I opened the back door to our house this morning to let the dogs out and the first thing I see is our horse Cash staring at me as if to say “hey human, our hay feeders are empty.” Nearby, Valentine and Moonshine echo the sentiment with looks of sadness. Romeo is out of sight, probably looking for ways to escape to find more food. Since Saturday, five and a half days ago, our four horses have mostly consumed 1,500 pounds of hay. That’s about 60-70 pounds of hay per horse per day, just about double what they ate during the summer. I say “mostly” because the quality of one of the bales must not have been entirely up to their high standards, as part of it was pulled out and stomped into the ground. It’s a horse thing and I got the message.  Even so, they did eat most of it and are now hungry…again.

It stands to reason that hay consumption increases when the weather turns cold. For one thing, there is less green grass. There wasn’t much in our pasture to begin with but now there is even less. When they’re not foraging for fresh grass, our horses are usually standing at a hay feeder munching grass all day. They spend more time there these days. Eating hay also generates internal heat so as the weather turns cold (down into the 30’s Fahrenheit last night), their body heaters required fuel.

At this rate of consumption they’ll probably go through almost 11 full round bales of hay per month. At $25 per round bale, that’s…good grief…$275 a month. In addition to daily grain. Horses are expensive!