Management

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• Oat and barley straw are ideal.
• Wheat straw is harder to breakdown so avoid if concerned about colic.
• Wash/soak to remove any dust.

• Straw is a perfectly suitable source of forage/hay replacer for the majority of leisure horses.
• Maximise fibre and minimising calories.
• The client can ensure their horse receives enough dry matter intake (at 2.5% of bodyweight) without risk of fat gain.
• Helps prolong chewing and healthy dental wear.
• In the long term it can save money, not just in terms of cost of the forage but also by way of preventative nutrition to help maintain lean body mass.

Straw is ideal for horses which:

• have good dentition
• are not in hard work
• have a tendency to gain weight
• the owner is struggling to afford hay

• If a horse is not losing weight by soaking the hay, oat or barley straw can be used to replace some of the hay.
• Low quality forage (pasture) which is high in neutral detergent fibre (NDF) takes feral horses longer to eat, compared to lower NDF (requires more chewing) which can result in an 8% BW loss in the winter (Scheibe and Streich 2003).
• To ensure that fibre is the foundation of all horse’s diet.
• For stabled horses, recommend oat or barley straw as bedding or as a partial or complete hay/grass replacer to keep fat horses chewing whilst reducing calories.
• If clients are struggling to find/afford hay.

• Introduce slowly.
• Monitor water intake.
• Maintain exercise and turnout to maximise movement.
• Minimise time stabled.

There is little or no evidence base for straw being a cause of colic, nor equine gastric ulcer syndrome (EGUS), assuming the below is discussed with the client and taken into account:

• Dentition: Check dentition before advising feeding straw.
• Wheat straw: it is better not to advise wheat straw because it is high in silica and lignin, which limits bacterial fermentation of fibre (forage cell walls) and increases the risk of impaction... on the other hand, how many of you know clients’ horses that happily eat their wheat straw bed?
• Fibre length: Advise the client to monitor faecal fibre length in their horses’ droppings as a guide as to how well the horse is masticating the straw... it should be mostly less than 4mm.
• Turnout: Horses always benefits from some turnout (preferably on restricted grass, no-grass turnout, or with a grazing muzzle) as it reduces the risk of gut stasis and helps increase movement/calorie usage.
• Stabling: Stabling for long periods of time does not help with weight loss. Try to minimise time stabled. Horses that compete will stay fitter if turned out compared to being stabled.
• Water intake: Ensure the horse is drinking enough.
• How to feed straw: Introduce slowly and mix with hay to gradually increase its use a partial or total hay replacer.

• EGUS: There were no reports of EGUS in donkeys fed ad lib barley straw whilst being restricted to 8, 12 and 23hrs grazing in the winter and summer; even when they ate more straw in the winter to maintain their DMI and consumed significantly less grass when grazing time was limited (Wood et al., 2012).

• Gastric ulceration: A more recent paper showed no relationship between gastric ulceration and feeding wheat straw (50:50 with hay) to ponies as part of weight loss management, (Jansson et al., 2021).

• Chewing: A decrease in fibre intake reduces chewing which in turn reduces saliva production, increases the risk of gastric ulceration, stereotypies, colic and the horse eating shavings if it is bedded on them. 250kg ponies which were restricted to a DMI of 1.5%BW, ate up to 3kg of their bodyweight in shavings (1.2%BW), (Curtis et al., 2011) not great for the pony nor client compliance.

Straw will reduce the calorie intake but it does not meet protein, vitamins and mineral requirements.

• There is a strong correlation between low micronutrient intakes and obesity (Astrup and Bugel 2010; Via, 2012).

Advise a balancer

• Recommend a balancer formulated to be fed at 100g/100kg BW – these provide negligible calories but are vitamin and mineral rich and should have a good protein source included.
• Explain to the client that feeding a small quantity of a low energy feed at less than recommended on the back of the bag, simply adds more calories without providing sufficient vitamins and minerals.

Which balancer?

• Encourage clients to read the label/back of the bag. It is easier when comparing balancers as the intake is the same so they can check per kg, rather than by recommended intake.
• Vitamin E declarations can be used to check if the company has invested in a good quality micronutrient package because Vit E is expensive to include.
• Lysine content is also important – a good indicator of protein quality.

• Welfare organisation: Many welfare organisations have fed straw as their sole forage to horses requiring weight reduction, and subsequent to the early ‘90s when hay was scarce and unaffordable (Hollands T, personal comms).

• Redwings: A study undertaken at Redwings compared ponies (23 ponies; 13 UK native cross, 13 Welsh and Welsh cross, and 10 Cobs) fed 50:50 hay:straw, to a control group fed 100% hay. The group on 50:50 hay: straw lost 20% of bodyweight (with no reports of ulceration) compared to a gain of 20% in ponies fed 100% hay (Dosi et al., 2020).

• Financial constraints: If clients can’t afford hay, they will still want to feed their horses. Although per kg concentrates are more expensive, they feed less and will see this as a way of expressing their need to feed the horse.

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