Hay Nets: The story of how research provides answers

Dr. Michelle Deboer shares her latest research on the use of hay nets in horses. We discuss effects on teeth, hay wastage and body weight, and overall health.  Here what dentists and chiropractors found after a two year study. This one is hot off the presses, so listen now!

Transcript

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Kris Hiney: Welcome to extension horses, tack box talk series horse stories with a purpose. I'm your host, Dr. Kris Hiney, with Oklahoma State University. And today we're going to be talking about the research behind Haynets, and whether or not they're a good thing. So with us today is a returning guest. You may know her from talking about blankets. Dr. Michelle Deboer. So welcome back, Michelle.

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Michelle DeBoer: Thank you so much, Dr. Hiney. I'm excited to be here.

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Kris Hiney: So we wanted to kind of give some background because you've done research on the use of hay nets. Correct.

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Michelle DeBoer: Yes, yes, we did.

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Kris Hiney: So we're kind of you're one of the leading experts. And maybe to to preface like, why, this? Actually.

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Kris Hiney: you looked into it. We want to talk about why we typically recommend hey nets and how they can be kind of a useful management tool. So why don't you just get started about why, so many times, we actually recommend that we use them.

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Michelle DeBoer: yes. And I think that's a great thing to talk about. And I was fortunate to work with Dr. Krishona, Martinson, During my graduate career at the University of Minnesota, and I feel honored that you call me a leading expert in Haynets. But she is the Queen when it comes to Haynets. And so that's where I was really exposed to the management practice and the research behind it. So the work that she did there, that happened about right.

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Michelle DeBoer: I started. My master's was looking at waste with different types of hay feeders, but haynets were one of those, and so they were able to see that haynets were really effective at reducing hay waste, which was great, and they were comparing it to kind of different round bale feeders or other feeders. And so it was one of the most effective options that were out there.

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Michelle DeBoer: And so we all know that hay can get very expensive, and we also know our horses like to pull it out and sleep on it, and poop on it, and pee on it, and then they won't eat it. And so I think it's a phenomenal

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Michelle DeBoer: tool from the financial side of it. But the other big side that was also looked at was the kind of the morphometric measurement. So body, condition, score, body weight over all those health parameters, and so they also found the benefits on the horses side of things in which the horses could maintain their weight better. They could maintain that body condition score. But I think the big thing comes down to nutrition as well

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Michelle DeBoer: is, you'll hear nutritionists always say, you know, we want to prolong the amount of time that horses can eat. That's how their gi tract was designed to continuously have food going through it all day, and so haynets help us utilize that practice a lot more efficiently if I just give them free choice hay, and they or give them like a few flakes of hay, and they just have free choice added, and can eat it as quickly as they want.

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Michelle DeBoer: Now they might be going a few hours between meals.

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Michelle DeBoer: using the hay nets depending on the different size you use, but they can prolong the amount of time a meal takes, and by doing that we are trying to extend that meal period to reduce the amount of time they might have fasting between the meals in which they're provided that forage, and so it can.

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Kris Hiney: So many benefits to that, too, because we always want to do a little physiology reminder for everybody that horses only salivate right when they're chewing. And so if they're all that time without chewing, then there's no buffer coming into that stomach. And so that's why fasting is not a great idea for horses, because we know their tummies are a bit sensitive, right.

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Michelle DeBoer: Yes, they are the horses. They like to make everything a little bit of a challenge. So a great way, especially if you have ulcer. Prone horses is to, you know. Give them that constant buffer for them.

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Kris Hiney: And when you talked about maintaining body weight, you meant not getting fatter right.

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Michelle DeBoer: Yes. And so that's something. We did talk about it with our study as well, because we did monitor body weight and body condition score, and it's not something in terms of your horse is going to drop a bunch of weight on a haynet. But

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Michelle DeBoer: we did find those horses were less likely to gain more weight in comparison to when they didn't have any haynet at all. So that's where it's like, okay, if you do have a harder keeper, you know. Monitor them on a haynet, but it doesn't mean your horse is going to drop down from a healthy weight to a skinny weight. It just means they're less likely to kind of gorge themselves and be eating too much that leads to that

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Michelle DeBoer: unhealthy weight gain that we can see with them.

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Kris Hiney: The other one that we typically recommend Haynets for are those horses that are, you know, we have to sort of diet restrict, and we don't want to make them crazy by giving them nothing to do. So this just provides, you know, not only the physical stimulation, but the mental stimulation of having something to do for longer periods of time.

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Michelle DeBoer: Exactly, and that's the nice thing with it is. I love it because not only does it save your pocketbook, but it kind of gives that enrichment for the horse, as well as giving some of those benefits in terms of

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Michelle DeBoer: prolonging the feeding time and allowing them to yeah, not get bored and go crazy and be running around in their stall, all waiting for their next meal.

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Kris Hiney: Okay. So now we're going to get into your research and why you did it. Because here you know, all of us nutritionists and people are like, Hey, use hay nets because this is going to do all these really good things. And then there was like, Well, but what if it makes the horses nutter butters, or really screws them up because they're not grazing off the ground. But they're pulling hay off the hay nets. So that's where you come in right.

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Michelle DeBoer: Yeah. So it was really, we saw these benefits. But the main question we'd always get asked were, What about their teeth? And you know. Well, you see, this kind of this artificial barrier now that we've created, that goes in between the horse and the hay that they're consuming. So we are

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Michelle DeBoer: changing that management practice and that style in which they normally are foraging. So it was a question that was asked a lot, and anecdotally, I had heard a lot of dentists being like, you know, the positives way more outweigh the things they've seen. But we didn't have science to back it up, and I'm someone where I'm like, I like the data. I like to be able to prove something with our controls and monitoring it versus just the anecdotal side. So.

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Michelle DeBoer: So that's where we kind of set out to monitor these horses. Look at their teeth, look at any soft tissue damage in their mouth. But we were looking at tooth length, too, of how much wear did they have? Did they have uneven wear? So we called it bevels of? Is there like a slant to their teeth as they're chewing. And then we had dentists look at the dental abnormalities that we might see in their mouth to see if any of those things were going to be related to the Haynets.

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Kris Hiney: Okay. So you did this study like, how long did the horses eat off of the haynet before you checked out their teeth?

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Michelle DeBoer: Yes. So for this one, we wanted a really controlled experimental design, because every horse is so different. And so I'm not the most patient person. But this was a 2 year study, so I really had to practice my patience here in getting from the beginning to the end and waiting for those results. But the reason it was so long is because the current dental recommendations for doing the dental float. So you know the dental work that veterinarians will do on

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Michelle DeBoer: the horse's teeth to kind of balance them out. It's typically about one year. And so we wanted each horse to be on the treatment for that one year period. So where did the 2 years come in? Well, we made it into a crossover design. And again, that's because every horse is so different. So what a crossover design allows us to do is every horse was on the Haynet treatment

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Michelle DeBoer: and on the No Haynet control treatment. So then we could compare each horse to themselves, because if we just had 2 populations of horses, there's no saying what variation they had already. And so again, by putting each one on the haynet for a year and the control for the year. It allowed us to control this experiment a little bit more.

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Kris Hiney: And so your dentist came in and did all of these evaluations, and they did not know what kind of hay the horse was eating. Is that correct?

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Michelle DeBoer: Correct. So they were the dentist. They were all blinded. So any of our evaluators were blinded. And so she actually had a horse trailer that has stocks in it, and where it's where she performed all those evaluations. So she was parked back behind the barn, and the students would bring the horses up one by one, and kind of alternate, you know, where they took them from, so she had no idea when they were coming up, what

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Michelle DeBoer: what treatment the horse was on, or what they were used to, and so at the beginning, when we blocked them by body weight. So we split half on Haynet. Half on control, she went and performed that dental evaluation. Did the dental floats to get everyone to what we considered a baseline like. Okay, let's make sure they're starting all with a clean slate, and then, after one year was the 1st evaluation. Then they switched treatments, and then we did another year.

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Michelle DeBoer: and then she and she floated them in between, and then we did the other evaluation.

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Kris Hiney: Cool sounds very sneaky of you.

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Michelle DeBoer: Yes.

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Kris Hiney: Okay, so this is where we do the drum roll. What did you find.

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Michelle DeBoer: Thankfully, we found nothing that was very concerning. So going through.

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Michelle DeBoer: I'll start off with the dental stuff. But going through our dental work is so we evaluated a few things that I've already mentioned, but I'll try to categorize them to make it a little more palatable as I talk about it. So one we called the Rostral Oral cavity score, where we looked at a lot of like soft tissue damage any chips or cracks or tartar on the teeth, and so horses were evaluated monthly, and the score was identical, for horses on the Haynet versus

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Michelle DeBoer: is the control. So we looked at it as a percent. But we were amazed that the standard error was so small, and we had 2 blinded equine veterinarians who did those assessments, and we averaged everything out, so nothing in terms of the soft tissue damage in terms of Tartar things like that. We looked at the length and the bevels for the incisors, and once again everything was pretty spot on, and very

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Michelle DeBoer: consistent between the Haynet and the control, and the last thing we looked at was the dental abnormalities. And so we kind of went down the list of, you know. Do they have the sharp enamel points? Do they have waves, you know, parrot mouth things like that, and we didn't see any differences between the 2 treatments. We did have a high prevalence of dental abnormalities, but it didn't

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Michelle DeBoer: matter which treatment they were on. But I think that's important to note, because even after one year, I think 100% of them had sharp enamel points. The you know the points that could lead to

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Michelle DeBoer: kind of the sore cheeks and the gums and things like that. So it's very important to do dental work. But haynets really should not impact how your horse is wearing their teeth down.

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Kris Hiney: Your biggest finding is that all of us that are running around recommending that they get their teeth done are not wrong.

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Michelle DeBoer: Yes, yes, 100. And yeah, that's I was amazed to see, though, even after one year of because sometimes I've had people say, like. Oh, you can wait 2 or 3 years. But even after one year those horses were really, really grateful to have that work done to prevent any pain or exacerbation of those issues.

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Kris Hiney: Okay. So myth of dental abnormality seems to be abolished. But then you did another one, and I think this was a long one, too. Right.

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Michelle DeBoer: So are you talking about the body, weight, body, condition, score, and waist part, or the

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Michelle DeBoer: Chiropractic one.

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Kris Hiney: Chiropractic, one.

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Michelle DeBoer: Okay, yes. So that one was a I call it like a sub project within our larger project. And so for that one, we use the same horses who were on this study, and what we did is we waited until the summer, and during the summer we chose that time because the horses weren't in work, and so we wanted to evaluate. We call them subluxations, for the chiropractors might get mad at me, but to try to define

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Michelle DeBoer: that is kind of like the spinal alignment. So they were looking at. You know how

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Michelle DeBoer: how balanced is everything within those vertebra. And then we looked at pain, pressure thresholds. We looked at range of motion, and we did it over a 12 week period in the summer, at the end of that treatment year. So we kind of started horses on a treatment in September, and then that portion of the study went from May through August.

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Kris Hiney: Okay? And did you evaluate them right after the semester was over? Or did you do them like

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Kris Hiney: before school started again?

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Michelle DeBoer: So similar to how the last study worked is so right. When they got done with work in May they had like a week or 2 off, and then we had a chiropractor come out, and she would adjust them to get them to a baseline, and so she'd take note of any of those subluxations that she found and rank them on a scale of

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Michelle DeBoer: no subluxation, minor, moderate and severe. And so that was our very 1st thing right when they were done work. Let's get them to a baseline to then move into that 12 week adjustment and evaluation period. Then we looked at them at 4 weeks, 8 weeks, and 12 weeks with that 12 week being that final evaluation, and that

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Michelle DeBoer: took place about 2 weeks before the horses began work again. So everything kind of happened in the summer

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Michelle DeBoer: between. When work ended and work began again.

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Kris Hiney: And so maybe we should. I should have backed up a little bit and said, This is one of the concerns people have with Haynets is that the horse's head is up right? And then grasping and pulling versus again the normal head down grazing. So some people have some concerns over. Is that actually hurting the horse or causing some issues there? So that's why you went ahead and did this chiropractic study.

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Michelle DeBoer: Yes, and so I also want to point out, too, that this one. So there have been studies that have looked at like hanging height of the Haynets, and how those would change versus like feeding them on the ground. Since this study we use round bales, and both round bales were in feeders. Just one had a haynet and one didn't. We really didn't change anything regarding the height or even the angle at which they were pulling at.

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Michelle DeBoer: We just considered it was we were looking at just the Haynet factor of. Are they pulling harder, biting harder? Are they using more muscles, you know, in their head and their neck that might impact the rest of their body as well. So this was a little bit more in terms of like just Haynet or not, which I think hanging height is also a huge factor that we do need to look at further.

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Kris Hiney: Okay, very good. All right. So everybody's mind is right. Now. We know that it's they're low, but they're still pulling. And then you guys followed them for 3 months doing chiropractic work. So we're ready. What did you find out.

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Michelle DeBoer: So I need to be a little bit in terms, since the paper is accepted, but not yet published, but so I guess, going through the. So you guys get some spoilers. So.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah, spoiler, you guys.

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Michelle DeBoer: So we looked at pain pressure thresholds. We didn't find differences between the treatments. And so for that we use like a pressure algometer, where we would push it on a point of the horse, and we wait till the point of avoidance, and that would kind of mark so the larger that number it would suggest, the less sensitive that horse is to that pressure or pain. And so

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Michelle DeBoer: again, that was no difference. When we looked at the range of motion. So we did cervical range of motion. So we looked at the horse, bringing its chin down to its chest between its knees, between its fetlocks, and we did find an improved range of motion for the Haynet horses. And so that was

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Michelle DeBoer: a little bit surprising, and I'll kind of go into in a moment. Why, we might think that is, but it was only 5 degrees. So it wasn't like this drastic, but it was a significant difference. And so we saw that for chin to chest and chin to fetlock, it was 5 degrees more for each of those.

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Michelle DeBoer: and then, when we looked at subluxations. We didn't see any differences with the individual vertebra. So we ended up grouping them together for cervical, thoracic, lumbar sacral. And then we scored it as a percent of the total points they could have accumulated. We did end up finding a slight increase in subluxations for the Haynet horses in their cervical vertebra region. And so what

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Michelle DeBoer: piqued our interest here was the fact that we saw slight increase in the cervical vertebra subluxations, yet an increased range of motion for the Haynet horses, and so some of the thoughts we had as the researchers doing. The study was that

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Michelle DeBoer: the changes were likely at the base of the neck, considering the range of motion increase for movement, that would be more towards the poll, and so the base of the neck was likely the most affected. But the difference that we saw was basically the difference of a single vertebra moving up from no subluxation to a mild to moderate subluxation. So it was a pretty minor difference, but it was a difference, nonetheless.

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Michelle DeBoer: And so those were noted within that 12 week period as well. So we were comparing it when the chiropractic adjustment was done again, 12 weeks at the end of the study, but that was kind of the findings we saw. And again, so why do we think we saw it.

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Michelle DeBoer: We're thinking that because the horse likely had to work harder to

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Michelle DeBoer: prehend the hay from those haynets, they were using more voluntary muscle movements within the neck. And so they have found that. And I believe humans as well as horses, that creating those voluntary neck exercises will strengthen those muscles which can increase range of motion and performance, but we also think, in doing those exercises, it might have

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Michelle DeBoer: at the same time led to some of those subluxations from working a little bit harder in that region of their body. But yeah, that was, those were our interesting findings for that study. So while it was a minor subluxation, it was like, Hey, you know, maybe it is worth having your horse evaluated by a chiropractor when they are on on Haynets. But

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Michelle DeBoer: sorry I'm getting long winded here. But what.

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Kris Hiney: No, you're good. You're good.

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Michelle DeBoer: Okay.

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Kris Hiney: So I think, yeah, making sure owners have the take home. And so there may be something there. But I mean, I always say, is this time to panic. Should somebody take this piece of data and like.

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Kris Hiney: Okay, this is not a good thing for the horse, or how do we want to frame that conversation about? Well, there maybe, was something going on.

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Michelle DeBoer: So our kind of takeaway was, we saw, changes. Some were positive, some weren't as positive, but neither one was substantial right. It was a 5 degree increase in range of motion, and a slight increase in a single vertebra for increased subluxation. So yes, there were slight changes. No, it's not worth panicking about again.

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Michelle DeBoer: some positive, some not so. And when we consider all the other factors and things that were impacted by Haynet, that

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Michelle DeBoer: hay, waste and body, condition and body weight, and even the time that it takes to clean the hay up, I think those positives are ultimately going to outweigh anything we see.

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Michelle DeBoer: I think also something I want to note, too, is when we did look at the pain pressure thresholds. So while not an objective of the study, we did see no differences across treatments like I mentioned, but we did see changes over time in which the horses had a greater pain pressure threshold at the beginning, and it slowly decreased between 4 and 12 weeks. And it was significant. So that shows us that the chiropractic work

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Michelle DeBoer: helped, you know, help the horse, and by 12 weeks we did see noticeable differences where they lowered that pain pressure threshold. So while I say, you know, maybe we need chiropractic evaluation, it might be good for any of our horses, considering those the changes that we're noting over time.

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Kris Hiney: Or giving them time off. Of students.

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Michelle DeBoer: I'm sure they much appreciate that as well.

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Kris Hiney: Trust me. I know what those school horses go through, so that would not surprise me at all, that they felt better after the summer than after classes were done, so.

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Michelle DeBoer: Yes, it's definitely a needed break for them. They are some of our biggest heroes, and the things they put up with and do for us.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah, absolutely absolutely so do you? Then? Still? Well, I guess maybe we had glossed over you said you did other stuff with the body weight. But I guess we you'd kind of already done that before, or did you guys do some new things? With that as well.

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Michelle DeBoer: Yeah. So I was hoping you'd bring that up again. Yeah. So over that time. So this is to our knowledge, the longest kind of body, weight, body, condition, score on nets versus no net study that has been done. So we did monthly evaluations, but we overall looked at changes

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Michelle DeBoer: from beginning to end of the treatment year. And so we did find. I have my notes to get the exact numbers, but we did find horses on the control treatment on average, gained about 44 pounds and went up about half a body condition score, and then horses on the net treatment went down. So the Haynet treatment. They went down about 51

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Michelle DeBoer: and down about one body condition score. And so that was an average for all 13 horses that were on this study, but I think so. All horses also stayed within a healthy range the whole time. So once again, it doesn't mean they're going to lose excess weight. But our horses on the control. They were typically around our 6, 7, 8 range and then our horses on the net treatment stuck more around our 5 6 range

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Michelle DeBoer: and then the one other thing we looked at was also, hey.

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Michelle DeBoer: hay usage is what we termed it, because we didn't look at intake versus waste. We just kind of lumped it all together. Of how much hay did the horses use during these periods of time? And so the horses on the net treatment used about 2.56% of their body weight. So again, that included

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Michelle DeBoer: intake plus anything they wasted. And then the horses on the control treatment used 3.23% of their body weight. So it was a pretty. It was a significant increase. But they did end up using about 26% more hay, which we're assuming was partly due to increased intake associated with that weight gain. But a lot of it, especially if you saw the pens

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Michelle DeBoer: during the study. A lot of it was waste. They just throw it around and lay on it and poop and pee on it so funded our study, and one of the things that was in our grant to fund was they had to pay for the extra hay we were going to waste from not using the hay nets. And so they laughed about that because they're like

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Michelle DeBoer: products designed to reduce waste. And here we are paying for it so, but that, I think, is really telling in and of itself, that we had a lot of money in the grant just to pay for that extra hay that was going to be used.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah, I mean super important point, though, because when you're talking about financial costs, right? So a 26% increase in cost to feeding.

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Kris Hiney: It's pretty

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Kris Hiney: pretty significant. And you know, if you use the haynet, that you can maintain an appropriate body condition and keep the horse happy like. Maybe maybe you spend the money on the chiropractor. I don't know.

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Michelle DeBoer: Yeah. And I think, too, it's you consider the labor like I've had to scoop all the hay from paddocks without hay nets, and it, in addition to them, wasting everything. It's also the time of like picking up this wet and gross and gross hay, and then disposing of it on top of that is, if you're cleaning those paddocks out. So I think there's a lot to be said in terms of

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Michelle DeBoer: ease of use, and you know benefits to the horses and the humans that we can see.

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Kris Hiney: And shout out to our entomologists, integrated pest management. That's a big part of it is reducing all of that organic and rotting feed and manure mixed together huge breeding ground for flies. So we try to bring all the things together and on the podcast I love it. Okay, so now, you don't work for them. Right? You just happen to research Haynet. So it's not like you're endorsing one specific one. But

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Kris Hiney: all of them are good.

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Michelle DeBoer: Yes, exactly. And so I like to bring up who funded it because I don't. I always want people to know, like I'm not hiding anything. They're not hiding anything. We reached out to them because we really wanted to do this study. They believe in their product. Enough that they were willing to fund it. And so for those who aren't in the academia type of industry, it can be really hard to get funding, especially for horses, especially for a lot of these

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Michelle DeBoer: applied projects. You know, a lot of this stuff is done in labs and is very this high end science. And

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Michelle DeBoer: I really like to do the research that

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Michelle DeBoer: the horse owners care about that's really applied. We can put it right into practice. And so to do that, we often have to go to industry to get funding for those types of projects that end up being useful for horse owners, for you guys. And so they

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Michelle DeBoer: gave me money, and that was their only role in it. We didn't really update them throughout the study. We honestly didn't even give them an Update till I got the paper accepted. So once I got it accepted, I set up a meeting, and I told them the results, and I knew they'd be happy with the results after we got them. But yeah, I didn't even get paid in the grant to do the study. I just volunteered my time because I was

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Michelle DeBoer: really interested in getting these results. So, so yeah, shout out to them and thank you for everyone in industry who does support the work we do because I think it benefits the horse industry as a whole.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah. And all these little pieces of the puzzle that help us do a better job. I think that's super important. So well, I really appreciate you sharing your data with us, especially as now we I do want to say everybody it has been peer reviewed. It's just waiting to get published. So it's not like we're cheating or lying, or anything.

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Michelle DeBoer: Revisions in today. It's on my next to do list. So I'm I'm excited for it to get out into the world.

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Kris Hiney: So and so in the future. If people want to read about this more, which journal should they look for.

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Michelle DeBoer: Journal of Equine Veterinary Science. So that's the one that the last one was published in. And this is the one that it's this new one's accepted into so hopefully. It'll be out in the next couple months.

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Kris Hiney: Awesome, awesome for people that want to read the details.

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Michelle DeBoer: Yes.

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Kris Hiney: Very good. Well, Dr. Deboer, really appreciate your time, love the type of work that you do that's super practical. And answering the questions the average horse owner does, rather than all the crazy genomics that everybody's eyes gloss over, but are so important.

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Kris Hiney: I don't wanna anger the genomics people, but.

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Michelle DeBoer: You know, I'm like it's great, but it's just above me. I just like going out my field and being like you have a new idea, and then I call Krishona, and she's stuck dealing with me, starting a new project.

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Kris Hiney: That's awesome. That's awesome.

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Kris Hiney: All right. Well, again, really appreciate your time. Can't wait to hear what you're up to next. But that has been another episode of our tech box talk core stories with a purpose.