Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Beet Pulp

Yesterday when I got the hay for the horses, I picked up a bag of beet pulp to try to help supplement their feed with. Beet pulp is beets that have been ground up and made into a pellet form to feed to livestock. Mind you the beet pulp has to be soaked in water. I will say that again - the beet pulp HAS to be SOAKED in water. If you don't soak it and feed it to the horse, cow, goat or what ever the animal will get sick when the beet pellet swells up in their stomach. I have heard of people doing this with horrible consequences.
My horses have never had beet pulp so it was a new experience for them. I had soaked several small scoops of pellets overnight in the house so they didn't freeze. I gave each horse or pony only a small amount and mixed in a handful of their regular grain and some wheat bran. They were all 4 excited over getting grain as usual but when they each took their first mouthful of the mix and tasted the beet pulp they spit it out. They all gave me funny looks as if to say "do you really mean for us to eat this stuff?".
I said "yes, they were to eat it,". They picked at it some eating the grain and the ponies stomped the heck out of their rubber buckets trying to find more grain. After a few more minutes they gave up and turned to their hay. But when I checked later most of the beet pulp was gone.
I am hoping that they will learn to like it better as they get used to it, and that it will let me feed less hay in the mornings so they hay will go farther.
But it was funny watching them try a new taste.

1 comment:

  1. I feed mine shredded beet pulp, which is a LOT cheaper than the feed and/or bermuda pellets that I buy! They've all learned to eat it up! Yum, yum!

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