# How much would grass per hour does a horse eat?



## Gingerwitch (8 June 2010)

Trying to reduce my big lads girth a little - he is a 17hh warm blood - and a big boy bone wise - so trust me he will never be a skinny minny. On my weight tape it estimates he si 586Kgs - I score him at a 4 -my vet saw him last week and he said he was a little too big but certainly did not want to see him any bigger so this is my dilema - how on earth can i work out how much grass he is getting of his 7 acre field shared with him and 5 others - the grass is short, but very green - so pretty high in the sugars but low in the roughage stakes.  A few places are advising 19lbs of roughage per day and 6lb of food per day.

His daily routine is now:- 5.30 am - half a section of soaked hay, a handful of  good doer and a carrot. 30 mins walk work - he is just coming back into work after 10 days box rest - then a half section of hay at 7.30 am - he then waits until 10.30 when my friend turns him out.  He is back in for 4.30/5pm at the latest and gets a handful of good doer, he then gets 3 sections of soaked hay split into several different nets at the 7pm ish mark.... 
I am waiting for my hay weighter to come through the post but any suggestions welcome


----------



## proctor (8 June 2010)

A tough one really, we always reduce the amount of time our fatty's are turned out for rather than trying to work out how much grass they are eating!! Unless you sit and watch your horse all the time he's out then you wouldn't really tell how much he's eating, if he's anything like my WB then he'll eat and eat all the time he's turned out!!!! Sorry I can't give you any answers on this one though!


----------



## CBFan (8 June 2010)

Is he the sort of horse to get fat on grass? by the sounds of it the grass isn't the problem - he's hardly out on it.

I'd be inclined to start soaking his hay for roughly 12 hours a day so that it is just roughage with no real nutritional content and see how you get on...


----------



## Gingerwitch (8 June 2010)

Thanks for the replies

I dont really think it is the grass - i let him come out of the winter "just right" instead of on the lean side - and in a fortnight he ballooned - i was a little slow at cutting down his hard feed and horseage/hay - He was going out from 7.30 until 5pm every day - but i will be honest - i was so scared of him getting laminitus when he went lame a fortnight ago - he got a bruised sole i have gone into over drive (my other lad is currently recouperating from soft tissue damage in the hoof and has been on 6 weeks box rest and is now in a tiny paddock).

My one friend told me off last night for giving him the 3 sections of hay at night - but i will not cut him down anymore than this - he is a big lad - i am hopeful that with the growing season slowing down a little and me being able to increase his work load in the next few weeks will shift the extra weight but he is carrying it on his belly rather than over his ribs, crest and hindquarters.... so it may just be his build - this is only the 2nd summer i have had him - his 1st summer he went into it so thin i was happy when he was putting the weight on  aghghgghh


----------



## DuckToller (8 June 2010)

It's impossible to say how much grass he is getting as it depends on the type of grazing, length of the stem, how many others on it, acreage etc.

But I went on a laminitis awareness course and learnt a couple of interesting facts.  One of the speakers said that a horse can consume in 24 hours as much as 5 times the amount of calories it needs in a day on good grazing, which is quite a shocking fact.  Then he said to judge if your grazing was good, go out and cut a kilo with scissors (I suspect he didn't actually mean us to do that, but to imagine doing it!).  If it takes ten minutes, you have too much grass, if it takes two hours, then that is about right for a laminitic.  That's about the most useful fact I can offer on the subject!

I agree with you about not cutting down his nighttime hay as 3 sections isn't a huge amount for a big lad.  I would just up his exercise as soon as is possible.  One extra thing - they said horses don't tend to carry fat on the belly, just on the neck, across the ribs and the quarters, and not to include the belly on a horse's fat score so maybe his belly is larger because of lack of exercise and a large amount of wet, semi-digested grass in it?!


----------



## Gingerwitch (8 June 2010)

Thanks for your input Llewlyn - must admit my RI told me to cut his hay down and bulk up his hard feed (when he was in work), which i did not quite understand until you said what you did and i saw the post on the mini horses being fed grain only.... well you live and learn


----------



## SO1 (8 June 2010)

Will depend on how long the grass is - my pony can eat a slice of hay in 20 minutes so if the grass is long they can consume huge amounts if greedy - thankfully the grass in his field is very short so it would take him several hours to eat the same amount of grass!


----------



## MochaDun (8 June 2010)

Mine's a real good do-er so I am keeping him stabled overnight for 12 hours at the moment as when he's out on grass he just never stops grazing.  Rest of the other geldings will be dozing, and he's still there nose down. We can't do restricted turnout in terms of size of paddock at our yard - they have access to 2 huge fields all summer. Unfortunately we don't have hay on our yard so when he's in overnight he has a small amount of haylage (2-3kgs per night).  I think with some horse's metabolism it's very hard to get weight off - takes a long time.  I battle every summer and don't manage to shift much and that's with riding about 5x a week.  Like others have said check the neck/crest, shoulders, feel for ribs and back end for where he's carrying fat.  Mine comes in with a totally bloated belly and he literally deflates overnight and his bed is quite wet in the morning and he releases gas so a lot of it in his belly is gas and water.


----------

