Equine Nutrition Calculator

How much is a flake? I will admit that I have never weighed my hay or had it analysed. My approach is to feed as much hay as they will eat (without wasting too much) and add a vitamin/mineral supplement. Depending on how hard they are working, I add grain. This relies on my chosen feed company to provide a feed/supplement that will add the nutrients missing in my hay. So, now I have an app to actually tell me if my feeding system is workingbut now I have to weigh my hay.... I bought a cheap fishing hanging scale and weighed a few bales/flakes. I found that my bales average approximately 18-20 kg (40-44 lb) per bale with roughly 10 flakes per bale. The bale in this photo weighed 18.5 kg and had 13 flakes in it. Thats 1.4kg per flake. Another bale weighed 19kg and had 10 flakes. So, closer to 1.9kg per flake. This variation is just within one batch of hay from one supplier. The question of how much is a flake gets even more difficult when you look at a large area like North America. Different grass types/bales are grown from coast to coast. For example, a bale of grass hay on the east coast may weigh 20-27 kg (45-60 lb) compared to 40-60kg (90-130 lb) on the west coast. All of this is to explain why flake isnt an option when entering your horses feed in the app. If weighing the hay isnt possible, you can always use the hours option when adding forage

Weighing my hay

This is a demo of the app