Mouldy Feed And Your Horse

Problems with mouldy feed

Have you ever bought hay or chaff that has mould down in the bag or went mouldy quickly? What about mould in hay.  How does this affect your horse if he eats it.

As soon as you discover the mouldy feed, ring your feed merchant. Explain what you have discovered. At the very least, they should either offer a new lot of feed or refund your money. If they don't, I would find myself another feed store.

If your horse is agisted and you are buying your feed from them, make sure you let them know. Again, they need to issue you with a new lot of hay or feed.  Just remember, that people can't see inside bags or inside bales, so the person selling the feed is most probably pretty blameless.

Yes, you do need to be worried, very worried- mouldy hay can cause permanent lung damage to horses. Some moulds contain toxins as well. Never ever feed mouldy hay or food to your horse. Even a little mould can cause problems.

If it is a bag of chaff, you can bet that most of the chaff is off! The biggest problem with chaff is if the bag has got wet at the bottom and the mouldy chaff starts down there, you could have been feeding contaminated feed. 

This can happen because the feed merchant hasn't been careful enough storing the bags of chaff, or it started back when they were cutting the chaff and the hay hadn't been dry enough when they cut it.  We actually sent some feed back that was delivered because when the driver arrived the feed bags were wet.  It had started to pour and this driver didn't stop and cover up the feed.  The feed was pellets for geese that we were farming at the time and you know how quickly pellets can go off if they get wet.   He grumbled but we wouldn't accept them and of course didn't get paid!

So always check your feed very carefully.  If your feed smells mouldy but doesn't look it, then go through it until you find where the smell is coming from.  Then throw out that feed to be on the safe side, unless you are taking it back to the feed merchant for a refund.

Sometimes, if hay is stored directly on the ground, it can allow moisture to penetrate the bales. The other problem can be if rain soaks into the hay. Hay keeps best if it's stored indoors with maybe some wooden posts or sleepers underneath the bottom layer of hay. Allowing good air circulation will help keep hay clean.

Just remember that horse hay can never be dusty or mouldy if you don't want your horse to develop problems.

You can get hay in a number of ways. Small bales, round bales or larger square/rectangle bales. We find the small bales better as they can be put in a metal hay feeder and remain dry and they are always finished fairly quickly. If you want the bigger bales, keep it shedded and only pull off what you need......unless you have a paddock with a lot of horses in it.

What to do with mouldy feed?

• Put it in the manure pit and let it break down with the manure.
• Used it for  garden mulch. Your garden will love it and it will provide humus for the soil.  Hey, if you don't have a garden, then a neighbour might like it, along with the manure, that is mounting up!
• Maybe if you have some cattle, you can feed the mouldy feed to them, as being ruminants, their stomachs can take it. They usually clean up anything that is a bit “suspect”. Even if it is not mouldy, some cattle can be fussy. We fed a neighbours lucerne hay to a new stud bull in the yards. He had been pretty spoilt before we got him and only ate the best lucerne hay.  He decided that it would make a really good bedding and proceeded to pee on it. Our neighbour couldn't believe it!