How much hay does my horse waste with a ground feeder versus a hay net?

Trampling and bedding contamination. A horse standing on loose hay pushes some of it into shavings or dirt with every step. Once hay is mixed with bedding, most horses will not sort it back out, and it gets forked into the muck pile at cleanup. This is the mechanism stall owners notice most because it happens in full view, every day.

Urine and manure soiling. Hay on the stall floor sits in the path of both. A horse does not need to trample hay to lose it; hay a few feet from where it lay down or stood to urinate can become unappetizing to a horse that is otherwise a careful eater, and it gets left rather than trampled.

Wind and scatter, outdoors. In a paddock or run-in, loose flakes get picked apart by wind, pushed under fence lines, or simply spread by hooves over a larger area than a stall floor. This mechanism barely exists indoors and dominates outdoors.

A net or a webbed feeder opening changes that interaction directly. Your horse has to work individual strands through the netting rather than pulling and dropping a whole mouthful, so what it pulls out, it generally eats before pulling more. That single change, hay leaving the container a little at a time rather than all at once, is the mechanism behind most of the waste reduction people report, not any special material in the net itself.

A rope net such as the Dura-Tech Everlast 2-inch slow feed poly hay net removes hay from the floor entirely and adds the pull-through resistance described above. Both mechanisms, elevation and resistance, are doing separate jobs, which is why a net hung correctly tends to outperform either a bare floor or an open feeder used alone.

The practical compromise is a floor-level or low-hung feeder that still interrupts trampling and soiling without forcing an unnatural head position. An enclosed unit like the Schneiders Easy-Up Pro corner floor hay feeder with netted lid keeps hay at floor height, inside a contained structure, with a slow-feed lid on top, which addresses trampling and soiling while leaving your horse's feeding posture close to natural. A net can be hung low as well, as long as it's short enough that a horse cannot get a leg through it as it empties. Match the height to your own horse's habits and to the feeder's design, not to a single rule for every barn.

• Weigh a flake before you feed it (a bathroom or luggage scale works).
• The next day, before mucking out, pull out any hay that's been trampled, soiled, or blown away and weigh that separately.
• Divide the leftover weight by the starting weight to get your own waste rate for that feeding method.
• Repeat with a net or feeder in the same location for a week and compare the two numbers directly.

This tells you what actually happens in your stall or paddock, with your bedding, your horse, and your weather, which is worth more than any published average.

What the spread shows is that "off the ground" and "slow feed" are two different features that happen to show up together in most of these products. A feeder can address trampling and soiling by being enclosed or corner-mounted without necessarily slowing intake much, while a net can slow intake dramatically without being hung especially high. Match the feature to the mechanism actually causing waste in your barn, rather than assuming every slow feeder solves every kind of loss.

How much hay do horses typically waste on the ground?

It varies too much by barn to state as a single figure. Bedding type, stall size, how soiled the floor is, and how a particular horse eats all change the outcome. Rather than relying on someone else's average, weigh a flake before feeding and weigh what's left over the next day to find your own rate.

Does a hay net really reduce waste?

It addresses two of the three waste mechanisms directly: it lifts hay off a floor where it could be trampled or soiled, and the pull-through resistance means a horse generally eats what it pulls rather than dropping loose mouthfuls. It does little against wind scatter outdoors, where an enclosed feeder does more.

Is floor feeding bad for horses?

Not inherently. A lowered head while eating helps drain dust from the airway and promotes even tooth wear, so floor-level feeding has a real physiological benefit. The waste problem comes from an open, unprotected floor, not from head-down posture itself, which is why enclosed floor feeders exist as a middle ground.

How low should I hang a hay net?

Low enough to let your horse keep its head near a natural grazing angle, but short enough that as the net empties, a horse cannot catch a leg or shoe in the slack netting. Check the specific net's hanging instructions and adjust as your horse eats down through the bag.

How do I weigh my own hay waste at home?

Weigh a flake before feeding it with a bathroom or luggage scale. The next day, before mucking out, pull out anything trampled, soiled, or blown away and weigh that separately. Dividing the leftover weight by the starting weight gives you a waste rate specific to your barn, your bedding, and your horse.