Make Slow Hay Feeders Work For You

Slow hay feeders—those nets, barrels, or boxes of hay with a grid of openings so that horses can nibble only small bits of hay at a time—are to be commended for the way they mimic natural feeding behavior. Instead of plowing through his flake of hay in ten minutes, a horse eating from a slow feeder has to work a little harder as he spreads his forage intake over for a much longer period.

Slow, continuous ingestion of hay is an improvement, but the downside is that hungry horses may stand still for quite a long time as they work out the wisps of hay. In contrast, natural grazing behavior includes lots of slow movement that can add up to quite a few miles in a day. How can owners encourage their slow-feeding equines to move around?

The answer is fairly simple: use more than one slow feeder. In a stall, put two slow-feeder nets in opposite corners of the stall. No, it’s not going to get your horse covering a lot of ground, but he’ll move more than he would with only one net. In a paddock or field, place two or more feeders in different parts of the enclosure, with the water trough in a separate location. This arrangement will encourage the horses to move fairly frequently, and it will avoid having a dominant animal refuse to let the others get their fair share of hay.