Choosing the Right Hay for Your Horse's Needs

Forage First: Why the Right Hay Matters

Whatever you ask of your horse — a quiet weekend hack, a day out with the local hunt, or a gentle retirement in the paddock — hay sits at the centre of their day. The equine digestive system is designed for near-continuous eating, and forage should make up the overwhelming majority of what passes their lips. Get the hay right and you support gut health, steady weight, good behaviour and normal dental wear all at once. Get it wrong and you can be looking at loose droppings, weight loss, coughing, or a painful flare-up of laminitis. It is worth spending ten minutes examining a bale properly before you commit to a whole stack of it.

Reading the Bale: Sight, Smell and Touch

A good bale tells you most of what you need to know before you even open it. Use your senses in this order:

• Smell: Fresh, clean and faintly sweet, like cut grass on a warm day. Musty, sour, or a mushroom-like whiff is a red flag for mould — walk away.
• Colour: Pale green through to golden brown. Some fading is normal in hay that has been stored a while, but grey, black or white patches are not.
• Feel: Stalks that bend and are soft to the touch, with plenty of leafy material. Brittle, stalky, straw-coloured hay is usually over-mature and low in digestible energy.
• Cleanliness: Minimal soil, weeds, thistles or ragwort. Ragwort in particular is toxic and a reason to reject a batch outright.
• Weight and density: A bale that feels heavy and firm for its size has usually been baled in good conditions and holds little dust.

Shake a slice apart in daylight. A small puff of fine dust is normal. A cloud, or visible spores, is not — especially if your horse lives out or is stabled in a barn where air movement is limited.

Fibre Length: The Overlooked Detail

Fibre length is where many owners unintentionally come unstuck. Long-stem forage is what keeps the hindgut working, encourages chewing, and stimulates saliva production, which buffers stomach acid. A horse at rest needs roughly 1.5 to 2 per cent of their bodyweight in dry forage each day — around 8 to 10 kg for a 500 kg horse — and that should be largely long fibre, not short.

Short-chopped chaff and cubes have their place, particularly for veterans with poor dentition or horses recovering from illness, but they should not replace the bulk of the ration. Very short fibre passes through the gut quickly, reduces chewing time, and in greedy eaters can increase the risk of choke. If you are feeding mainly short fibre, split it into several small meals rather than two large ones.

Also consider maturity. Early-cut hay is leafier, softer and higher in sugar and energy. Late-cut hay is stalkier, longer in fibre and lower in calories — often exactly what a good-doer or a laminitis-prone pony needs. Seed heads visible in the bale usually indicate later cutting.

Dust, Mould and Your Horse's Airways

Respiratory disease is one of the most common reasons a horse stops performing at their best, and hay is frequently the culprit. If your horse coughs at the start of work, has a nasal discharge, or seems to tire earlier than they should, look at the forage before anything else.

Soaking is the traditional remedy. Thirty minutes in cold water removes a good deal of surface dust; an hour or two will also leach out water-soluble sugars, which is useful for horses with Equine Metabolic Syndrome or a history of laminitis. Be careful with long soaks in warm weather — wet hay left too long grows bacteria and can turn sour. Steaming is a gentler alternative: it kills mould spores while preserving more nutrients, though it removes less sugar. Haylage, being moister and fermented, is generally lower in dust but higher in energy and protein, so it suits poor-doers better than native ponies.

Matching Hay to the Horse in Front of You

• Hard keepers and competition horses: Earlier-cut, leafier hay or good haylage for more energy and protein. Ensure they can still eat ad-lib.
• Good-doers and native ponies: Late-cut meadow hay, soaked if needed. Weigh it rather than guessing.
• Horses with laminitis or EMS: Test the sugar and starch content if you can, or soak routinely. Aim for low-sugar, low-starch forage.
• Veterans with worn teeth: Softer, leafier hay, soaked, or a mash alongside long fibre they can still manage.
• Horses with ulcers: Constant access to long fibre is essential. Never leave an empty haynet overnight.

Storage and Everyday Practicalities

Good hay can be ruined by poor storage. Keep bales off the floor on pallets, away from walls, in a dry, ventilated barn or open-sided shelter. Stack tightly enough to keep its shape but allow air to circulate, and use older bales first. Never store damp hay — it can heat up and, in rare cases, combust. Haylage should be used within a few days of opening, so buy small bales if you have one horse.

Finally, buy from someone whose fields you can see, ask when it was cut and how it was stored, and buy a trial bale before committing to winter. A little fuss now saves a great deal of trouble later.