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Are hay cubes heating food??



Regarding the thread about feeding extra hay in the winter to keep your horses
warm...
It's wet and cold  here in WA right now. My horses are outside all day,
blanketed, more to keep them at least tolerably dry rather than warm. However
I still want something in their tummies to keep them happy.

 I get home from work at about 3 pm and try to check on Jordan and Smoke right
then. I can't feed them, though. This is not because it's not available, but
because I'm boarding my horses at my neighbors. Their horses are on ""a
schedule""  (meaning, I think that my barnlord thinks I'm too stupid to feed a
horse properly) where they can't be fed more than twice a day. 
Personally I think it's deleterious in the long run to the horses health, both
mental and physical. In my humble opinion, a horse needs lots of what I call
"chew time"..if they don't have hay to chew on, they'll find something else,
like wood..........

I don't feed them hay in the afternoon, because, as I said, my barnlord's
horses are on a "schedule". In the beginning I tried feeding only my boys hay
when I got home from work. My barnlords horses, smelling the hay and not
getting any, went absolutely berserk. One was trying to heal a pair of stifled
stifles, so bucking like a mad thing lamed him for a week. (TB with lousy
conformation but a picture book head). Another looked at me with such an
unhappy face that it broke my heart to walk past him with an armfull of hay
and not give him any.........

So I feed my boys alfalfa cubes. I can sneak them past the other horses in a
bucket and no one is the wiser. But my boys know..........
Do the alfalfa cubes provide the same amount of digestive heat that regular
alfalfa does?
ANd, also, does anyone know what amount of cubes is equivalent to a flake of
hay???
Michelle and Jordan (and Smoke, too..)



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