🥣 This Year's Hay Is Like Cocoa Pops on Steroids!
I work with hundreds, if not thousands, of horses every year that either have laminitis or are recovering from it, and one of the first things I normally recommend for all horses with laminitis is to take them off all green, growing pasture, because the grass can be very high in sugar. We then swap that out for a much lower-sugar forage, usually low-sugar meadow hay, but that’s been the problem this year.
🚨 I KNEW WE HAD A PROBLEM
By February, I could already see a pattern emerging, and by April, after seeing hundreds of hay tests from across New Zealand, I knew we had a serious problem. The hay itself was coming back far higher in sugar than we would normally want to be feeding a horse with laminitis, and in fact, it was coming back far higher than I would want to be feeding any horse, with results ranging from around 19% right up to a whopping 32% NSC.
🌱 SO WHAT IS NSC?
When we test hay, one of the things we look at is non-structural carbohydrates, or NSC. The name sounds complicated, but the idea is actually really simple. The structural carbohydrates are the tough, fibrous parts of the plant, basically the framework that gives grass and hay its structure, while the non-structural carbohydrates are the sugars and starches. So when you see NSC on a hay test, just think: how much sugar and starch is in this hay?
For a horse with laminitis, we ideally want that figure below 10%, but the lowest result I have seen so far this year has been 19%, which is almost double what we would ideally want.
🥣 THINK OF IT LIKE BREAKFAST CEREAL
The easiest way to picture it is to think of hay like breakfast cereal. At one end of the aisle, you’ve got something plain like Weet-Bix, and at the other end, you’ve got Coco Pops. They are both cereal, but nutritionally they are very different.
Hay is the same. Two bales can both look like perfectly ordinary hay, but one can contain considerably more sugar and starch than the other. For a laminitic horse, we want the Weet-Bix end of the hay aisle, but a lot of the hay I have seen tested this year has been much closer to Coco Pops. I have seen some absolutely beautiful-looking hay come back at 28% NSC, and that’s not just Coco Pops, that’s Coco Pops on steroids.
🌦️ AND THIS IS NOBODY’S FAULT
Last year’s growing season was a very unusual season. We had so much rain that people were grabbing every decent weather window they could to get hay cut, dried and baled, and when you add in the sunshine, wind, temperature, soil and everything else that was happening while that grass was growing, you can end up with grass carrying far more sugar than anybody wanted.
None of that is the haymaker’s fault. They can make beautiful hay, dry it properly, bale it perfectly and store it well, and it can still come back sky-high in sugar. You cannot make low-sugar hay out of grass that was already carrying a huge sugar load when it was cut.
⚠️ WHY DOES THIS MATTER SO MUCH?
Normally, taking a laminitic horse off grass and replacing it with low-sugar hay is part of the road to recovery, because it substantially reduces the amount of sugar and starch they are eating.
But if the hay itself is sitting at 19%, 20%, 25% or even over 30% NSC, then we may not have reduced that sugar load anywhere near as much as we thought, and in some cases, we have simply moved the horse from high-sugar grass onto high-sugar hay.
That can be enough to cause laminitis in some horses or make recovery much harder for a horse that is already struggling.
👀 YOU CANNOT TELL BY LOOKING AT IT
It does not matter what type of grass it is, what colour the hay is, whether it is bright green or pale, how sweet it smells, or whether it looks stalky, soft, coarse or absolutely beautiful. Some of the nicest-looking hay I have seen has been made from brown top grasses, yet has still come back with some of the highest NSC results.
So, please don’t assume a bale is low in sugar because of the grass species or because it looks like good horse hay. You simply cannot see sugar.
🧪 TESTING SOUNDS GREAT.......BUT LET’S BE REALISTIC
After analysing hundreds of hay tests this year, I think it’s safe to say there is very little, if any, genuinely low-sugar hay available at the moment, and I’ve been privy to far too many horses that have relapsed because of that.
Ideally, yes, we would test every batch of hay before feeding it, but let’s face it, if you are only buying 10 bales of hay, you probably do not want to spend between $125-$180 on a hay test. That is the reality for a lot of horse owners, so while testing is the best way to know exactly what you are feeding, we also need practical ways to manage horses when testing every small load of hay simply is not realistic.
🛠️ SO HOW DO WE MANAGE LAMINITIS IN HIGH-SUGAR HAY IF THAT’S ALL WE’VE GOT?
The first thing we need to do is soak it properly, and I don’t mean for one or two hours. It needs to be soaked overnight in clean water. If you can, put the hay into a slow-feed haynet, completely immerse it in a bath, large tub, wheelie bin or something similar, and keep the whole net under the water overnight. In the morning, take it out, hang it over a fence or tree and let it drip-dry for a while before feeding it. Use within 24 hours to prevent the risk of moulds.
🌾ADD STRAW
Another thing we can do to bring the sugar load down is introduce some low-sugar barley straw. Straw contains more lignin, so we do need to be careful with how much we use, and it should make up no more than 30% of the total forage ration. So if your horse is eating 10 kg of forage a day, around 3 kg can be barley straw, but no more than that, and it needs to be mixed evenly through the hay rather than fed separately.
Barley straw is useful because it still gives the horse plenty of fibre and chewing time, while helping to bring the overall sugar level of the forage ration down.
⚖️ WE ALSO NEED TO WEIGH IT
Whilst I have always recommended feeding hay ad lib, so the horse can regulate how much they eat according to their own appetite and needs, when the hay is this high in sugar, unfortunately that can’t continue and we do need to weigh it.
Ideally, we do not want to be feeding more than around 2% of the horse’s body weight in total forage each day. So for an average 500 kg horse, that would be a maximum of around 10 kg of forage over 24 hours.
And if we are using barley straw as part of that ration, it is included in those 10 kg, not added on top, so that could mean around 7 kg of hay mixed with 3 kg of barley straw, spread across the day.
The important thing is to spread that forage out so the horse is still eating regularly, because a horse should not be left for more than a few hours without forage.
🌦️ WE’RE ALL FINDING OUR WAY WITH A NEW NORMAL
So, as you can see, we’re all finding our way with a new level of normal this year. We’ve had to change the way we think about hay, the way we feed it, and the way we use hay when managing horses that are recovering from laminitis.
What I’m really hoping now is that we don’t get the same growing conditions again this coming season, and that we get some respite, with much lower-sugar hay available for the horses that really need it.
❤️ A SHOUT-OUT TO THE OWNERS WHO’VE REFUSED TO GIVE UP
I also want to give a huge shout-out to the horse owners I’ve worked with this year, because some of you have been absolutely incredible. I’ve had clients spend up to $28 a bale on hay that was sold as suitable for laminitic horses, only to find out afterwards that the sugar was through the roof and certainly not suitable for a laminitic horse or one recovering from laminitis.
By then, the hay had already been bought and, in some cases, it simply wasn’t practical to send it back, so we had to work with what we had. These owners have soaked hay overnight, weighed every ration, mixed in lower-sugar forage and put an enormous amount of time and effort into managing their horses.
Through that hard work and diligence, I’ve seen horses make full recoveries from laminitis, horses with EMS improve dramatically, and some remarkable changes in horses that have been incredibly difficult to manage.
It has been genuinely heartwarming to watch people roll their sleeves up, work with what they have available and do absolutely everything they can for their horses.
❤️ IF YOUR HORSE IS STRUGGLING, LOOK AT THE HAY FIRST
So if your horse is struggling to recover from laminitis, the first thing I would ask you to look at is the hay.
By all means contact me if you want any help working through it, as I am always happy to help.
