16/03/2025
Great post about hay transitions I remember a great neighbour once sharing their understanding of the gut’s microbiome requiring quite lengthy time to adjust to new hay. It made me pay more attention to who I got my hay from and how much I could safely stock up on without too frequent changing nor too lengthy periods of storage if the humid weather was likely to cause problems.
I have one mare (grey of course 🙄) whose rear end will always tell me when the hey is good or less than!
He Won’t Eat The Hay!
“Get some grass hay” they said. Ok, so you’ve secured some hay (often a feat in itself!), paid for it, huffed and puffed loading and unloading the trailer and even convinced hubby to give you some space in the shed. Feeling proactive and happy to be making healthier choices for your horses, you take armfuls out to pointed ears and eager mouths. Sniff sniff. Faces stare at you. Then someone pees all over your efforts. Seriously!?
This is such a frustrating situation (and we’ve all been there) but what do you do? How do you know if they’re just being fussy or if the hay is no good? We certainly don’t want to force horses to either eat the hay or starve. Like most life forms, staying alive is the main goal and horses do this by being a bit suspicious of new tastes. The good news is, palatability can be ‘trained’ to some degree. Mariette van den Berg has done some great research into this topic and her article is worth a read (see link in comments) if you like nerding out on details.
It is quite normal behaviour for horses to turn their nose up at new hay. We’ve run track systems (hay based systems) for countless rehab horses for 15+ yrs and every time we bring new hay in, even if it looks like beautiful hay, they typically only take snatches of it for the first day or two. Once they get used to it, and instinct tells them it’s safe, they hook in without a second glance. Give your horses time to change over from one hay to another. Make it easy.
Changing a sweet tooth however is actually more difficult to ‘train’. Not unlike humans, if a person has eaten diets high in processed foods, sugars, fats and salt etc. then healthier options can at first seem bland and boring. Over time, with effort, our pallet changes. The same goes for horses. We’ve had the most spoilt, over loved, metabolic sugar-monsters in for rehab at times and even those horses have found a way to transition from their unhealthy habits to new, more species appropriate ones without more than temporary reluctance.
Most horse properties we see often have feast or famine happening in their pastures. All too often these pastures are also sweet, primarily for two reasons 1) because they are over grazed and short stressed grass is a real ‘sugar lick’ and 2) because the species themselves are too rich for equines. These sweet pastures become the foundation of their diet (and form their pallet preferences). Hard feeds, if fed, are usually yummy (sweet, carbs, fats, salts etc. or all the above) and then yummy hay is added on top - lucerne, rye, clover, oaten etc are typical options.
Enter mixed species, mostly native grass hay (as highly recommended by nutritionists et el) and very possibly the situation has escalated to an over weight horse and/or a metabolic issue. But HE WON’T EAT THE HAY!!
Unless the hay is mouldy or rank (cut when gone past mature and beginning to degrade) then most likely your horses just need time to adjust and/or your horse’s diet needs some cleaning up. It’s often not the hay nor a lost cause either. Being patient and taking a step back to solve the issue is key. Training your horses to eat low sugar hay is one of the healthiest gifts you can give to them.
If you need help navigating this situation or implementing changes without the stress or overwhelm, we invite you to book in for a consult
Stacks Trax is a South East Queensland based agistment/livery Track System.
