The Effect of pelleting, cubing and chaffing on rate of lucerne forage intake
Keeping horses eating for the longest possible time throughout a 24-hour day is IMPORTANT — and has HUGE benefits for their gut, mind, and overall health and happiness.
While long stem pasture in the form of pasture and/or hay is the BEST form of forage for your horse, nearly all of us use at least some forage in other forms like pellets, chaff and cubes.
Which leaves the question… does the form of these alternate forages make a difference to the length of time it takes a horse to eat them?!
We recently ran a study in conjunction with Dr Nerida McGilchrist PhD, Equilize Horse Nutrition Pty Ltd, to measure how long it takes horses to eat lucerne in four different forms: pellets, chaff, dry MultiCube lucerne cubes, and soaked MultiCube lucerne cubes (which were allowed to soak up exactly 2 litres of water).
The goal? To help owners make smarter feeding decisions based on intake time.
The Experimental Setup
We used 8 horses in a Latin square design over an 8-day period, after 3 weeks of adaptation to the cubes to make sure ‘everyone’ was familiar with the cubes.
Each horse was fed 1.5 kg of one lucerne format per day — and we timed them from first bite to last crumb, or until they lost interest.
Any leftovers? We weighed and recorded them to add in to the statistical analysis.
Stats was a generalised linear model with a Gaussian family in R. Statistical significance was determined at p < 0.05.
What Did We Find?
Here’s the scoresheet for how fast the horses ate:
- Pellets FASTEST: ~ 63 g/min, 1.5 kg gone in just under 24 minutes!
- Soaked cubes Slower: ~47 g/min, 1.5 kg eaten in 32 minutes
- Chaff Similar to soaked cubes: ~42 g/min, 36 minutes to eat 1.5 kg
- Dry cubes SLOWEST: ~36 g/min, taking 42 minutes to eat 1.5 kg
MultiCube’s dry lucerne cubes did take the longest to eat. But they were not significantly different to the relatively long chopped chaff used in this study. Soaked cubes sat in the middle — slower than pellets, but not quite as slow as cubes or chaff. BUT, the soaked cubes also had the highest number of and largest refusals.
Had we left horses for an indefinite amount of time to eat ‘all’ their forage, the soaked cubes probably would have ended up being eaten slowest. With the larger bulk (total of 3.5 kg) horses tended to ‘get full’ and leave a portion of the soaked cubes, which ‘in real life’ they would have then come back to eat later.
Takeaways for Horse Owners
Need a slow-eating option? Dry cubes are your best bet.
Short on time but still want forage? Horse’s can down pellets fast – making them useful for quick top-ups (e.g. on a stop-over during an endurance ride or on a short break during a long road trip) but less ideal if you’re trying to keep a horse chewing longer.
Soaked cubes? These do slow things down AND they get water into your horse as well.
Bottom line: If you’re looking to manage behaviour, reduce boredom, promote chewing and saliva production and support gastric health, the form of forage matters.
In this study, cubes were consumed slowest, giving you the best alternate fibre option for more time eating and chewing.