Study Evaluates Horses’ Voluntary Consumption of Teff Hay

When horses were not given a choice of forage, teff hay intake was no different than timothy hay intake.
Share
Favorite
Close

No account yet? Register

ADVERTISEMENT

Some horse owners in drought-affected states have been searching high and low for affordable forage for their horses. To that end, one research team recently completed a study evaluating an alternative type of grass hay that could be a viable option for some equids: teff hay.

Teff is a relatively new type of warm season grass in the United States and is capable of producing large hay yields in a short period of time, making it an attractive option for horse owners in need of forage. To date, however, no researchers had compared its acceptability versus that of legumes and cool season grass hays. Thus, Laurie Lawrence, PhD, professor in the department of animal and food sciences at the University of Kentucky, led a two-part study aimed at a) determining if horses would consume teff hay as readily as timothy or alfalfa, and b) comparing intake levels of teff and timothy hay.

In the first part of the study, the research team evaluated eight adult mares’ preference for two different teff hay maturities and comparable alfalfa and timothy maturities. Researchers provided the horses with approximately 4 kg (just shy of 9 lbs) of two different hays–teff and either alfalfa or timothy–in separate hay nets for one hour. Then, the researchers measured the remaining hay to determine how much of each the horse had consumed.

The team found that horses showed a preference for the alfalfa and timothy hays over teff hay offered. Of the two varieties of teff offered, horses preferred less mature opposed to more mature

Create a free account with TheHorse.com to view this content.

TheHorse.com is home to thousands of free articles about horse health care. In order to access some of our exclusive free content, you must be signed into TheHorse.com.

Start your free account today!

Already have an account?
and continue reading.

Share

Written by:

Kristen M. Janicki, a lifelong horsewoman, was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in Animal Sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and later attended graduate school at the University of Kentucky, studying under Dr. Laurie Lawrence in the area of Equine Nutrition. Kristen has been a performance horse nutritionist for an industry feed manufacturer for more than a decade. Her job entails evaluating and improving the performance of the sport horse through proper nutrition.

Related Articles

Stay on top of the most recent Horse Health news with

FREE weekly newsletters from TheHorse.com

Sponsored Content

Weekly Poll

sponsored by:

Where do you primarily feed your horse?
276 votes · 276 answers

Readers’ Most Popular

Sign In

Don’t have an account? Register for a FREE account here.

Need to update your account?

You need to be logged in to fill out this form

Create a free account with TheHorse.com!