How to adjust your slow feeding set up during winter.

WINTER

We always recommend a minimum of one extra bag than the number of horses. For a two horse set up, you could use two full 1" hole large nets inside the shelters. The horses use them a lot when it’s windy, raining, snowing or slushy in the fall and winter as well as when it's hot or the bugs are bad in the summer. Outside a shelter, two 1.5" hole medium bags tied low to the ground to different trees as well as two or three 1" hole trailer bags with only a few flakes in each down toward the end of the track system or field. If you feed alfalfa, putting their nightly portion in the bags at the furthest part of the pasture encourages movement in winter and the horses can enjoy shaking out the tasty leaves. Allow for ample hay during cold snaps, you might even consider adding some loose flakes into the pasture to help the horses maintain body temperature.

So how do you know when you should change the number of bags and/or size of netting?

As a general rule, in ANY situation where your horse might be more stressed such as: trailering, shows, sickness, old age, cold weather, very wet weather, stall confinement, new environment or new herd members etc., we recommend a netting hole size of 1.5” be available. This could be in combination with a 1" hole net as well if they are already transitioned to one. This can still be by the portion (the amount you normally feed) unless you choose free-choice feeding principles. Please don’t introduce a smaller netting hole size during these times. If you do you will be adding stress and you may see your bags get damaged.

Damaged Bags

If you are seeing a lot of holes in your bags it is a SURE sign that your horses are having a difficult time and are potentially frustrated. Either the texture/length/type of hay is not appropriate for the netting size, and the horse is trying to help with that by making LARGER holes OR your horse isn’t getting enough food for their nutritional/caloric needs. Excessive pawing along with a tight body/eye while eating from the bag is also a clue to watch for. Check out our page on Understanding Hay Texture, which is full of pictures to help you learn how to most effectively utilize your nets and minimize damage.

Weight Management

While it is perfectly normal and expected for horses to put on a little weight going into winter, any horse with a history of metabolic issues, large fat pads and hard cresty neck etc., probably needs to be transitioned to 1” hole Handy Hay Net. 

It’s important again, to let the horse guide this process a bit to reduce any stress that might come with the change. If you do need to repair your nets we include a bit of repair twine with the tag of each bag. We also offer Repair Twine and Repair Kits to help manage any damage from transitioning or long term use.

It’s ok to be creative, and it’s ok to make mistakes. We can cause our animals undue stress by being too rigid with our feeding regimens.