DIY Horse Slow Feeder

"What is a horse slow feeder?" you may well ask! Well it is a device that is designed to slow your horse or pony down so that his hay lasts for a longer periods of time.

Some owners can only feed their horses twice or maybe three times a day which means there are long periods of time where the horse has no food in front of it. We know that the horse's digestive system works best when the horse is continually eating but many horses pig out when given free choice hay.

The slow hay feeder gives us the best of both worlds by restricting the amount of hay the horse gets by making the horse work harder to get it whilst also lengthening the time it takes to consume the hay.

I have tried a few different options but have found that hockey nets converted into haynets is a great solution in this style barn.

View from above

This barn is known as a bank barn, as the hay is stored up above the horse's run in area. So I cut some holes in the floor of the hay area and attached the hockey net haynets from there.

This works incredibly well as I use large round bales so filling up the haynets is now extremely easy.

How to Make the DIY Horse Slow Feeder

The hockey nets are made of nylon and can be bought at Canadian Tire (the $25 ones) and I simply folded them in half length-ways and stitched them up the long side. The holes are about 1.5" which means that the horses have to really work at getting the hay, and generally only get a couple of strands at a time.

It used to take the horses about 2-3 hours to eat each serving of hay. Since installing the horse slow feeder it now takes them around 5 hours and there is absolutely no hay wasted.

I thought the horses may be frustrated by the nets but in fact they are all much calmer and much less hungry at the next feeding session.

If I were to do them again I might try using a solid material at the top and just using the nets for the bottom two feet. This would encourage a lower, more natural head position.