I live in north florida and I have 5 horses at a boarding factility I feed them square bales of hay and I try to feed 1.5% of their body weight and I was leaving them in their stalls all night so that they had time to eat it… But they are wasting quiet a bit of the hay I give they have no grass in the pasture so I was reading about horses eating for 16 hours straight so would it be better to leave them in their stalls with hay for 16 hours during the day or night? which is better? I gets very hot and muggy here and I dont know which would be better? we have a pretty good number of flys at our barn and it is an out door barn but I have fly bags and they all have fly spray and fly masks on so which would be better stalled during the day or stalled at night?

I personally think it would be better to have the horses stalled during the day with a fan running to keep them cool. However horses tend to eat less when they are kept inside. I think if you put them outside during the night with their hay, they probably wouldn't waste so much of it. The night tends to be cooler so they wouldn't get overheated. Also if you give them their hay outside at night they might eat more of it because there is less activity going on so they could eat more and look around less. The other thing you could do is give them a little feed in their stalls at night and a little outside during the day. I don't know which one will work best for your horses. I have seen it and done it many different ways and all I can say is to try out the dfferent possibilities and see which one works best for you and which way the horses prefer better.

Filed under: Florida hay

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