Hay chopping

PasoBaby_CarolU · Hay chopping

The grass hay I bought this year was poorly crimped and so has long stems. Not hard to digest stems, but I guess they are hard to chew up. My older horses are leaving them and not eating them.

Any ideas on chopping their hay up smaller? I don't want it so small that they choke on it, just that they don't have to chew so much.

gaitinalong

You can't make hay silage out of it at this juncture so, unless someone can build and patent a giant blender to chop it, I'm of no help

How much is being wasted? Are all the horses refusing the hay or just a few? My 25+ guy has four molars missing and can't eat the stemmy stuff.

We try really hard to feed him all the "drippings" but it isn't always easy. What he doesn't eat, I scoop up and give to "Mikey who eats anything" in the morning.

I also feed my senior fella about 3 lbs of soaked timothy/alfalfa cubes every day.

One thought would be to add soaked hay cubes to their daily diet but that could really run into money for you.

The thought that's the biggest hassle and PITA would be to re-sell the hay you have stored and buy something better.

Wish I had something more intelligent to offer but that's my best shot - lol

Mandy'sMarty

Check out the post on this blog: http://www.b4boots.com/w/

They are using a 2002 leaf vac.

PasoBaby_CarolU

Oh, the others are eating it just fine. I am forking the stems over the fence for the others. But, I weigh my hay and keep all on diets, so this messes up my feeding, since I have to feed my Senior Citizens more and my boys less...but how much less?

I do have one horse that puts hay in the water trough to soften it. He learned this with tough stemmy hay. This hay isn't tough, just long.

gaitinalong

Mandy'sMarty

You're quite welcome!

I happened across that blog yesterday, read that post...and bookmarked it then just in case I ever had a need for such an application.

Clarissa

Can you track down an old hand operated chaff cutter Carol? They used to be turned by horse or by hand, but once electric engines can about people set them up that way. So they are very old pieces of equipment with the motor added much later. A guy here buys old chaff cutters & adds the electric motor & resells them for a very tidy profit because so many people do make their own chaff here.

I discovered a much easier way to acheive the same result.

I put my push mower in an old bath tub that I set up on some house blocks. I put the catcher on the mower, started it, fed the grass hay under the front & it streamed into the catcher as fine(ish) chaff.

I left the mower in the tub for about 12mths during a very dry year so it was always set up with a tarp over it. I made huge bale bags full at a time that lasted me a few weeks. But it was very dusty dirty work & I would hose off after which I looked forward to since it was quite hot weather mostly.

I mixed it with a little lucrene hay for flavour, soaked it & fed it out in the hay hammock. They wouldn't eat the grass hay on it's own but they mostly needed fill so I chaffed the grass hay & mixed it with the lucerne 4:1. I experimented with putting the lucerne hay through the mower at the same time to mix both together but the lucerne just turned to dust basically.

You can see the end of one black bale bag laying on the ground behind the mower. It took 5 catchers full to fill the bale bag & I made 3 or 4 bags at a time. I don't know how many small square bales that would be because my grass hay came in a big 4x4 round bale. Being quite dry the chaff stored well.

PasoBaby_CarolU

Clarissa, you absolutely amaze me at times. That is ingenious.

thelmanelle

sandra smith

Coarse hay seems to be the theme this year. My horses are not liking theirs. It came from 2 different farms about 2 weeks apart in cutting. As long as they can find anything that resembles grass, they're going to eat that and the hay as a last resort.

The chopping sounds like a lot of work, but I may have to resort to it.

Sandra

thelmanelle

You know a mulch mower might be in order for inside barns on this sort of issue?