 Welcome! We are super excited to have you back with us. We did some webinars in the spring and several of you joined us for those and we took a break for summer and now we're back. And I've kind of missed you guys a little bit. I'm not a horse person, but I like this community. This community is fun. You guys ask questions and you're curious and you're watching manure videos and so that makes me really excited. Today you don't get to hear from me. You do not get to hear about manure, but you will be hearing about some feeding hay. And so you have to wait for me until the end in January. So housekeeping. I think everybody has their camera off except us as speakers and actually when we start most of us will turn off except the speaker that's speaking. We would really appreciate if you guys keep your mics and cameras off just because we are using a different format and it's going to allow us to stream a little faster and hopefully a little better and it allows us a bit more control on our end when you guys are registering, but we do need you to keep your cameras and mics off if you can. You're doing an awesome job of that right now. And last time we had a different format for our question and answer and so if you joined us last spring we're going to switch things up on you and this time we're going to be putting our questions in the chat. And so you can see people are introducing themselves in the chat saying where they're from and that's awesome. So Rachel and Paige are going to be watching the chat the whole time and they're going to pull those questions out that you guys have so they don't get lost. And then as we go along we'll answer those questions. And just so everybody knows this is recording. So we are recording this and because you're registered we will be sending the link out to you after the recording is up and so it should be up by Friday but at the latest we should have it up by Monday. And so that'll include the link to the webinar that we're doing right now and it'll also have a link to the presentation and such and other materials if there's any resources that our speakers share today. Okay so just some locations and numbers for you guys. We have a lot of people joining us from North Dakota and Minnesota so that's really fun. We have and we have a few folks from other parts of the United States too but it's always fun to have our home crowd join us and so we're excited to have you guys here. We do have a member from Italy and Germany and you guys joined us in the spring too. So welcome back we're glad you're here. And then as far as the numbers go I just kind of broke it down into categories of the most horses and so one to five was the most often seen between one and five horses for you guys owning and what our numbers are on here. 25 to 50 was the next biggest group and so we had folks that had like 25 horses or 50 horses would have been the next biggest group and then there was just a handful that had between 75 and 150 and out of the 87 folks that registered maybe three or four had that many and so we have a lot of folks that have between one and 15 horses that are joining us today. Okay we have today Leanne Scurpe who is going to talk to us about nutrient requirements, digestive system basics, really the nitty gritty science stuff about feeding hay. And then we have Paige Brumman who's going to come in and talk about hay that are available in North Dakota. What can we feed? What do we have available to us and then how does that look? What does it look like when we're feeding hay in the winter in North Dakota? And then to round out today Rachel Wald is going to come in and talk about determining hay quality and she's going to show us I would say and some of you guys asked what's the simplest way or the best way or the easiest way to know what those nutrients are in your hay? I think she's going to talk to us about that today. So with that I am going to give Leanne access here to go ahead and let you guys so Paige do you want to turn my camera off for me and Leanne you can take over. Perfect thank you so much Mary this is exciting opportunity so I'm going to kick off with this little black book this is something that we pull a lot of stuff from it gives it basically this is the Bible for the horse industry in terms of nutrition it's called the nutrition requirements of horses they have for all species it gives us a combination of requirements and allowances so we can begin to start thinking about winter feeding and so those requirements are based on data collection from horses extrapolation of research from a lot of different other livestock and professional judgment the bottom line when we think about this book is the values from this 2007 nutrient requirement handbook is for the average horse so the key thing to remember is that it works well for most but not all horses and so that's something definitely that's critical I'm actually going to put in the chat box a link to the working document online just be careful with that and always consult with a nutritionist when you're starting to think about stuff but it is available online to just play with and kind of start thinking through things so let's think a little bit further into when what about nutrient requirements and as we think about these we need to think about influential factors the little black book that I just talked about the nutrient requirements addresses the key factors which are shown on the left and so these are really common things that we think in terms of classes of horses we consider when we think about requirements so body weight age the growth rate so our foals milk production are you having a lactating mare pregnancy maybe your horse is in a different trimester or the level of activity of your horse whether it's light moderate heavy or intense the other side are different factors that we also need to consider so today we're talking about winter so climate and environment the digestive and metabolic differences between horses is variable depending on size and also a lot of other factors the variation in production and performance capabilities the current health status previous nutrition status the variation in digestibility and the interrelationships among nutrients from horse to horse and so there's so many things that we need to consider and so when I when I say that I really want to drive home the fact that when we think about horses horses should be fed as individuals each individual horse has a different tolerance to cold weather stressors which we're talking about today not every horse is going to be the same and so as the Arctic weather here in North Dakota sets and we need to consider nutrients for each specific horse individually so let's talk a little bit about those different nutrients water intake energy protein vitamins and minerals those are some of the common ones that I'm sure most of you have are all heard at some point or another water is a huge concern energy is a very big concern I'm going to hit a little bit more and focus on those and then protein minerals and vitamins are certainly important as we start to bring the whole picture back together so let's kind of dive into some of the most critical things that we need to consider and why I'm sure you've been driven home especially the youth or growing up with horses water water water this is a very critical nutrient the risks and impacts of colic will dramatically increase by water intake and so reduced activity reduced forage intake all of which can often become critical during the winter or colder climates and so as it gets colder making sure the ice is broke so horses have access to fresh water is a top priority horses tend to decrease their water consumption as temperature drops seems natural I don't like drinking cold water when it's cold so making sure that your horse has good access to water and also salt you know making sure that that salt is there not only as an electrolyte and a mineral but it also will help to increase some of that water consumption horses will not drink water obviously if the ice is in the way most horses are not going to break their own ice and so just making sure that if you have to check it a couple times a day unfortunately when the waters are super frigid that is something that we all need to consider if water is being provided in buckets sometimes it's more often that we check those especially in this cold crazy North Dakota weather the other nutrient that I really want to focus on today is energy energy is perhaps the biggest concern when it comes to cold temperatures as temperatures drop especially for prolonged periods of time this creates a little bit more stress and discomfort we call it cold stress on average a horse at maintenance so just average horse not really doing anything just sitting out in a pasture will need approximately 25 percent higher energy intake during the coldest temperature of end winter months each horse has a different tolerance just like I was talking about earlier every horse is very individualized to cold stress and therefore a lower critical temperature or the lct sometimes we refer to that which is when the horse has hit a state where they need more energy in order to stay warm so that's something that we start to consider here in the crazy cold but horses possess a pretty highly effective thermal regulation system so the lower critical temperature depends on the amount of body insulation such as hair coat you know we have they have this pretty cool mechanism where the horse's hair coat has the ability to stand up lay down and change direction via erector muscles tapping trapping that warmth of air and creating an insulating area so that's kind of a nice layer to consider when the horse's body clipped that's a little bit different and depending on what you're doing for that the amount of body fat which we're going to talk about I think a little bit later in terms of body condition scoring which is incredibly important and providing protective shelters and that might be something as simple as even a blanket and so depending on what blanket you choose they each have different fill factors and so there's a lot of things to start to take into consider when we think about energy because there's a lot of things that affect the energy one more consideration in terms of environment is if a horse is out in pasture remember that as the snow gets deeper horses have to paw through the snow to get to the grass that's another extra component of energy when that horse has to forage and find its food and so those are some different things to think about when we move forward with energy if we think about that lower critical temperature just on another different level a horse that's stabled and heated barn perhaps with a clipped hair coat that horse is going to have a lot higher lower critical temperature where a shaggy horse that's accustomed to the outdoors isn't going to get like the horse on the right where he's got a really nice layer of ice to protect him that horse is going to be naturally adapted to a lower critical temperature so if a horse is shivering that's a really good indication that that horse has hit its lower critical temperature if cold stress is significantly prolonged so more than one to two days and that increased energy is not met that's when horses will start to lose weight so other factors that alter caloric needs and activities such as level of housing age and stuff that we talked about so making sure that that energy content is is kind of one of the things that we're focusing on today and let's kind of drive into what is one of our best energy tools that we can serve our horses best with all right you guys have probably heard this but fiber fiber fiber is so critical to a horse's diet um let's kind of discuss why so roughages you know when we say roughage if you're looking at a feed bag or something we tend to think in terms of crude fiber so feeds with a minimum of 18% crude fiber is considered a roughage and fiber is needed to maintain the motility and digestive tract function of the gastrointestinal tract and so when we think about fiber that is the number one thing that we think about if you have horses out on the wild think of what they're doing all day they're foraging and grazing on grasses and such so roughages really should make up the majority of the diet for all horses forages are key key key to producing heat and i'm going to tell you a little bit more on that here in a few minutes when we think about that heat the hind gut is truly the horse's furnace that's where we're going to get that neat internal temperature to start to increase when we start to feed quality fiber sources and in the winter months you guys might have heard that we really like to have our horses being fed on a 1.5 to 2% basis but we can increase that to 3% on terms of body weight when we start to get into the winter to make sure that we can make up for that particular um access to a good long-term heat source and again i'm going to hit on that body condition score again because that is going to be one of your determining factors which i'm going we're going to talk about a little bit later in terms of is my horse at a good am i feeding too much am i feeding too less fiber um and that's going to help you kind of dictate some of that all right so let's think you know when we think about fiber and we think about feeding the horse we have to kind of go to the anatomy of the horse to really understand what's going on so we have two different sides of the horse we got the forga and we got the hind and so the forga is going to break down their proteins and carbohydrates and fats starting at the mouth going through the esophagus and into the stomach the stomach's pretty small and so as you think about a horse foraging they're eating a lot of forage and small quantities throughout the day unfortunately we change that you know we feed usually twice a day and so just recognizing that the stomach is small and the food in there really only stays in the stomach from generally 30 to 45 minutes it's not in there for a very long time before it passes into the small intestine and this is where i really want to focus because this is where all the the good stuff happens when it comes to winter and heat so we leave the small intestine and we move into the horse's natural furnace so it's kind of fun because once we leave the small intestine we go into the cecum that truly is like the internal combustion site the cecum is pretty fascinating and houses a really neat population of microbes that work to formant forage so again speaking to those fiber components fermentation gives off a long lasting heat and this is much like the steam that rises rises from fermenting in a manure pile so mary i did mention manure just for you these microbes are basically a whole bunch of steam engines creating heat as they break down that fiber that's being consumed which is why feeding horses is critical in winter months again that fiber component as it truly serves as fuel for those little tiny microbes to be stoked and generate that long lasting internal heat for your horse you know as humans we think oh nice cup of hot tea or steaming bowl of oatmeal in the winter months sounds pretty good what doesn't work that way for horses hot food such as like warm brand mash is delicious for horses might temporarily knock off the cold chill but it's not going to help them stay warm and toasty throughout the night it's very temporary again you need that strong fiber source same is true for grain grain still has plenty to offer in the winter however it is a false interpretation that grains like corn are warming feeds because they just don't have the fiber content that is needed for that microbial population to really be stoked and keep that horse warm for a long amount of time and when I say fiber components that's those cellulose and hemicellulose components that that microbial population needs to generate heat throughout fermentation so kind of the take home mentioned before I pass this along to my amazing colleagues the major nutritional concerns for winter is we need adequate calories so again thinking about the energy components to maintain good body condition score again i'm hitting on that again it must be important adequate fiber to increase and maintain that internal body heat for longer periods of time and of course water water water water is so critical not only to prevent colic it helps lubricate the entire digestive system keeps your horse nicely hydrated and again just remember that every horse needs to be fed on an individual basis they're all a little bit different so analyze your horse's workload it's housing again body condition score to determine if the feed change is necessary or if they're doing just fine so with that I think I'm going to hand it over and it looks like Paige is ready to roll so thank you so much Leanne we're going to keep rolling here as questions start to come into your mind please put them in the chat box Rachel is watching that right now and so she will compile those questions and make sure that we get those answers so I'm going to hand it over to Paige all right hello everybody I'm going to talk about some of the common types of hay that are available in North Dakota typically we split them into three different categories of grass haze legume haze or a mixed combination type when we look at our grass haze a lot of times the tame seeded types are more of our cool species think of our brome grasses our smooth and meadow brome our blue grasses and some of our wheat grasses like crusted or intermediate our warm season grasses sometimes those are more of the native types such as our western wheat grasses and our blue stems our grandmas our green needle and then your annual forages are becoming more popular in the last well just more popular in general sometimes they can be a little bit easier for people to seed and put up and hay producers are growing those and some of those examples would be teff hay that some horse people have questions about oat hay your rise millets sorghum sedans those type of haze when we look at our legumes most commonly elf elf is kind of king and I think that's nationwide but also definitely here in North Dakota some pasture mixes or hayfield mixes will throw some clovers in but they're much less quantities and then our mixed haze they typically test out more similar to a grass hay as they do have a smaller amount of elf elf but typically when they're harvested that elf elf is going to be a little bit more mature and therefore not provide as much of a boost in some of the the nutritional analysis there so keep that in mind and then you know Leanne mentioned this too but by the type of hay that matches your horse's diet needs and we'll talk a little bit about how we figure that out down the road here so what type of bales do we have available in North Dakota sometimes horse people are associated with small squares but that's not a lot of the majority anyway definitely most popular is our large round bales and they can have softer solid cores your solid core bales are going to typically be a little bit heavier they're going to hold their shape better have less contact with the ground and therefore have less waste in the long run large round bales can vary in weight quite significantly anywhere from 800 pounds up to 1600 pounds or better depending upon what the species are in that hay keep in mind that whatever type of hay you purchase you want to make sure that your equipment that you have is able to handle it large squares are also available in North Dakota and becoming a little bit more popular for horse hay as well some people prefer these when limit feeding because they do flake off easier than the large round bales but they aren't as expensive or require as much manual labor as the small squares do and those large squares are typically around the eight to twelve hundred pound range and your small squares we're all pretty familiar with those not as common typically going to be higher in price weighing around 40 to 80 pounds and let's think about what those bales are wrapped with what kind of twine is being used ideally twine and net wrap should be removed when feeding to reduce the choking hazard and entanglement hazard that come with that cesil twine is more biodegradable but it does result in a little bit more dry matter loss meaning that the the bales wrought a little bit quicker they break down over time in your manure and compost whereas plastic twine and net wrap do not but plastic twine and net wrap are going to have less dry matter loss cesil twine around 20 dry matter loss plastic twine and net wrap around that 10 percent there is a fairly new product that's come out in the past few years called b-wrap and it's a net wrap variation it's a combination of net wrap as well as a plastic material that doesn't let moisture in and this is considered to be as good as storing hay under a building or covering it in tarps because it has much much less dry matter loss almost no dry matter loss there's a few custom hay producers that are starting to use this but the cost is much much higher so keep that in mind and you may have to request it as an option if you want to go that route it's about eight dollars a bale versus a dollar so a bale for the other type of bale wraps and twines so we get a lot of questions about how to price hay or what is hay worth and when you're buying hay you want to consider buying it well you should be buying it by the weight but oftentimes it's advertised as a price per bale so how do you convert that to know if you're which hay is a better deal per se the formula up on the screen is 2000 pounds divided by the weight of your bales and again we mentioned that the weight very significantly depending upon the type of hay that you're buying and you're going to take that time the price per bale and that'll give you the cost per ton so in the example below I have two bales one bale is listed at 55 dollars a bale the other one's at 85 and let's just say this is a grass bale which bale would actually cost less and in this instance the second bale the 85 dollar bale even though it seems like it's more up front is going to end up at a price of about 120 dollars per ton versus the 55 dollar bale is going to cost you about 137 dollars a ton so assuming that you have the equipment and the ability to handle that 1400 pound bale you're going to save yourself quite a bit of money to spend a little bit more in price per bale rather than getting the cheaper bale that is smaller another thing to keep in mind is that overall larger bales are going to be a better deal in the long run because trucking is a huge expense of purchasing hay in North Dakota getting it from the field to the farm so there's less handling involved if the bales are bigger less cost in that bale wrap and you can fit more bales on the truck so how about we visit a little bit about where to find hay in North Dakota probably the number one way to find it would be to contact some local connections who do your neighbors that have horses get their hay from maybe they produce a little extra that you could purchase from them the closer the hay is to you typically the more affordable affordable it will be if you don't have that option there's a lot of online and web listings a common one is biz man online in North Dakota there are some social media sites for hay for sale in North Dakota and then there's the NDSU feed list as well you can check with your local feed stores sometimes they will sell hay either in small squares or even work with a producer to sell larger quantities or round bales or large squares oftentimes they'll have ads or listing up in their lobby with local hay seller contact information if you're still struggling there's always the national hay suppliers these are larger companies that will ship hay to you know that there's usually a minimum quantity that's required and that minimum quantity is usually by the truck load so it's certainly an option though there's also many people that are going the route of looking at some bagged feeds and I'll talk about that in a minute and then last hay auctions aren't very common in North Dakota a matter of fact we don't have any weekly or monthly hay auctions like some of our surrounding states however there's sometimes internet auction companies that will have hay lots on that you can bid on and local farm auctions will sometimes sell lots of hay as well reminder that the trucking will end up being the responsibility of the buyer so if you don't have availability that may not be a good option for you so we mentioned that trucking is a significant portion of the hay cost in North Dakota typically around four dollars a mile and that's a really just an average you can find it cheaper and you can find it more expensive typically it's going to be delivered by a full truck load meaning you might be able to get hay delivered by two or four bales at a time but it's going to cost you probably a little bit more or it might just not be an option for some hay producers on average like a semi load of hay you can expect about 28 bales so if that's more hay than you need for your few horses maybe you want to get together with a neighbor and consider purchasing lot sizes of hay and then lastly I mentioned this before but consider safety your experience and the available equipment you have if you're hauling yourself if you're going to just pick up one or two bales at a time so there's a lot of different ways to store hay in North Dakota keep in mind that the outer four inches of the bale contains about 25 percent of the entire volume of the bale and we're talking round bales here so if you can prevent rot to the outer edges you're going to significantly decrease the amount of hay loss that you have so one way to do that is to cover it if you can get your hay stored inside under a roof in a shed great if not consider covering it with tarps or plastic that's another option to reduce hay loss and that can be significant up to half of the dry matter another question we get quite frequently is about stacking and there's a lot of different opinions about stacking hay some of the research that is out there is that if you can stack in long narrow rows end to end similar to this first picture up top that's going to reduce the amount of moisture that pools around the edges of the bale and will decrease some of your dry matter loss now that might not be possible if you're limited on space you may need to stack and go up to the picture right below it there you can see when water sheds off the bales you're going to have a little bit more rot and mold in those crack areas where the water is going to drain also keep in mind make sure that if someone's unloading and stacking the hay for you make sure that the equipment that you have is able to get that hay bale down so maybe instead of stacking at three high like this hay stack here you'd only go too high some people will stack them out in the field or line them up where the round sides of the bale touch if they're touching again you're going to have that water that sheds down into the middle and have a little bit more dry matter loss in this picture here on the top right they're spaced out a little bit to allow those bales to sweat and to breathe out in the field and then lastly if you have the ability to get them up off the ground in this bottom right picture you see they've stacked them on like a rock bed and allowed airflow in between them that is one way to do it and if you're just dealing with a few bales using something like a pallet to get them off the ground will prevent a lot of that rot from ground moisture. Something else to think about is the moisture level so ideally our horse hay is 10 to 16 percent and in reality that might not be possible some years in North Dakota if the weather is not very conducive to hay production know that you're going to have an increase in molding occurring when the hay is at 18 to 20 low 20s moisture percentage and then much over 24-25 you get a risk of heat damage and the higher the moisture your bales is you actually have a fire risk in hay bales so hay can spontaneously combust and it happens every year. One of the reasons we recommend not storing your hay inside until it's had a time to sweat is because of this exact reason. In Leanne covered a little bit about the lower critical temperature so I'm just going to reiterate that you want to increase your forage intake by two pounds for every 10 degrees below your horse's lower critical temperature and that's something that you have to figure out and determine just some general guidelines as a healthy adult horse that lower critical temperature is going to be around five degrees if they're accustomed to North Dakota kept outside and Leanne covered a little bit about that it can really drop significantly if the horse is young old or thin if they may hit their lower critical temperature at freezing or even above freezing if they have wet hair coats so keep some of those things in mind. The bottom line here is increase their forage access the colder that it gets ideally an extreme cold like we see in North Dakota we just hit 20 below zero the other night here if you can feeding free choice access during those times is is a good idea. Something else to figure is feed placement place your hay behind wind breaks close to their shelter and close to their water sources it is a myth that horses will eat snow and get enough to get enough water from that they may be able to survive in the short term on that but in the long term you're going to really increase their risk for losing weight decreasing that body condition score and also increase their risk of impaction collie and then in a few weeks our webinar is going to address facility design a little bit more but when you're feeding try to keep away from snowdrifts or where snow will drift keep it away from buildings where you're going to have snow coming off of the side of the buildings as it melts you want to not feed right in front of the gates right in front of the doors to your shelters to the barns and low spots keep in mind where that waste hay and manure is going to be in the spring when it comes time to clean it up as well and then lastly we're going to visit a little bit about stretching your horses hay resources so if it gets to the end of winter you're running low on hay and you're having trouble finding that same hay source you can consider replacing some of your hay with a pelleted cubed or vacuum packed forage that's available for most feed stores you can also replace it with a complete feed which would be a typically a pelleted or extruded feed that is a combination of forage and a grain or concentrate you could supplement your existing hay with a concentrated feed you can feed older hay even though it may not be as appealing and you're probably going to have more of that dry matter loss or that rot on the outside you can crack open bales from maybe carry over hay that you've had a year or two ago or maybe other people have had and are willing to get rid of at a lower cost knowing that there's going to be a fair bit more waste as long as the inside is is still good quality and palatable that is an option as well know that typically if hay is over a year old you're going to be deficient in vitamin a so again a be a good idea to get it tested to know exactly what you have you can also feed a lower quality hay free choice say some years there may be an excess of CRP quality hay or slu grass hay or things that aren't very nutritious or palatable but they're available so you can maybe feed that in a higher quantity or free choice and then reserve your high quality feed like your alfalfa or high quality grass haze and portion that out in smaller quantities once or twice a day reduce waste rachel's going to talk about limit feeding and then maybe using a feeder or net actually you should use a feeder net if it'll possible because you will greatly reduce the amount of waste over 50 percent sometimes just by throwing a feeder around your your bale and then lastly if you're running short on hay resist the urge to turn horses out to pasture early it's better to buy more hay or use some of the previous mentioned strategies rather than to turn your horses out on grass too early you will reduce the the production of your forages if you graze too early in the spring i'm going to turn it over to rachel and then be sure you're thinking about questions that you have as you go through this webinar today throw them in the chat box and we will answer them at the end page we do have a couple if you wanted to check out in the chat box real quick while i go through determining hay quality so as we're looking at hay quality excuse me i'm this is just a visual assessment so if you go to go to buy hay absolutely go in person and look at it you definitely need to just want to make sure i can move my slides here there we go okay you definitely need to see it in person waste your content when you're when you're just visually looking at things you want to make sure that it's not moldy hay you can smell it and it smells good everybody knows that good hay smell when it's too wet you can smell that it's that it is too wet that there's a high moisture content you can put your hands on there and feel that it's wet and sometimes you can even feel if it's hot and that's not a good sign either so those are just some things visually as you go to look at it before you get that that hay assessment nutrient assessment beforehand palatability when you're looking at to see if it's palatable you know that wide coarse leaf that you're going to see horses don't usually eat those wide coarse leaves or if there's slewgrass in there or if it's stemmy or if there's a lot of sticks that's going to affect the palatability of any hay or hay source that you're looking at foreign objects is another thing especially in ditch hay we we did a ndsu extension did a project i believe five years ago now on ditch hay and yes it is a good source of hay but you are looking at some foreign object issues that you can find there aluminum cans glass bottles other trash that you might find um when i was a kid we picked up a lot of squares out of there and we made sure to go through all the hay before putting it in the hay net to to grab all that trash out which is foreign objects is a big issue um with horses you know cut lips and other stuff that you want to avoid the other thing you want to look for is noxious weeds uh possibility of noxious weeds are unpalatable weeds in there um absent wormwood is something that's really unpalatable and of course you'll be able to smell and then any thistles smell that hay make sure it smells good and then color even though you can see that nice green color in there it doesn't necessarily directly determine the hay quality that's why we're going to talk about testing our hay next um so i'm going to just show you we're going to talk about how to take a sample here in my office we have a hay probe of course my nice little background is gonna pull it off or not show it um we have an end that goes into into a cordless drill so that you can take it out there um and test samples here's here's a picture of someone who's who's testing the face of the bale so i would want you guys to go um on the twine side of the bale so that you can get as many layers as possible you're going to use that cordless drill and drill in about 18 inches of that probe the probe is approximately 20 to 22 inches long um you can check out any probe from an extension office usually they're free to use um no issues just use it and bring it back because otherwise we'll have to to hunt you down to get it back which isn't always so fun but um get that sample taken um so the nice thing about sampling hay when you have horses if your hay supplies you know that 10 to 20 bales for the year sample all of them um and get them into a bucket and and mix it around because the sample size that you need is small this is you know a sandwich size baggie actually just a little bit smaller than a sandwich size baggie so when i'm taking samples i take a five gallon bucket out there i go in that 18 inches on either all of my bales or 10 of the crop um so 10 percent if i have 100 bales i'm going to be doing 10 bales so 10 of that crop is one sample and i'm going to put it into all 10 of my samples into a bucket mix it around to pull it out put it into my sandwich size baggie and send it off to the lab so when you're looking at labs you want to use um labs that are certified so a lot of times if you're if you're working with an extension agent to borrow a pro a lot of times they have labs that they send to that are reliable for the area or have maybe a good turnaround time um i know around here we have several labs we can use ndsu chia um lab out of minnesota and then dairy land labs as well those those are some three good sources around here there are some labs into south dakota as well that can be utilized um but those are kind of the main ones around here so when you send a sample off usually your cost for one sample so if you get 10 percent your bales or you know the bales that are all from one field that sample will be one sample and that's around 18 20 dollars per sample so it's fairly inexpensive to know what you have so that you can properly set up a ration for your herd for the winter time and when you're looking at results a lot of your results are going to come um and you're going to see crude protein um your average daily fiber or average i'm sorry average digestible fibers and um a whole bunch of other things including calcium and phosphorus and a and a couple of other ones but if you bring that sample into your extension agent a lot of times they can help you go through that to determine what's going on in your in your feed supply already um and if you can see at the bottom of this PowerPoint here we do have a really good publication that you can get um off of ndsu extension website that as 10 64 is feed sample or sampling feed for analysis so the the best most recommended way to do it is with this hay probe you can do grab samples but in my opinion it's not a complete analysis um when you use the probe you're able to get all the way through several layers so that's one thing that i i do want to stress is if you have the option go and get a hay probe it's it's really easy to take samples you just need a little bit of time so the next slide i want to show you um for for feeding hay so your maximum dry matter in a in a 24-hour period is going to be around that three percent of the body weight so it depends how much you're going to put out depends upon how many courses are out there and what condition they are in i know both page and leon have touched on this um so i'm going to kind of touch on on space and feeders and reducing some waste um so if you have four to five courses that are around that bale feeder and you have 10 horses in the lot i would say you know get two bale feeders out there so that you have enough space for every animal to be eating all at the same time um so that if it is really cold you can you can make sure that they have the the fiber that they need to get through that day so and then you want a body condition score needs to be monitored i'm going to show you a picture here shortly from k er which is kentucky coin research they're leading nutritionists in the field in the world um and they have a really nice body condition score chart that we're going to go through so university of minnesota actually did a study on feed waste with or without hay feeders and this one is is a nice lightweight one it's actually one that i have at home something that i can pick up and move on my by myself i don't need a tractor to do it um and feeders depending upon the feeder so i'm going to give you kind of a range of things the university of minnesota study showed that depending upon the feeder that you use waste seen using a feeder was between five percent and 33 percent however the waste without a feeder you would see 57 percent waste so i mean even just using a feeder seems to have increased the amount of feed that you would save um i know somebody had mentioned in the chat that there were um questions about nets nets do help um to reduce waste immensely um but keep in mind that if you have a horse that has poor body condition score nets will also reduce the feed intake um so you need to make sure that you're using it on a healthy healthy group of horses so that you're not um decreasing any amount of feed that's needed so that's the only thing um i have used nets before in the past and they are they are a wonderful way of reducing waste so the last thing that i'm going to go through is body condition score and body condition score is so important uh we talk about this not only in horses but in all animals you know body condition score is is key to knowing um how well they're going to get through the winter you know everybody seen that really fat number nine horse that's got the creases over the back and around the tail head and around the neck um that obviously is not something we're going for but we definitely don't want to get into that number one range either so we're looking in that five to six for the northern plains northern climate um to keep your horses in good condition throughout the winter um a lot of times the majority of the horses around here are on hay based diets only so making sure that that hay is of good quality you're taking samples you're making sure that it's that it's what you need for your horse um if you have anything in that two to three range you definitely want to make sure that that they're getting the nutrients they need along with the the cover that they need if they need to be blanketed or need to be inside um and then that number eight horse of course you're always going to see that number eight horse sometimes like Paige had said making sure that you're portioning out to knowing what they get um and that they're not they're not overeating to become even fatter coming out of winter because you always get one of those that seems to be fatter coming out of winter than than when they started but keep in mind if you have a number number one number two horse in with a number eight horse maybe we should look into splitting those two up so that that you're able to feed accordingly to the horses needs um because everybody knows if you've got 10 horses out there um majority of them are going to be in that five to six range but everyone's got an eight and everyone's got a closer to one uh to take care of so splitting those guys up to make sure that they get what they need is important too but this is um a really nice body condition monitoring score so the other thing I want to mention is um before the cold make sure to get your body conditions done on all of your horses uh once hair coats are put on it's really hard to tell conditions so getting your hands on those horses to know if you can feel ribs or if you know if they're a little thinner than you thought um and then if you're not confident on it invite someone over they invite a friend over who is who is good with body condition scoring so that they can score your horses for you and and don't take don't hold it against them if they tell you your horse is fast if you're struggling with a thin horse uh definitely talk to an area expert or a veterinarian to get a nutritional evaluation done so that you can properly feed that horse that's going to be the main concern there all right and I think we're ready to go on to questions yes I want to encourage you guys now is a good time where you can unmute your microphone and ask a question direct it to a specific speaker or type those questions into the chat box and we'll address them as they come in oh page I know um there was one earlier that I kind of wanted you to to take um and it says is test grass available to be grown in western North Dakota yeah so there are some hay producers that have planted test grass uh and are sourcing it so yes um I would go back to some of those resources on where to find hay and see if you can access it find somebody that is growing it but yes it is being grown in western North Dakota you may have to truck it a little bit I know there's some people around the minot area that have planted it and then also the Bismarck area that have planted it as well it is a little higher cost than your you know just the native grasses because of that it's expenses of the seeding so I'm going to butt in here real quick and so I just want to give a quick review um real quickly for folks who are jumping on we've had a few folks jump on right now we might see that happen here in the next couple minutes um if you are jumping on now expecting us to start at one o'clock we actually started at noon I made one mistake on the poster and so um they started at noon but have no fear we're recording it and so this will be posted and I will send it out so you can watch it again the whole thing instead of just the end uh and so uh today then Leanne talked about the digestive system and how important roughage is and so if you have questions regarding any of that kind of stuff Leanne is still here with us Paige talked about the types of hay in North Dakota and sourcing that hay and Paige is here she's been answering questions in the chat and then Rachel talked about visual assessment of hay and uh making sure that you're using a hay probe for nutritional analysis and so Rachel is here and has also been answering questions so let's keep those questions rolling you can see there's a poll up there that'd be super helpful if you guys can take the poll there's only two questions today uh and so if you can do that for me while you're asking questions and if you guys want to roll back through the questions that have actually come in and the answers that you put I think that would be really helpful for folks who are not following the chat sure absolutely um I might have missed some as well let me think after the test grass the next one is um somebody asked isn't there more loss per ton on smaller round bales yes that's correct so typically the the larger the bale the less loss you're going to have and as as well as the how tightly it's wrapped but the smaller bales are going to have um more contact with the ground and percentage-wise I don't know how much different it is but weight-wise it's going to be significantly more and then the next one is what's a good way to measure bale moisture content I don't know do we want to take team that one sure so um I guess I can highlight uh the best way to know the the moisture contact is going to be the core of that bale like Rachel talked about send it into a lab and they'll give you your your moisture content there are also hey moisture probes that you can purchase where you insert the probe into the bale and it'll give you an immediate reading of that hey moisture level and that's more applicable if you're putting up hay versus if it's already being stored and then you're feeding it I guess if you're going to purchase it too you can bring along a hey moisture probe and you can probe it yourself the only thing is is then that moisture is for that bale only and that spot only keep in mind that it will vary throughout the bale so doing the moisture test um with the nutritional sample is going to be the most efficient and the location it's stored of course too if you have the bales on the bottom that are touching the ground that ground moisture is going to wick up through the hay and those are going to test higher than ones that are stacked up off the ground I think I want to grab a question live here Shelly did you have a question I see you're unmuted I had a question for Dr. Skirpe is she still on yes awesome um what would be the biggest mistake that you see people making for forage feeding in the winter like your typical think your typical force owner is there one standout thing that you think a lot of people struggle with? Shelly I love that question thank you so much for asking it so actually I think the common thing is we really want to try to force uh different concentrates or supplements um whether it's a lick tub or push oats or grain to our horses in the times of winter because there's such a false assumption that they're going to also generate an increased amount of heat whereas we really need to focus on the long stem options so any sort of roughage even hay cubes are still going to produce a higher amount of long term insulated energy because we need that cellulose and the hemicellulose components of feeds for those microbial populations in the cecum to really generate any sort of internal heat and so really focusing on what is your fiber fiber fiber fiber when it comes to heat production so thanks for asking that yeah no problem thanks okay looks like we have some more coming in the chat here we have a couple minutes left so um we have I struggle with my horse getting too fat on one hand to read horses should eat all day on the other hand if they get fat they're somewhat restricted what is best I feed twice a day um not free choice unless it's really cold thoughts on that anybody yeah I can throw in there is some information out there and a lot of people have moved to feeding and slow feed hay nets and that's one way to stretch their ration out over a longer period of time throughout the day so if you are limit feeding and feeding twice a day if you can feed into a hay net that's one strategy another strategy is to work with a nutritionist to balance that diet so maybe you can provide lower quality hay free choice or not necessarily free choice but in larger quantities that will last them longer throughout the day and then work with a ration balancer or a vitamin and mineral supplement which we'll talk about more at the next webinar to make sure they're getting all of their nutrients that they need that's one other strategy okay and I think the next question is probably for Leanne you mentioned about the minimum fiber needed is there a publication with ideal or other components needed for horses diet like percent protein and so on is there any kind of guide that we can follow with that yes there is in fact I'm only showing my screen here because I put this link into the thing earlier and there is tons and tons of different just drop that in the the thing again tons of different operant options out there but this is just a quick thing if you were looking for your requirements so when you go to animal specification on this site it's going to bring up all of your possible options most of your horses are going to be a mature horse is going to be around a thousand pounds and so ideally you're going to need to go and weigh your horse with weight tape or whatnot for thinking winter and it's really cold out as I mentioned earlier in terms of the percent intake maybe it's super cold and you're looking for a three percent intake on body weight let's say I've got an average horse maybe I'm he's a little bit higher than average maintenance or a growing horse you're going to start to see some of these things change so if you focus down on the bottom you're going to see really quick like your animal requirement so you mentioned protein it's going to say here that on grams I'm going to need 28 grams and so again this this is just really scientific but if you really needed something quick and I can certainly Sarah send you some other stuff if you really want to focus on a specific nutrient component just let me know but there is that's just a really quick option to just kind of see using that tool from again that black book is your Bible there's a lot of content in that terms of like you've mentioned protein in terms of protein feeding as well but definitely hit me up email me I can drop my email in the in the text too I had a question come in privately too similar to that what protein should our horse hay be and don't look at what protein should your horse hay be it should be a what level protein does your horse need and then you balance that ration by providing the correct pounds of protein into your horse's diet and then of course you have to figure in whether they're physically able to eat that much if it's a really low protein feed and how palatable it is to if it's a really low protein feed so that's not easy there is no answer to that question I guess and I love that page emphasize it emphasized pounds because we feed by weight you don't feed by oh this looks like a good quantity because everything's going to be such a different when it comes to weight and so weighing your feed is so critical but again going back to what Rachel was talking about body condition score if your horse and be careful with the hair you might actually have to go out take the blanket off and run your hand along its ribs to actually see and actually evaluate any sort of body insulation fat coverage and that's going to give you your perfect um you know solution am I feeding enough what do I need to feed to start to increase weight if I can feel its ribs significantly when I pull off that blanket or whatever you probably need to increase either testing your forge source for better content or start to supplement with some sort of concentrate next question in the chat has to do with dust allergies and what to do to prevent them in the winter this is a little trickier but one common strategy is to soak your hay or to to rinse your hay not as easy in the winter unless you're taking immediately from the house to the horse avoid buying hay that's put up by ditches on gravel roads or in dusty areas that can help as well test your hay for ash content and try to feed lower ash content haze and then last but not least getting in touch with your veterinarian there might be some medications that you can use in the winter when other things aren't working out for the horse I was going to mention that too quality of hay is how it's put up as well so if you find a reputable source that you buy from even if it's just a little bit more expensive in your mind it may be a better quality because of the way it's put up so make sure once you find a producer who does it the way you like it maybe keep with them