Forage Replacers
Just about every article on feeding will include a mention of the importance of fibre for the horse and rightly so but it is somewhat ironic therefore, that we don’t really know how much fibre the horse needs each day.
We tend to refer to how much forage a horse should eat rather than fibre. So why is fibre so important? The horse is an herbivore and therefore has a digestive system that functions best on an almost continuous supply of fibrous material. Some of the effects of too little fibre in the diet include:
- Increased acidity in the stomach – the saliva produced by chewing forage neutralises acidity in the stomach.
- Colic – just as for humans, fibre in the diet helps to promote regular bowel movements which push gas and material through, and out of, the gut. Too little fibre can result in a build-up of gas or an impaction, neither of which are good news for the horse.
- Leaky Gut Syndrome – too little fibre has been shown to result in a reduced mucus layer exposing the colonocytes (gut cells) which compromises their integrity. The gaps between cells become wider and allow substances to pass through into the body that wouldn’t normally do so.
If a horse or pony can no longer manage the longer length forages such as grass hay or haylage, it is vital that alternatives are used to ensure they receive sufficient fibre to maintain digestive health. There are other reasons why alternatives or additions to forage can be beneficial too.
There are a range of reasons why a forage replacer might be needed or beneficial.
- Forage shortage – hot, dry summers reduce the forage yield in areas of the UK. If your supply is reduced then topping up every day throughout the winter with a forage replacer is the best approach. Avoiding running out and having to make a more drastic change to your horse’s diet helps reduce the risk of digestive upsets such as colic.
- Forage that’s too good or not good enough! – long hot summers also result in very high sugar levels in some forages which will be too much for those with EMS, PPID or that are prone to laminitis. Using a low sugar forage replacer can help you manage your horse’s sugar intake. Equally, if your forage isn’t that great for some reason, then topping up with a more nutritious forage replacer can help to avoid weight loss and poor performance.
- Variety in the diet – Offering a bucket or two of chopped fibre alongside the usual forage ration is a great way to keep your horse interested and encourage foraging behaviour. This is beneficial for all horses and ponies but may be particularly useful for those with limited appetites or fussy feeders where offering a variety of fibre sources may help to increase the overall intake.
- Does your horse have respiratory issues? – Equine asthma also referred to as RAO and COPD, means that some horses need a super-clean forage source. Soaking and steaming may not be practical or possible to do in some situations which is when straw free forage replacers are particularly useful.
- Is your horse struggling to chew hay or haylage? – poor dentition isn’t just a problem for older horses; diastemas can affect younger horses and ponies too. If they simply cannot manage longer length forages then a short-chopped forage replacer may be suitable or it may even be necessary to use pelleted fibres soaked into a mash.
How do I know if my horse is struggling to chew forage?
There are some very obvious signs such as quidding where balled up pieces of food are dropped out of the horse’s mouth and tend to accumulate around the hay net or feeder. However, there are some earlier more subtle signs that you may not be aware of. Studies have shown that pieces of fibre greater than 3.6mm in the horse’s droppings are an indicator of dental abnormalities. And for donkeys, the threshold length is slightly shorter at 3.3mm due to differences in conformation.
What you need to know about feeding forage replacers
- Not all feeds can be used as a forage replacer for horses – they must be high fibre and low starch, as well as being nutritionally comparable to forage to be suitable.
- Feeding insufficient forage replacer, and therefore fibre, in the diet increases the risk of digestive issues including colic and loose droppings. It is also likely to result in weight loss as well.
- A minimum of 1.5% of bodyweight on a dry matter basis should be provided daily when totally replacing the usual forage ration. For a 500kg horse this is 7.5kg dry matter and given that many forage replacers are around 90% dry matter this equates as 8.3kg of forage replacer as fed (7.5 ÷ 0.9 = 8.3).
- Forage replacers for horses can’t be fed in a net and instead should be fed in a large wide bottomed bucket. Putting a football or some large, smooth pebbles on top of the bucket can help to slow the rate of intake.
- Like all dietary changes a forage replacer should be introduced gradually into the ration over the period of at least a few weeks.
- One of the first concerns many horse owners have about feeding forage replacers is meal size. It is appropriate to leave large meals of fibre based feeds for your horse to eat just as you would a net of forage. It is only concentrate feeds that provide larger amounts of starch from cereal grains that need to be fed in restricted amounts.
- Soaked feeds should be made morning for night and vice versa to keep them fresh and any hay replacer not consumed within the day should be discarded.
Want to know how good your forage is?
The only way to know what your forage is contributing to your horse’s requirements is to carry out a nutritional analysis. It is possible to carry out tests on your hay before and after soaking if you are concerned about sugar levels
Which forage replacer for my horse?
A range of ingredients are used to provide chopped fibre which are summarized in Table 1. They can be divided into legumes such as alfalfa and sainfoin, grass and straw. The grass in chopped fibres is usually dried with hot air and so it is harvested when it is much younger than grass harvested to make hay. This means grass based chopped fibres are much more digestible and nutritious than hay. If a chopped fibre product contains hay it should refer to it as hay rather than grass as there are important differences between the two.
Straw used in chopped fibres is usually dust-extracted and so cleaner than using big-bales direct from farms. Straw used in Dengie products is sourced from farmers who are aware of NOPS and poisonous plants and understand the specific requirements for horses.
Alfalfa and other legumes such as sainfoin are a great way of adding essential amino acids such as lysine and counteracting the shortfalls in other types of forage. This makes them ideal for including in forage replacers for veterans and performance horses.
It is very important to consider that any forage replacer that is based on grass will contain more sugar than those that are predominantly based on alfalfa or straw – assuming other ingredients are comparable. When sugar declarations are made on chopped forages it is important to differentiate between simple sugars and water soluble carbohydrates (storage sugars). There is no legal requirement to declare WSC values as such and so it is worth checking they know what the WSC value is – if it looks very low but contains grass for example, they’ve probably declared the simple sugar level.
Table 1 summarises some of the pros and cons of different types of chopped fibre.
If your horse or pony can no longer manage short chopped fibre then the next step is to move to pelleted fibres that can be fed soaked to make them easier to chew. It is possible to maintain horses on this type of feed with fresh pasture indefinitely as long as they are able to consume sufficient quantities to maintain their health and condition. In these scenarios Dengie Pure Grass Pellets or a high fibre cube make great bases to the ration and then a proportion of sugar beet and Dengie Alfalfa Pellets can be added to increase the energy content of the ration if needed.
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