Is trickle feeding frustrating?

I had a conversation with someone last week about whether I thought horses found eating out of small-holed nets frustrating. It depends.

I currently use a mix of methods to feed hay, I am not affiliated with any of these brands, they are just products I have purchased over the years. I use a mix of Nibbleze nets and Trickle Net Softie nets, I also have 2 shires greedy feeder nets which have surprisingly lasted me almost 2 years with baler twine repairs.

My horses get some loose hay then the rest in nets. They are very used to small-holed nets and can eat out of them effectively. They seem to find the Shires easiest to eat out of followed by the Nibbleze, the Trickle Nets are the most difficult. They also find any net much easier to eat out of if it is fixed into a haybox from the floor rather than hung up.

There are so many factors that can contribute to frustration, we have to look at the whole picture.

My horses have access to some very short grazing, some hedgerow and ad-lib hay out in their slow feeders. I wouldn’t personally feed mine exclusively from the small-holed nets as I feel this would create too much frustration, I like them to have a variety of difficulties to choose from. I have seen them try to eat from the nets when they’re hungry and they show frustration behaviours like biting the net aggressively and head butting it, the energy just feels frantic. But having several options means they’re not hungry and desperate when they come to eating from the smallest-holed nets and it feels more relaxed and like problem-solving than desperately trying to get food.

I think issues come when we have our horse on such low rations that even with trickle feeders they are running out of food at times, then when the food does come they become even more frustrated as they can’t get a good mouthful despite being hungry. Sometimes we’re even told to double/triple net already very small-holed nets making it impossible to get more than a strand or 2 out at a time. I met a horse who only ever received hay triple netted and watching him try to eat made me feel frustrated, I can only imagine how he felt.

My horse Dan actually developed wind-sucking behaviour for the first time in his life when out on the track when we had tried triple netting the large bales, it was way too difficult for him to get out and the bales were at the perfect height for him to wind suck on. He had never ever wind sucked before even when stabled and it is now something he will very occasionally still do if he’s frustrated eating a haynet, I haven’t seen him do it for a long time now.

I appreciate how important it is to keep our horses at a healthy weight and I know so many of us are always battling with this, both of my boys could do with losing a few kilos at the moment. However we do need to look at the whole picture and not just the weight.

Restricting forage intake can have a really high-cost on their emotional and physical wellbeing if we are leaving them feeling hungry and frustrated. I meet many overweight horses who present with stomach ulcers and food anxiety because their owners feel they have no choice but to leave them without food for long periods of time, this is not sustainable if you want a healthy horse.

My current thoughts if you are needing to restrict forage intake are to have most of the ration in the harder-to-eat-out-of nets but make sure every day they are getting some of their ration from easier sources just to help limit that frustration. I also find its really important that they aren’t running out of food completely.

I know the general consensus is that horses will be okay for up to 4 hours without food, but this is talking about the physical digestive system, I’ve done a lot of experimenting with my little herd and the emotional/behavioural effect of running out of food is really quite significant for them. If I leave my horses with enough hay that they run out around 2 hours before I get there, they are frantic for the new hay I put out and resource guard heavily from each other. If I put out maybe 2 extra haynets so they don't run out, there’s plenty of hay left in the morning and they are calm and relaxed about the new hay going out.

Just some food for thought, have any of you experimented with this or had horses develop problems using slow-feed nets? 🐴