Winter Feeding Challenges

Not that I would know for sure, but I highly suspect it's way easier (and cheaper) to acquire illegal drugs in his town that it is to buy hay.

Border security found all the hay the smugglers tried to hide in this coke shipment.

This year's been especially bad...often you can't even buy it at any price because there simply isn't any! Current pricing for a ton of timothy delivered here is $675, if you can get it. There's a waiting list, apparently limited to previous customers only. I'm lucky in that I found some local hay last summer and that I work in the same town as the timothy supplier once a week and can bring back 4 bales at a time in my truck on the ferry without a hazardous goods permit.

So, I've been doing everything I can to stretch the hay out, and surprisingly, I feel like my horses are looking better than ever this winter.

Bridget. I'm happy with her weight this winter. (One of her previous barn kids taught her to smile :)

Nothing groundbreaking here, but here's what's working for me.

- A FeedXL subscription. I think the one I chose was $50 for the year and it's the best money I spend on feeding. I can add a profile for each horse, and easily edit and plan their diets virtually each season as they get more or less pasture or a change in hay, and still ensure their dietary needs are being met. It's saved me money because I was previously feeding more hay than I needed in winter and a more expensive supplement/grain combo than I really needed year round.

Yum yum.

- Alfalfa cubes. They're more easily and cheaply acquired here than bales of hay, so I've been adding 2lbs/day for Sophie, and 1lb/day for Bridget for about a year now. I soak them to mush and hide their vitamin/mineral mix in there too. Depending on hay availability, I've previously tripled that amount and still had happy ponies. The con to these as hay replacement is of course they eat it much faster, and I've seen some studies showing the longer stems of traditional baled hay are more filling and a better source of fibre. I feel better about feeding soaked hay cubes than I do other options like beet pulp or rice bran since I'm just looking for straight up baled hay substitute.

Pictures of ponies approving of my dinner selection. You can see Bridget's funny white spot under her neck here, too. So cute.

- Hay nets. Less waste, and spreads eating time out. I can't not use them.

Bridget is savage if you don't give her some on the ground to stuff her face with first, tho.

- Taking advantage of any pasture time. Sometimes it means multiple trips to the barn in a day, but this time of the year if the horses can get out of their paddocks and onto better grass even for a couple of hours on a sunny day, it's free forage (and a nice mental break for them too, I think!)

Am happy with Sophie's weight too. She's really filled out!

- A locally manufactured vitamin/mineral supplement. I was previously buying ration balancer grain, but there was a whole lot of filler and stuff in there they didn't really need, plus feeding the recommended amount meant multiple bags per month. I'm liking just feeding the vitamin/mineral powder that is balanced for our local pasture and hay. The bag lasts way longer, too so it's a lot more cost effective.

(Sidenote: chatting with the vet last year, she was fairly vocal about researching the grain I feed and making sure the ingredient list was available and there was no clay or other binding agents, no unidentified protein sources, no molasses, etc. It had never occurred to me as I usually just read the nutrition label, and buy the low sugar grain but yeah...there's some interesting stuff in some of it and low sugar is sometimes subjective. As mentioned above I opted to switch it up, but do your research and make up your own mind, of course.)

- Owning big ponies. I know that sounds like a joke, but I'm halfway serious. I couldn't have a really hard keeper and live here. We don't have year round pasture, or an unlimited guaranteed supply of hay, and the closest feed/grain supply comes via the ferry once a week. Our local feed store does an amazing job, but in my experience there is no guarantee they'll have what you need in stock on any given day and space on the weekly truck is limited. Currently, Bridget gets by on 10lbs of mixed local and ttimothy hay daily and Sophie gets 15. I'm really lucky!