Anyone here feed oat hay?

[jaytori220]

My neighbor has a source of beautiful oat hay. And the price is great also. Her horses love it and eat every bit of it. She gave me a handful of it to see if mine like it and the new guy was all over me for it. He couldn't get enough. Does anyone here feed it? And nutritional how does it compare to other hays?

 

[Lewella]

If you feed it feed it very, very restricted. We feed the ponies round bales in the winter (they go through 1 every other day) and I lost TWO to impaction colic in one night because we somehow ended up with a bale that was a mix of oat hay and alfalfa instead of a mix of ryegrass and alfalfa. They loved it so much they basically ate themselves to death.

 

[disneyhorse]

We tested our oat hay here (CA) and it tested far too low in protein to be considered viable hay for horses (even with a protein ration balancer for grass hay).

I think it's good for giving horses something to keep them busy after their normal rations are eaten, but that's it.

 

[Hosscrazy]

I fed oat hay years ago when I first got my original minis, on the advice of the breeders. I quickly learned that the hay is very high in starch/sugar and really not a good choice for the minis. I switched over to timothy hay (and soaked timothy pellets) and have stayed with that ever since.

Liz N.

 

[susanne]

The one and only time we fed oat hay, the horses loved it, but I then learned why -- it was like feeding them candy. It was also extremely coarse, and while full-sized horses may have no problem, minis are roughly 1/4 the size of a big horse, so that coarseness was multiplied x 4.

 

[Jill]

The oat hay I've seen is much more coarse than what I would feed minis.

 

[stormy]

I have a source of very nice green oat hay here and the horses love it! Great for those that are a little harder to keep weight on.

 

[Katiean]

I fed it to my horses when I could find it. I would not feed JUST oat hay. I added it to what my horses normally ate. They loved it. I did not have any problems with impaction or colic in any big or little horse. I know when I was on the race track we fed 1 flake of alfalfa hay and 1/2 of oat hay each feeding. Never a problem. One hay I will NEVER feed ever again is TEFF. I had 1 mare colic 3x's in 1 week and 1 mare broke out in hives all over her body. Use caution when trying new hay.

 

[Marty]

Oat hay is nothing more than straw around here. Its too coarse for them to chew up properly and be able to digest it and there is little nutritional value in it. I use it in the fall to decorate with.

 

[stormy]

Marty has a point, like other specialty hays the person putting it up has to know what they are doing. The oat hay I have used is still green looks alot like rye grass hay with the oat heads just starting to form. Same with Clover hay, have a source that has been growing it for 40 years and it is beautiful, green and mold free...have seen a lot of clover hay that is black in color and dusty...quality is always the key in choosing what hay to use for your horses.

 

[lil hoofbeats]

I have fed it several times when it was available, It is great hay when cut at an optimal time, but if you wait a week to ten days too long before cutting it just becomes straw.

I have not had a problem with colic from it

 

[Genie]

I haven't heard of oat hay around here.

We use the the oat straw for bedding sometimes, but I prefer barley straw. We chop the straw to make it less attractive to eat and it beds the stall more effectively when chopped.