DAN: "What is the difference between steaming and soaking
hay?"
Lots of hay questions or forage questions today.
"What is the benefit for both?"
So again, we had another YouTube community comment.
So Cheyenne Denning said, "I soak my 22-year-old gelding's
hay.
It seems like it helps with his allergies, but I'm not sure."
And she also wanted us to point out that she was the first one
to comment.
So congratulations.
I know that's a big thank for our YouTube community watchers
to be the first comment.
So congratulations on that.
DR LYDIA GRAY: So when your feed forage,
you have a couple of choices.
You can feed it dry, just as it comes.
Right?
You can dampen it.
Some people just take the flakes and spritz it with the hose.
And that just to cut down on the dust.
The next would be to soak it.
And then the next would be to actually steam it.
DAN: Yes.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yeah.
And the best way to steam, really the only way now,
there is commercial steamers like Haygain Steamer.
DAN: Correct.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Because you can make your own steamer, but--
DAN: That sounds dicey.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yep.
And it's not only potentially dangerous, water
and electricity, but if you don't
steam the bale from the inside out, you're not as effective.
And you might also be creating a dangerous situation
with microorganisms.
So there's lots of research about the Haygain steamer.
If you go on their website, I mean just pages and pages
of published, peer-reviewed scientific research.
And what it says is that--
I better read it so I get it right.
The Haygain steamer takes about an hour.
I don't know.
Have you smelled it?
DAN: I have.
So they actually have been in a lot of our booths
at trade shows and things like that.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yeah.
DAN: It always smells very good.
DR LYDIA GRAY: It does!
"Significantly reduces airborne respirable particles."
That's your dust and allergens.
"And microbial contamination," so bacteria, yeast, and mold.
That is the fungi.
So I think the original asker said why would you
pick one over the other.
You pick steaming if you're concerned
about respiratory allergens or airway irritation,
and you're trying to reduce the contaminants in your horse's
breathing zone.
DAN: So if your horse has some sort of allergy.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Like Equine Asthma Disease,
the Inflammatory Airway Disease, or the Recurrent Airway
Obstruction.
Let's just call it Heaves.
OK?
Right.
That's the main use for a steamer.
It also softens the hay, and it's very, very palatable.
When horses are given a choice, they always
choose the steamed hay.
That's in the research.
I just read that.
DAN: They've got great taste!
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yeah.
So, soaked hay -- why would you soak hay, then?
There are some commercial units for this,
but do we have a hay net?
There's people who have really good systems of putting hay
in hay nets, and then putting it in a muck bucket or something.
And some people even put the hay net on a pulley, a rope,
because it gets heavy when it's waterlogged.
And so they pull it up out of the water.
It helps to have sort of some help.
DAN: This little Velcro.
DR LYDIA GRAY: The gator mouth.
DAN: Gator mouth.
Easy to fill, and then basically just closes up.
And then you just dunk this in.
DR LYDIA GRAY: The whole thing in the water.
DAN: Nice!
And this acts like a little spaghetti
strainer when you pull it out.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yeah!
Yeah, right.
And you want to discard the water.
There's a list of pros and cons between soaking and steaming.
One of the cons is that this takes a lot of water,
like 40, 50, 60 liters of water.
Lots and lots of water.
The Haygain steamer takes, they say, four liters.
DAN: OK, so drastically less.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yeah, so much less water.
And potentially, there's environmental contamination
with this.
But why would you soak?
You would soak if you were trying to remove sugars.
DAN: OK.
DR LYDIA GRAY: So the horses that are insulin resistant,
maybe have Cushing's disease with some insulin resistance,
the horses that are PSSM, that are laminitic and shouldn't
have either sugars or fructans.
And so if you soak, the guidelines
are 30 minutes hot water and 60 minutes cold water
will leach out significant amounts of the water
soluble carbohydrates.
Fancy term for the sugars in the fructans.
Potassium has been shown to come out at about the same rate
also.
Now, hay is very high in potassium.
But if you have an HYPP horse, you
could soak and remove potassium.
DAN: Oh, there you go!
DR LYDIA GRAY: Right, right.
So soaking would be to remove sugars.
And then steaming would be to reduce
the allergens, the respirable particles, the contamination.
DAN: Microorganisms.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yep.
DAN: So steaming does not get rid of the sugar.
DR LYDIA GRAY: It gets rid of some of them.
DAN: But not the same way as soaking?
DR LYDIA GRAY: The numbers range.
Most studies show 2% to 3% only of the sugars
are removed with steaming.
There's not very much, and probably not
enough to move the hay into a safe range for the horse, which
you know because you analyzed the hay.
DAN: Ah, got you.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yeah.
There are some studies with higher numbers that have shown
12% and 18% removed, but still.
When you compare it to 30% that soaking
removes-- and it's been as high as 55%.
DAN: Wow!
DR LYDIA GRAY: Soaking really does the better job.
If that's your goal, sugars, then soaking
is the technique you want to use.
If your goal is to help your horse breathe better,
then steaming is what you want to use.
There was one study in the list where
they said the best of all worlds is to soak then steam.
DAN: That's like top notch.
DR LYDIA GRAY: That's hardcore.
DAN: That's all the way there.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yeah.
But it can be very time consuming if you do all that.
DAN: That's really helpful, because I
was on our Customer Care team for a long time at SmartPak.
And that is a common misconception.
People are not really sure whether to soak
or whether to steam, and what the difference between the two
and what their goal is.
So I think that's a really helpful and easy way
to break it down as to what the best options are.
So hopefully that helped you out.