How much hay does a horse need per day? The UK answer, in kilos

Most horses need about 2% of their bodyweight a day in forage dry matter, and not less than 1.5%. For a 500kg horse that is roughly 11.8kg of hay or 15.4kg of haylage, because haylage holds more water.

Most of the hay charts online are American and in pounds, and many skip the part that trips people up on British yards: the guidance is in dry matter, and haylage is a lot wetter than hay.

This post covers the daily and weekly amounts by bodyweight, why haylage needs a bigger net, the minimum for a good doer, weighing and soaking, winter grazing, a yearly bale count, and when to get a vet involved.

How much hay does a horse need per day?

Around 2% of bodyweight in forage dry matter is a sensible everyday figure for a horse in moderate condition. Redwings’ weight management guide feeds 2% to a horse at its ideal condition score, 1.5% to one carrying too much, and 2.5% to one that is too thin. The European College of Equine Internal Medicine consensus statement sets the floor: at least 1.5kg of dry matter per 100kg of bodyweight a day for a horse fed hay.

Dry matter is what is left of the forage once the water is taken out. Nobody feeds dry matter, so you convert. The figures below assume hay at 85% dry matter and haylage at 65%, the values Dengie uses in its forage guidance. The sum is: bodyweight × 0.02, then divide by 0.85 for hay or 0.65 for haylage.

Daily forage at 2% of bodyweight in dry matter

Treat these as a starting point. Condition, work, age and grass all move the number, and the horse’s weight over the following weeks tells you if it is right.

If you don’t know your horse’s weight, start there. A weigh tape is the usual yard tool, and a weighbridge is better if your vet or a local event has one.

Why does a horse need more haylage than hay?

Because the guidance is about dry matter, and haylage carries more water. Hay is dried in the field until it keeps. Haylage is wrapped while still damp. At Dengie’s working figures, 10kg of dry matter is about 11.8kg of hay but about 15.4kg of haylage, roughly a third more by weight.

The classic mistake is switching from hay to haylage and filling the net to the same weight. In dry matter that is about a quarter less.

Haylage also varies from bale to bale, and these percentages are averages. If you buy in bulk, a forage analysis tells you the real dry matter of your batch, and the sum above works with whatever number it gives you.

How much hay does a horse eat in a week?

Multiply the daily figure by seven, which is handy when ordering hay.

Forage a week at 2% of bodyweight in dry matter

That is for a horse with no grazing at all. Most British horses get some grass for part of the year, so in practice you will use less outside winter.

What is the least hay you can feed a horse that needs to lose weight?

For most good doers, 1.5% of bodyweight in dry matter is the floor. The ECEIM consensus statement gives the same 1.5kg per 100kg minimum for overweight horses and ponies, and suggests a more mature, lower-energy hay for them. Redwings is blunt: only go below a ration of 1.5% of bodyweight if your vet advises it.

For a 500kg horse that is 7.5kg of dry matter, about 8.8kg of hay or 11.5kg of haylage a day. It looks like very little in a net. Cutting further is a decision for your vet, not the yard WhatsApp group.

The levers that help a dieting horse without dropping below the floor are a lower-sugar hay, small-holed haynets so the ration lasts longer, several smaller feeds through the day, and more exercise. Our guide to the early signs of laminitis covers why this matters so much for native ponies and cobs.

How do you weigh a haynet?

Hang it from a hand-held luggage scale. They cost a few pounds, read in kilos and hook straight onto the net’s drawstring. Weigh the empty net once and take that off the total.

Weigh every net for a week, not once. Slices are not a unit: Redwings cites one study where small bales varied from 13kg to 27kg, so “three slices” can mean very different amounts from one bale to the next. After a week you will know roughly what your usual armful weighs, and you can spot-check from there.

Should you weigh hay before or after soaking?

Before. Redwings’ advice reads: weigh hay, not water. In a UK study of soaked hay published in PLOS ONE, the hays took up between 50% and 62% extra moisture, so a net weighed after soaking contains much less hay than the scale suggests.

Soaking is mainly used to leach out sugar for laminitis-prone and overweight horses, and the same study shows why it is not a guarantee. Sugar losses varied widely between hays: 6 to 30% after an hour and a half, 17 to 54% after nine hours, and 31 to 63% after 16 hours. The authors found no extra benefit in sugar removal from soaking beyond nine hours. Redwings suggests 12 to 16 hours. Either way, a high-sugar hay can still be high in sugar after soaking, so a hay analysis before and after is the only way to be sure.

Tip the soaking water away where horses can’t drink it, as that is where the sugar went.

Does grazing count towards a horse’s hay in winter?

Yes, grass is forage and it counts, but it is hard to measure. Redwings notes that ponies at grass can eat up to 5% of their bodyweight in a day, which is why summer grazing, not hay, is usually the problem for a good doer.

Winter is the opposite. British grass grows very little in the cold months, and a winter field can look green while offering a fraction of its summer bite. For most horses out by day in winter, hay or haylage makes up the bulk of the ration, and a horse living out on a bare field needs it as much as a stabled one.

A practical approach: feed as if the grass were not there, then watch the horse’s weight and condition. If it is gaining on a good field, cut back towards the 1.5% floor. Forage is also how a horse keeps warm, since digesting fibre makes heat, which our post on when to rug a horse explains.

Why shouldn’t a horse go long periods without forage?

Horses evolved to eat little and often for most of the day. The ECEIM consensus statement lists more than six hours between forage meals, and fasting, as risk factors for squamous gastric ulcers, and finds a higher risk when straw is the only forage. It calls continuous access to good grass ideal, with free-choice hay, or at least four to six meals a day, as the substitute.

The usual gap on a British yard is overnight: last haynet at 6pm, breakfast at 7am. A horse that finishes its net by 10pm has gone nine hours without forage. Two nets, a small-holed net, or a late check feed closes that gap without adding to the daily total.

If your horse is coming back into work after a break, the same steady forage base matters, and our guide to getting a horse fit after time off covers the rest of the routine.

How much hay does a horse need in a year?

Here is a worked example with every assumption shown, so you can swap in your own.

• Horse: 500kg, fed 2% of bodyweight in dry matter, all from hay at 85% dry matter
• Daily hay: 11.8kg
• Small bale: assumed 20kg, within the 13 to 27kg range Redwings cites

The year is 11.76kg × 365 days. The winter figure is 150 days. Add a margin for hay that gets pulled out, trodden in or rejected, and weigh a few of your own bales, because a supplier’s 20kg bale can easily be 15kg.

When should you ask a vet about how much your horse is eating?

Most feeding decisions you can adjust week by week as you watch the horse. Get a vet, or a qualified equine nutritionist, involved if your horse:

• Is losing weight on what should be enough forage
• Drops food, leaves balls of chewed hay, or eats slowly, which can point to teeth
• Is elderly and struggling to keep condition through winter
• Needs a diet below 1.5% of bodyweight to lose weight
• Has had laminitis, or has a metabolic condition such as EMS or PPID
• Suddenly goes off its food, which can be an early sign of colic or another illness and needs a call the same day

A horse with poor teeth may not manage long hay at all and need a soaked fibre replacement, which is exactly the sort of change to plan with your vet rather than guess.

Where the technology fits

The sum in this post is a calculator’s job, and Stride does not have a hay calculator. Nothing in the app works out a ration from your horse’s bodyweight, and it does not convert haylage to dry matter. You do the maths above, or your nutritionist does.

What it does is keep a record of what you actually feed:

• The feed log has a Hay / forage type, alongside hard feed, chaff, balancer and the rest. You enter the amount and choose a unit: kg, g, scoop, flake, ml or biscuit.
• A per-day total adds up every feed you entered in kg or g. It is the whole ration, not hay alone, and anything logged in flakes or scoops is left out, with a note saying how many items weren’t counted. Weigh the net and log it in kilos, and the total means something.
• Label scanning reads the nutrition panel from a photo of a feed bag, sack or tub and fills in the entry for you to check. Baled hay has no label, so this is for bagged forage, chaff and hard feed.
• The Nutrition marker in the horse’s Genome notes a forage base when a Hay / forage item is logged, and lowers the score only if a logged feed is over 12% sugar and starch. It does not check whether the amount of hay is enough, and it never penalises a horse with no hay logged, because it may be at grass.

It is a record, not a nutritionist. The amount stays your call, and your vet’s.

If you take one thing from this: hang a luggage scale in the hay barn this week, weigh every net for seven days, and compare it with the table above. Most of us are guessing, and the guess is rarely the number we think.