Haycubes, how to crush them?

[QRTRHRS]

We have a couple of hard to keep old mares that we feed alfafa/timouthy hay cubes to. One mare has few teeth and the other gags on baled hay. If we wet the cubes to soften them up, the mares waste too much once they get rancid.

Rather, my wife has been crushing them with a pair of pump pliars. The mares can nibble away as they wish and don't waste too much but breaking those cubes is chore.

Anyone have an suggestion for some kind of grinder that may work to break the cubes up? We were thinking a corn grinder may work. My wife had been bidding on one on Ebay but the seller pulled it off the market. New ones are pricy to try out if they will not work. Any ideas?

[jimbrown]

blender

[egon]

Have you considered an inexpensive manual meat grinder or perhaps a food processor. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Feedlot feeders would use a hammer mill.

Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[JazzDad]

Your feed store doesn't carry some type of meal with the same nutritional content?

[QRTRHRS]

"Your feed store doesn't carry some type of meal with the same nutritional content?"

Without running out to the barn to check labels, offhand, I would say that the grains we are using have more nutrition than the cubes do. I know that Purina's Equine Senior can be a total feed for aged horses and that you cannot overfeed them with it as is usually the case with grain and horses.

We never felt that the results were that great using Purina's Equine Senior. Rather, we have them on Purina's relatively new and pricey Ultima and a local blend we are trying that has 10% fat and 10% protein.

By the way, before someone possibly interjects that Ultima is for high performance horses only, that is not true. Working with a vet and Purina's people, we brought a starved horse back from near death a few years ago with Ultima and Equine Senior.

If you do not know, as horses age, their digestive system becomes less efficient and keeping weight on them becomes an endeavor. We know we are loosing the battle but we are continuing to try anyway.

If nothing else, the cubes meet the horses emotional needs to munch on forage were as, they just cannot deal with hay anymore.

I don't think a blender or food processor blade would last very long. We got the ice crusher today but it jammed on the first cube. Guess our next move is to try to wet small amounts at a time.

[eccentricfarmer]

Just thinking out loud, do you get your cubes from the where they are made? Maybe get the floor sweepings??

The other was, drive over them and suck them up with the shop vac??

Just musing.

[allmuxedup]

Here's something I might be able to help w/. I used to have a horse rescue. Refeeding is (understandably) something that's big in rescue, as is feeding aged & damaged horses. I did quite a bit of research on the subject. I found an article on refeeding by a Prof. at UCDavis. I used the advise in this article & the results were just amazing. I also used the info in feeding the hard keepers; who are really just 'starved' horses waiting to happen. We were able to keep all our horses in good flesh & in good health.

[QRTRHRS]

We had been discussing the problem with one of our feed suppliers. He came up with "shreds".

Basically, the same product but shredded only it has a bit of molassis added which older horses have no need for. However, they love it!

Of course, all things being equal, the bags weigh lighter and cost a bit more. But then, no one ever said that horse keeping was cheap.