cubes vs. bales

[Dee]

I've always fed baled hay to my horses, but with our foster horse the rescue has him on cubes. I just find it takes up less space, easier to give proper amount and its not always easy to find good horse hay in my area. When it comes down to actual nutrition fact is one better than the other? Any other pros or cons for both to consider?

Thanks

 

[muffntuf]

I feed both on my farm. Cubes are just as good as baled hay. Nutritional value doesn't change. With cubes, I can soak them and feed them out, making sure I get enough H20 into them in the summer when working. Baled hay works well too.

It's your preference. The only drawback would be price. If it is comparable in your area a 50LB. bag of cubes to a 50LB bale of hay - its up to you.

 

[Matt73]

I bought some timothy cubes for my stallion when he had some teeth issues (just some loose caps that needed to be knocked out

). I still have 98% of the bag. Love the smell and quality. But baled hay is much cheaper in my area. If I had to feed cubes, I'd know that they were getting great quality

I may try to finish this bag off (if I don't it's just going to sit there). But I may keep it for emergencies. I'm sure it keeps a lot longer than baled hay. I don't think one is better than the other. If you have good quality baled hay, it's just as good as good quality cubes.

 

[midnight star stables]

I feed bales. Mine won't eat cubes anyway.

 

[Miniv]

I vote for baled hay over cubes......

Horses are grazers and need the time to happily nibble .... Their bodies are designed that way.

Cubes are like grain. The horses gobble their food down within the hour (or less), and then what???

 

[disneyhorse]

I prefer hay. I will sometimes supplement my hay with pellets (which are finely ground and easy to digest) but I think that horses need the foraging time to sort around through the stems and pick around at it.

Also, sometimes the cubes are less-than-desirable quality because once they are processed, you can no longer see weeds, debris, and quality of the stem and leaf. It's harder to hide or disguise poor quality hay flakes.

I also don't like soaking cubes. I already have to soak beet pulp, and that's enough for me.

I think my horses are happier on hay.

Andrea

 

[love_casper]

My minis do not get fed hay at all. When they got it, I had a comibned 18 colics, 13 of them from the same horse. 7 hospital visits. 1 surgery for impaction. (Results NOT typical.... not to drive anyone away from hay, there was a horse that never had an issue with it, but the one with the chronic colic issue and another with chronic diarrhea whenever the supplier changed was enough for me to not want to feed it. Just happened to be our feed store had really spotty quality. Poisonous weeds were found in a bale my friend bought.)

At our new place, the hay comes from wherever we can find it really, sometimes first cutting, sometimes last year's hay. Just not consistant so I'm not going to take chances on my minis that I already know are really sensitive. I feed it to the big horses though. Right now we have fresh hay from our neighbor who grows it. With as much as they eat, pellets/cubes would cost a lot. My older girl gets half her ration in cubes though, the hay isn't as easy to digest for her.

The minis get half pellets - because I don't have to soak the pellets we get - and half chaff. They inhale the pellets, but then they slow down and kind of graze on the chaff. I didn't want to have them on a 100% pellet diet, for the reason others have stated... their systems need some grazing. Soaked cubes take some time to get through, plenty of horses do just fine on an all cube diet. Since I switched all mine off hay - knocking on wood - I haven't had a single colic from the colicer or off manure from the other horse.

If your horses are doing well on hay, and it's easy to feed, that's great. If you want to do pellets or cubes, because it's easy to store and consistant quality there's really nothing wrong with it. Honestly my older big horse would be on a totally soaked cube diet if it were cheaper. But with the $4 a bale hay from the neighbor, it's hard to pass up!

 

[Shadows Fire]

I've fed both, and pellets too. I Love the pellets, less mess and waste, but it also leaves the horse feeling hungry, then they tend to chew wood. The cubes were good although they still ate them quickly, but they do give them enough roughage. The bags are so much easier to move around and store. You can even put them in the back of the car since its no mess, the hay gets everywhere.

Hay is cheaper, keeps them happy, I imagine the best soulution would be some of both. Perhaps less loose hay and more pellets or cubes. I know if I had to stack the 4 ton of 100 lb bales I just bought I wouldn't have bought it. 50 lb bags of pellets are more my style-but when you stumble on such a great deal how can you say no? LOL I saved over 400 this year by buying hay and that was just feeding one big horse.

Course I am sure my Mare would have loved

to have the Alfalfa pellets or cubes much more than the plain grass hay she got. Candy you know-but dang she gets so fat on that stuff. LOL But when it rains for weeks on end this winter she will be happy to have the extra time consuming grass hay to munch on.

 

[Mominis]

I'm not for baled hay or cubes either. I feed chopped hay. I buy it bagged ($9.99/bag) at our local feed store. It has nutritional analysis on the bag, the quality is consistant, and it is super simple to feed.

http://www.tntforage.net/custom.asp?id=293934&page=12&shopperid=

 

[Shadows Fire]

Oh yes I have fed that before! its really good for putting weight on. I can't believe you get it for so cheap. here I think it about 14 bucks a bag.

Minis are SO much cheaper to feed than big horses.

 

[Magic]

Great points from all!

Here, since we grow our own hay (first crop ended up costing us $1.22 per 50 pound bale; second crop will be more because of irrigation costs, but I'm surely not going to complain!) our hay supply is of excellent quality and consistent and inexpensive, so hay is clearly the way to go. If you didn't have a consistent or quality hay supply then I can see that hay cubes would be a good alternative.

Just remember (for anyone who isn't aware of it) that there's a difference between pellets and cubes-- horses MUST have long-stem fiber for their digestive health, which cubes have (and chaff too), but pellets do not. So feeding a pellet-only diet could be very risky, where a cube-only diet should be perfectly fine. Horses are grazers though, so if your horses are on cubes only and finish their meals too quickly, they may very well become bored and begin to chew or crib, among other things. If you can feed a little hay in addition to the cubes, or allow some pasture time, the horses may be more content.

 

[Marty]

I feed baled hay. My horses spend all night long in the barn and also significant time in the barn during bad weather. Right now this heat wave has them up in the barn a lot and they are very happy to be munching away on their hay. I feel it is very important to keep them grazing on hay during these times when they cannot be on grass a lot for many reasons such as their mental health. As horses are grazers this is natural for them as I do not want them picking up any stall vices such as cribbing or windsucking or becoming anxious.

However in the grand scheme of things I feel there is always a time and a place for other alternitives to feeding baled hay so I don't rule any other possibilities out.

 

[spindleberry]

I feed baled hay...cubes are too expensive here...

 

[chandab]

I feed baled hay; its most economical around here and I can't get cubes locally. I live in a feed store "free" zone, as in they are few and far between, and the ones that are around are poorly stocked.

I have travelled great distances to stock up on grass hay pellets to have on hand for emergencies, I special order beet pulp pellets (order my winter supply in the fall), and stick to the basics of ration balancer, oats and hay when I can.