Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Pete Vukovich <pvukovic1@yahoo.com>]

Thanks John, what sort of horses do you have - just curious?

--- On Sun, 1/9/11, John D'hondt <dhondt@eircom.net> wrote:

From: John D'hondt <dhondt@eircom.net>
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Haylage for horses?
To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Sunday, January 9, 2011, 1:15 PM

Our horses sleep inside every day of the year and then get a bit of hay. Reason being that we have seen laminitis appear when they get a chance to eat their heads off on sweet grass and clover 24 hours per day.

In winter they often stay in for weeks or months at a time depending on the weather and then they get haylage or even silage the same as our cows and goats. Never seen a problem with colic but I suppose a lot depends on the quality of the herbage. We never add molasses to the feed.

Horses are "end-gut" fermenters and I think that you can avoid colic almost completely if you don't feed them stuff that would start fermenting in the small intestine. So when they are stabled for long times they don't get many carrots, apples or other soft things. Just haylage, fresh water ad lib and a small amount of sea salt.

john