❄️HAY-Way More Than Food For Winter Horses- Your Horse’s Internal Log Burner.
- Natural Horse NZ
- Jul 3
- 2 min read
Updated: Jul 7
❓ I know this is going to upset a few people…🤔 But for many horses, another slice of hay will do more than another rug.
😳 That sounds completely back to front, doesn’t it? But bear with me…
Because once you understand where a horse actually gets their warmth from, it all starts to make sense.
❤️ Yesterday we discovered how your horse’s winter coat traps a layer of air to stop body heat escaping.But insulation is only half the story.
🔥 Before you can keep the heat in……you have to make it.And that’s where hay comes in.
🌿 Hay doesn’t just simply fills a horse’s stomach…….
🦠 Deep inside your horse’s hindgut live billions upon billions of tiny microbes whose job is to ferment fibre.As they slowly break hay down…🔥 They produce heat and lots of it.
🏡 Think of it like a log burner…….Softwood catches quickly, burns hot… but burns out just as fast.Hardwood takes a little longer to get going, but once it’s burning, it produces a lovely steady heat for hours.
🌱 Grass is a bit like softwood.
🌾 Hay is much more like hardwood.
Because hay is full of long, coarse fibres, it takes much longer for those microbes to ferment, providing a slow, steady release of warmth.❤️ Every mouthful of hay is another log on the fire.
🌿 “But what about wild horses? They don’t have hay.”
That’s absolutely true.
🦓However, many wild and feral horse populations thrive in scrubland, grasslands and other environments that provide a natural equivalent to hay in the form of fibrous forage. This might include standing dry grasses, sedges, tussocks, reeds, shrubs and whatever else is available.
🐴Even our own New Zealand Kaimanawas spend much of the winter browsing the fibrous forage available throughout their subalpine environment.
🌾 Hay is simply our way of replacing that natural source of fibre for our horses when it isn’t naturally available in a domestic paddock or environment.
It’s not the hay that’s important…
❤️ It’s the fibre.
💭 Suddenly it makes perfect sense why horses spend so much of a cold winter’s day eating. They’re not just filling their stomachs🔥 They’re stoking the fire.
🌿 This is one of the reasons horses should never be left without forage for long periods during winter. It’s not just about their digestive system.
It’s also about helping them do what horses have evolved to do remarkably well…
❤️ Keep themselves warm… and how amazing is that.
❄️ Continue the Equine Winter Wonders Series
Don't stop here! Discover the fascinating ways horses survive and thrive through winter.
❄️ Horse's Incredible Winter Breathing
❄️ Piloerection – How Horses Fluff Up Their Coat
❄️ How Hidden Heat Exchange Works IN Horses Legs
❄️ Why Cells in Your Horse's Eye Trigger Winter Coat Growth
View the complete Winter Wonders Series →
