Whoever invented modern hay-baling equipment garners far too little praise from horse owners. The concept of dividing unwieldy bales into flakes, or biscuits, qualifies as sheer genius.
Despite off-the-chart convenience, conscientious horse owners maintain a niggling uneasiness about feeding hay by the flake. What is it that bothers them?
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Feeding aficionados probably hit on the problem quickly. It is another case of feeding by volume, not by weight, akin to feeding a scoop of this feed or a dipper of that feed, rather than a specific quantity based on weight.
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“To maintain body condition, horses typically consume about 1.5-2% of their body weight on a dry matter basis each day in concentrates and forage, with the forage component accounting for 1-1.5% of body weight for most horses,” said Catherine Whitehouse, M.S., nutrition advisor at Kentucky Equine Research (KER).
Example: a large pony weighs 800 lb (365 kg) and could be expected to consume 12-16 lb (5.5-7 kg) of feed per day, with 8-12 lb (3.6-5 kg) of that forage.
With those calculations in mind, how many flakes of timothy hay would the pony require daily? Two or three? Five or six? Half a bale? Can a reasonable calculation be made with only this information?
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The missing factor in this feeding puzzle is an estimation of how much each flake weighs. As anyone that’s unloaded wagons of hay can attest, weight of hay varies, sometimes a lot!
Some hay is fluffy and light, and weighs little; other hay is densely packed and weighs more than expected. So, it’s best to find a portable scale of some kind—a fishing scale is an easy-to-find solution—and measure several flakes from different bales, carefully noting each weight. An average of the weights provides a representative estimate that can be used to determine consumption.
Assuming the orchardgrass/timothy hay in our scenario weighs 3 lb (1.4 kg) per flake, it is easy to calculate how much the pony requires daily: three to four flakes.
This provides a sound basis for forage consumption. Factors may change this allotment: time on pasture, amount of work, or desired body condition changes.
Source: https://t-tees.com
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