Horse hay and technology or how to “uncook hay”

This article is written by Viktor Kvachan, the father of horse engineering, innovator and founder of EHOSS. Part One.

One of the key issues in keeping horses is the quality of hay and the opportunity to manage the horse feeding process.?

The volume and price of hay.

I would say, the horse does not eat when it sleeps. Generally, the mass of hay for feeding a horse is about 2% of the horse’s weight and it is about 70% of food intake. The daily nutrition of hay is 10 kg for my horse. It is 300 kg of hay monthly.

Let’s calculate hay consumption.The monthly cost of hay consumption is 40 euros in Slovakia for one horse. A small horse stable of 50 horses spends about 24,000 euros for hay yearly. That is 180 tons and 1800 m3 of hay.

The storage of hay bales.

Of course, such a hay storage volume needs a lot of space. The hay bales warehouse is inside a huge hangar, mostly the hangar has no walls, just a roof. Sometimes, the outside layer of a bale becomes dark under the influence of the environment. The horse stable can lose about 20% of hay as the result of this environmental process. This mass of hay is unsuitable for horse feeding. Besides environmental factors like sun exposure and rainfall, the bale spaces are being compromised by the presence of rodents and the reproduction of bacteria etc.?

The horse stable needs to build enclosed spaces with forced ventilation and air circulation for the quality storage of hay bales. But that is increased construction costs, and subsequent energy and service costs for this building.

We take into account that we have already bought good-quality hay. And we sincerely hope that the quality of hay can never lose its nutritional properties. But as I mentioned above, we can not impact the warehouse process and the quality of the hay storage. Mostly we have to rent a horse stable as it is.

The feeding of horses.

Each day the hay bales move to the area near the horse stables from the storage. Then part of hay is filled manually into the wheelbarrow by the stable hand. It takes quit a long time and it is not so easy to do it. But you also need to understand this process is not safe for humans because of the presence of dust. The next step the stable hand needs to do is to deliver a certain amount of hay to each stable. Mostly one wheelbarrow is enough hay for feeding 4 horses. So, if we have 40 horses in one stable it takes about 2 hours.?

Today we have a few technologies for preparing hay before feeding. There are moisturized hay and steamed hay. Both technologies have already been used to partly change hay quality in recent decades. Moisturizing can be done in a special water tank or the hay can be watered directly on a wheelbarrow manually. Steaming is a more technological process that uses a steam generator in a special tank or a container. I call this process “to uncook hay”.

The moisturized hay solves dryness and brittleness in overdried hay to some degree, but meanwhile it does not control the humidity level.

The steamed hay is intended to remove dust and microorganisms and to moisturize the hay. There is a “marketing” opinion for the steamed hay that a horse eats it better and it is easily digestible by the horse.

I have a lot of questions about steaming technology. The first is that it is too long of a process that takes about an hour to do it right. This is because we need to steam a huge volume of hay in a tank to avoid surface steaming.?

While steaming the hay is in the same position in a tank. So much nutrients are lost at the point of contact of the steam and the hay. During the process “to uncook hay” a huge amount of vitamins, micronutrients and other type of nutrients are lost. The hay steaming is done without prior cleaning of the hay. So we uncook hay with mud, dust etc.?

We brew a “borsch” with hay and harmful substances.

Another problem is that a portion for steaming in the tank is too small. It is complicated to clean hay this way for many horses at one moment. The horse cannot eat steamed hay in a short time. The hay is going to lose its quality over time since the hay is in open air.

In conclusion both processes, the moisturizing and the steaming, do not solve hay issues in the right way and are too complicated for stable hands. Steaming is not possible to implement for a whole stable of 50 horses. And finally, steaming equipment is not able to portion control during the day.