[SallyintNorth]

Aye, you have to do

Time pony takes to eat hay in net + 4 hours for digestion + 4 hours before damage can start to occur from highly acidic environment.

So because Davy is greedy, we can't let it be more than around 10 hours from last net at night to first net in morning.  When he was bedded on straw he could pick at that all night so it wasn't an issue.

So at present I am going out to give him a final slice of hay around 10-11pm, then the milking team give him his morning net around 8.30am.  I am going to get a couple of bales of a chopped straw based bedding product to try him with next week, because the late nights are killing me! 

[harmony]

Happy to be corrected but that's not my understanding. Once the stomach is empty the damage starts. Food is pushed through the stomach quite quickly whereas it spends several hours in the large intestine.

[landroverroy]

Can you not give him straw with his hay so he has something to eat all the time and therefore always something going through his gut?
When I had my cob pony, he lived in a large pen with my donkeys in winter. Donkeys can live on straw so there was always a large bale of straw in their pen. However we also gave them hay twice a day. Now horses are higher up the pecking order than donkeys so Apache ate most of the hay and the system worked well. He lost weight in winter without actually ever being without food and therefore in Spring we could put him out on spring grass which he would eat to his heart's content without fear of laminitis.
Like you said - Davy used to pick at his bedding straw anyway overnight so why not feed him straw ad lib and that way he would naturally restrict his hay intake without going hungry. It would be a lot cheaper to buy bales of straw than chopped bedding straw.

[SallyintNorth]

The situation re: straw is complicated. 

Our usual source of chemical-free straw has run out this year; we have managed to find one last pallet of 40 bales of chemical-free, which will just about see the cattle through the winter if we are not profligate with it.  So none to spare for greedy, mucky Davy, who would eat / dirty / use half a bale of straw a day, on top of a hay ration.

I don't mind so much if the ponies get straw that might have had chemicals on it - we don't eat them or drink their milk , and the amount of chemicals which would be persistent through composting and survive to get back on the fields or veg plot is minimal, given that aminopyralid is not authorised for cereal crops - but because there are a gang of us looking after the animals, most of whom are not experienced, it's just impossible to keep the two lots of straw in the barn and not have the wrong one end up in the cattle pen.  (People sometimes bed with hay, get hay and haylage mixed up...  .)  I'm hoping that the chopped bedding straw will look sufficiently different - itself and its packaging - that mistakes won't be made, plus the company that make it are very environmentally aware and source carefully, so whilst they can't 100% guarantee the crops would have had no treatments, the odds are somewhat better than with any other source.

The hay we use is locally produced from untreated ground.  Some people would think it poor hay, but it's perfect for the ponies; the cattle get half hay and half home-made haylage and do well on that.  The sheep are mostly Shetland mixes so they are fine on the rough hay.  Anyone who needs a bit more gets grass pellets. 

[SallyintNorth]

Happy to be corrected but that's not my understanding. Once the stomach is empty the damage starts. Food is pushed through the stomach quite quickly whereas it spends several hours in the large intestine.

Hmm, the vet who attended the colic was not of the opinion that 8+ hours without fresh input would be harmful.  I was expressing anxiety about him not having straw to pick at once his hay was gone overnight and she didn't seem to think it an issue.  I will talk to the vet some more about it when they come to rasp the teeth and investigate the lump.

Davy's health will, at the end of the day, trump trying to keep all our animals and land as organic as possible, so if the only way we can keep him healthy is to use treated straw (or alternatively to leave them out so that they trash 2 acres of grazing over winter, which would leave us short for spring grass for cattle turnout and lambing ewes, plus often short of making enough hay and haylage for our own winter use) then that is what will happen.  We aren't registered organic and aren't squeaky clean in every other respect, plus don't buy exclusively organic food in for ourselves (although the majority is).

[harmony]

I would disagree strongly with your vet and strongly agree with Scarlett.Dragon and Landroverroy comments.


Take look at paddock paradise systems as an alternative to trashing your field. Rosemary and Dan use it I think.

[SallyintNorth]

I can manage them on rotational grazing over summer, that's not the problem. 

If I put them on paddock tracks in winter here, they will be over their fetlocks in mud.  In fact they are over the coronet on mud if I let them have the whole of several acres in winter.  (And they don't need to be encouraged to move, they are always very active.)

The vet is now booked to come Thursday, and I have got Davy on once-a-day Bute for now, so that he doesn't wolf his evening haynet down but can eat what he needs slowly.  (Which is the lesser of two evils?  Some discomfort chewing hay overnight but no long periods with no input, as opposed to no problems chewing and ending up with 8 hours between haynets?)

So hopefully we can work out a way forward once we know more about what's going on in his jaw.

[SallyintNorth]

Here is the post where I got the detail of the timings for horse digestion.

linky

By my reckoning, if she is correct, then you have the following from giving a full haynet to the horse really needing something else, or suffering real damage.

• Eating time (time it takes to eat all the hay in the haynet), say 2-3 hours for a greedy pony with a full net?
• Emptying stomach (from article) 4-6 hours
• Time before starvation kicks in and real damage starts (from article) 4 hours

Therefore, for an ideal scenario, so that the horse is never stressed and hungry, you would give a greedy horse a haynet every 6-9 hours, so that there is no time when the stomach is empty.  The timing to avoid physiological damage is 10-13 hours, so that he eats for 2-3 hours, empties his stomach over the next 4-6, and starts to be in danger from starvation a further 4 hours after that. 

We are currently doing Davy's bedtime 'net at 10-11pm, and the milking team give him his first 'net in the morning at 8-9am or thereabouts.  In addition, I'm now using "bedderstraw" as part of his bedding, which isn't particularly nice for him to eat but won't harm him, so if he is really anxious and hungry, he can eat a bit of that and it will avoid any damage from acids, and won't cause any damage itself.

Oh, and he now has haynets with the small holes, which slows him down ever so slightly.  Watching him tearing the hay from them, I don't expect them to last very long, mind...   

[SallyintNorth]

We had the vet - actually, 2 vets - to him yesterday afternoon.

X-rays of the lump showed something amiss but not diagnosable on site.  Samples were taken, no visible pus, more blood than she had expected.  So I will hear more, hopefully, in the week.  However, I am not sure that any of us think it likely we have something treatable here, at this point :/.  So the fact that it doesn't seem to be growing fast at present, and that bute clearly makes him comfortable, is the best I can say at the moment.  He's a very happy boy at the moment - and I had his teeth rasped while he was sedated, so even less barrier to overeating now! lol

I am hoping that, once we know what we are dealing with, we decide to try him with a bridle, because if we can ride him without any discomfort, then he will be even more happy - and of course we can give him more exercise, which is good all round.

[SallyintNorth]

He seems to be 100% recovered from the colic, and my money is on him having eaten - whether on purpose or accidentally - some of Flossie's miscanthus bedding.  No question that that could - and probably would - cause colic, as it has a highly absorbent core, and could easily therefore absorb all available water in the colon and cause impaction.

So I am not putting any more elephant grass in the beds (which is a shame, because it made a fantastic bed mixed with shavings), and at present we are not letting them loose in the yard + stables overnight.  I can't really see how to do that now, because he would eat his own hay and then all of Flossie's, so she would be too hungry by morning, through no fault of her own!  (And I can't see her eating the bedderstraw as a stopgap.  Not at all suitable for a Princess.  )

[SallyintNorth]

Another option that may be worth considering to slow him down is to put a grazing muzzle on him whilst he has hay... really make him work hard for the hay!  If you have access to it, cut some various other stuff for him... gorse, willow etc  It'll give him various things to keep him occupied without allowing him to eat too much too quickly.

Oh, yes, I'd forgotten the suggestion about tree hay.  We are cutting back some hedgerows for fencing right now, actually; I will see if I can find anything that is 100% not blackthorn :/ 

I did look at a grazing muzzle at the agri merchant, but the one I looked at would sit right where this lump is.  I might have a look see for other shapes and fittings.  I guess he would need to learn to wear it on suitable grass before expecting him to manage to eat hay through it? 

[SallyintNorth]

It's a haynet, and I have switched to a "small hole" one for him.  It slows him down a little but really not that much.  They had the "Trickle Net"s in the store, it looked to have the same-sized holes but should be more robust (so if he destroys these then I might have to get one of those.)

Maybe I will ask for ideas on one of the horse forums...

[silkwoodzwartbles]

My old girl was a laminitic and I used to give her soaked and rinsed hay in two haynets (one inside the other) to slow her down. Worked well and meant the haynets lasted longer too. If I had to bring her in early I'd sometimes give her two haynets, one at each end of the stable (always with soaked hay) and she very rarely ended up with nothing to eat. Hope this helps a bit

[SallyintNorth]

I did have him on soaked hay briefly, when we thought that chewing dry hay might be uncomfortable for him, but to do it on an ongoing basis, I would need to get a tap and container set up in the yard so that I can soak it and rinse it off.  Soaking it in the water trough makes the water in the trough unpleasant for all the animals.

At the mo, it seems to be working fine with the bedderstraw for overnight pickings when he's finished his hay : he won't starve but he won't overeat, either.