Why Winter Forage Deserves Careful Thought

From November through to March, hay stops being a side dish and becomes the main event. Grass in the paddock loses its nutritional value and, on heavy clay or frosted ground, your horse may barely graze at all. A horse kept on poor hay will drop condition, lose top line and go into spring looking hollow, no matter how generous you are with hard feed.

Forage should make up at least 75 per cent of most horses' diets, and during winter they will typically eat between 1.5 and 2 per cent of their bodyweight in dry matter each day. For a 500kg horse that is roughly 7.5 to 10kg of hay every 24 hours, ideally offered little and often so the digestive system is never empty. Chewing also keeps your horse warm, which matters far more than a rug on a frosty night.

Reading a Bale: Sight, Smell and Touch

Good hay is as appealing to your nose as to your horse's. Before you buy a load, open a few bales from different parts of the stack and give them a proper look and sniff.

• Colour: a soft green-to-olive tone suggests hay cut at the right stage and stored out of the sun. Pale yellow or bleached hay has usually been weathered, and its vitamin content will have suffered.
• Smell: sweet, clean and faintly grassy. A musty, sour or tobacco-like whiff is a red flag for mould, which is a genuine respiratory risk rather than a minor nuisance.
• Feel: dry, pliable and slightly soft, but not dusty or brittle. If the bale feels warm, heavy or damp in the middle, it was baled too wet and could heat, spoil or worse.
• Contents: a mix of leaf and stem, with plenty of leaf. Seed heads everywhere means it was cut late and will be stalky and less digestible. Watch for ragwort, thistles, bracken, plastic string and stones.

Break a bale open and shake it out in good light. A cloud of dust that hangs in the air is your cue to walk away, or at least plan to soak it.

Dust, Mould and Your Horse's Airways

Dust and mould spores are one of the most common causes of coughing, nasal discharge and poor performance in stabled horses, and winter is when they are concentrated indoors. If your horse is coughing, has a mucky nose or simply seems dull in the school, hay is one of the first things to investigate.

Steaming is the most effective option: it kills mould spores and reduces dust while keeping the hay's nutritional value largely intact. Soaking works too, but it is blunt instrument. Thirty minutes in clean water is usually enough to damp down dust; longer soaking, up to twelve hours, will also leach out water-soluble sugars, which is useful for a laminitis-prone pony but means you are throwing away vitamins and minerals. Always use fresh water and tip the bucket away afterwards — a soggy, stewed haynet left in a warm stable is a mould factory in its own right.

Store bales on pallets, off the floor, with space around them for air to move. Never stack hay directly against a wall, and keep it well away from fertiliser, diesel or anything with a strong smell, as hay absorbs odours readily.

Matching the Hay to the Horse

There is no single "best" hay. A 16.2hh hunter in full work and a native pony on restricted grazing need very different things from the same forage rack.

• Good doers and laminitis risks: look for late-cut meadow hay with plenty of stalk and seed heads. Rye-grass hay and early-cut, leafy seed hay tend to be higher in sugar and starch, which is exactly what you want to avoid. A laboratory analysis of water-soluble carbohydrates (WSC) is money well spent if you are managing laminitis.
• Poor doers, veterans and hard workers: early-cut, leafy hay or a good Timothy or meadow mix will carry more energy and protein, helping maintain condition without piling on bucket feed.
• Older horses with worn teeth: they cannot chew long-stem hay efficiently, so offer soaked hay, softer leafy hay, or a hay replacer fed alongside the rest of the yard so they are not left out. Have their teeth checked annually.
• Haylage: cut earlier, wrapped wetter and higher in energy, it is excellent for horses in work or with dust sensitivities. It must be used within a few days of opening in cold weather, though, and it is generally too rich for good doers.

Buying, Storing and Rationing Your Winter Supply

Work out roughly how many small bales you will get through: a 500kg horse eating 9kg a day will get through around 1,650kg between October and March, which is about 70 to 80 conventional small bales, allowing for some waste. Buying in one go secures a better price and a consistent batch, but only if you have dry, ventilated storage.

Weigh your hay rather than guessing by the net. A small bale can vary from 18kg to 25kg, and it is easy to underfeed a big horse or overfeed a pony without realising. Split the daily ration into three or four small nets, use double-netted small-holed nets for greedy types, and always keep fresh water available — a horse on dry forage may drink 30 to 45 litres a day, and a frozen trough will put them off drinking entirely.

Finally, be prepared to change your mind. If your horse loses condition, starts coughing or develops a bloated belly on your winter hay, that bale is telling you something. Adjust the ration, soak or steam it, or source a different batch. Feeding well in winter is simply a matter of watching the horse in front of you and responding early.