 3 days is better, but we've had that maybe once in the past month. So the hayfields grow and grow and most people have cut less than half of what they normally would by this time.
Feronia got switched from BO's super-rich second-cut timothy to lower-quality "mature mixed grass hay" a few months ago because the farrier caught some potentially bad changes in her hooves. She's not an easy-keeping Morgan, but apparently she inherited the breed's tendency to founder :( The hay switch took care of the problem, and has the added benefit of taking longer to eat because the grass hay is pretty stemmy. Also, because it's less expensive, I am able to feed it to her free choice rather than the standard 5 flakes/day.
The hay guy says that the way things are going around here, "mature mixed grass hay" is all that will be available locally, by the time things dry out enough to cut hay. He is of the opinion that most horses are better off on this lower-quality hay, given free choice, than on the rich stuff. He's not talking about high-performance horses in heavy training, just your average pleasure horse and lower-level show horse.
Any opinions? I will admit that I knew almost nothing about hay until last year, and now I find it kind of fascinating, in a geeky way :)
Feronia got switched from BO's super-rich second-cut timothy to lower-quality "mature mixed grass hay" a few months ago because the farrier caught some potentially bad changes in her hooves. She's not an easy-keeping Morgan, but apparently she inherited the breed's tendency to founder :( The hay switch took care of the problem, and has the added benefit of taking longer to eat because the grass hay is pretty stemmy. Also, because it's less expensive, I am able to feed it to her free choice rather than the standard 5 flakes/day.
The hay guy says that the way things are going around here, "mature mixed grass hay" is all that will be available locally, by the time things dry out enough to cut hay. He is of the opinion that most horses are better off on this lower-quality hay, given free choice, than on the rich stuff. He's not talking about high-performance horses in heavy training, just your average pleasure horse and lower-level show horse.
Any opinions? I will admit that I knew almost nothing about hay until last year, and now I find it kind of fascinating, in a geeky way :)