dry lot or pasture; what type of hay bunk to use

[kdhminis]

Do you mainly keep your mini's in a dry lot and feed hay; or out on pasture; or in a stall? And if you feed hay out in a dry lot or pasture what type of hay bunk or trough do you put your hay in that the minis can eat out of? Pictures if you have any!!! Learning

 

[chandab]

I let my girls out to pasture during the day in summer and feed a little hay on drylot at night. I found a sheep round bale feeder at an auction a couple years ago and it works great for their hay (keeps them from walking all over it and pooping and peeing in it, so less is wasted). I also have a mare that gets her hay in a former water tub, it leaks, so works great for hay.

 

[Leeana]

I have a drylot and a pasture, for the most part the mares and horses that are just out bein horses get the pasture with hay avaiable most all day long ...they stay nice over there.

Everyone else goes on the drylot that i am showing ext during the day. Stall at night, drylot during the day for so and so long. Normally i turn mares/geldings out in the morning and then colts in the evening. Works for me ..i spread out a block of hay around mid day so they can "graze" on the hay and pick at it durig the day on the drylot and keeps them busy.

 

[Miniv]

I probably am not a good person to respond because of the numbers we have. We have over 50 minis and ponies.

First, we have never stalled our horses 24/7, even when we had only a few horses (way back when)

Yes, we have drylots and we have a full pasture, and we have some small pastures with short grass in them. We try to rotate our different groups throughout the grass-growing season so that everyone gets time "nibbling". And we feed hay to everyone, unless they are on the full pasture. The amount is obviously increased if they are on full drylot.

What has worked for us when feeding in our drylot areas is placing rubber mats out. And spreading the hay on the mats. Then, if the group is being grained, we place their scoops of grain on top of their hay piles.

We also have a number of large rubber feed dishes that we use for grain, but they tend to live in the drylot just off our barn.........

 

[Marty]

My schedule changes due to the seasons. My barn is for using and it does get used. Right now it is way too hot for the horses to be turned out all day so they only go to pasture on grass in the mornings. They are back inside the barn where its nice and cool with fans for the heat of the day. When they are stalled, they do get hay. I don't lock horses up without hay. That's when I will usually start baths or clip etc. In the evening they will go out into the dry lot or back into the pasture for a while so they can have two turns outs a day if possible. If they are in the dry lot, I make a lot of piles of hay either on the ground or in some of the empty swimming pools. At night, they are stalled with their dinner and hay for the night.

My horses are never stalled 24-7 unless the weather is insane and not fit for humans to be outside such as storms, high wind storms or extreme temps. The most they have ever been in without turn out was during an ice storm that lasted 3 days.

Every horse is turned out daily.