wasted hay

[Mini-M Ranch]

I don't know. My girls chomp right down on the big stems first.

 

[cmjust0]

Ours are prone make tumbleweeds out of stemmy alfalfa.. Throw them stemmy alfalfa and the next day, the feeder will have three or four beach-ball sized wads of alfalfa stems in it, stripped clean of leaves and smaller branches.

Now, if you're like me and get aggravated that they're leaving tumbleweeds...and if you refuse to refill the feeder...and then it rains and keeps them off pasture...POOF!...the tumbleweeds magically disappear!

Amazing how that happens... :/

I can't help but chuckle when I see an empty feeder after a few days of leftover tumbleweeds.. I know it's mean, but I can just picture the goats looking out at the rain...then looking back at the tumbleweeds...then out at the rain again......."Well, crap."

 

[BDial]

I used it as bedding before I brought home my horse from the trainer. Now I feed them all in one big pile and the horse finishes off what the goats don't eat. No more wasted hay!!!

Oh ya I should also mention. I don't have to clean up goat poo either. For some reason my horse loves it.

 

[OHMYKIDS]

cmjust0 - I like it although my buck cries big time if I don't feed them the good stuff, I guess he's spoiled. His cries echos all over here. I know what you mean of tumbleweeds, yup, I get them. Sometimes I add the alfalfa leaves in there but they still pick the leaves and leave the rest.

So if I get a horse they'll eat the rest of the hay? That would be cool!

 

[kimmyh]

Yes, between hay waste and straw from kidding, we usually have a huge pile each spring that is beautiful compost by winter.

 

[currycomb]

yes, unfortunately, the horses are not as picky about what they eat and will go thru a pile of goat rejected hay and leave nothing, so, i guess get a horse, pony or donkey(ps the donkey can guard as well)

 

[kimmyh]

If your horse is eating goat poop, I would add feed/look for mineral issues. It is abborent behavior.

 

[freemotion]

Absolutely. Start buying supplements, including probiotics. That shouldn't be happening.....and give it some time, weeks, to correct itself. You can have a dozen horses on the same diet, and one is suffering from deficiency or insufficiency of something or other but the rest are fine. In humans, we now know that genetics play a huge role in each individuals' ability to obtain certain things from a normal diet. So this is no criticism of your horse care. He just needs more of something than most horses do, and it will take some sleuthing to figure it out.

A good multivitamin/multimineral supplement is a good place to start, also look at selenium/E (if you are in a selenium-poor area, or if your feed comes from a selenium-poor area.....a lot of areas are!), and probiotics. I would probably put him on all three at the maximum dose for three to six months, and then reduce them one by one to see what the culprit is. It takes too long to do it in reverse, give him one supplement for 3-6 months to see if it is the one, then try the next one. It will be a couple of years before you figure it out that way.

 

[freemotion]

Oh, and when I had my horse and her two pet pygmies all together, I would put a pile of hay on the ground for the mare and the goats would rush for the weeds first while the horse ate the grass. Not a leaf or spear was wasted! I started asking the farmer for hay from weedy fields! It worked out just great.

The only problem I ran into was that I always fed the mare her grain from a ground feeder, and the goats soon discovered that they could bonk the poor old gal away from her food. So I had to raise it up.

 

[kimmyh]

Please if you are feeding any animal on the ground make sure their feed is in a tub. Ground feeding is the best way out there to give your animals parasites, and risk Listerosis.