A horse eating hay from a small-hole hay net hung on a stable door

How much hay does a horse eat per month?

Bymuntaseer

An 1,100 lb horse at maintenance eats about 772 lb (350 kg) of hay in a month — roughly 16 bales of 50 lb small squares, or about $39 of hay at $100 a short ton.

That figure is a decent budgeting anchor and a poor buying instruction, because a horse’s hay bill is not the same in June as it is in January. Both numbers are below.

How much hay does a horse eat per month, week and year?

One 1,100 lb horse at maintenance, grass hay, no pasture, fed from a rack — and what it costs at $100 a short ton
Period Hay 50 lb bales Cost
A day 25.7 lb (11.7 kg) 0.5 $1
A week 180 lb (81.6 kg) 4 $9
A month (30 days) 772 lb (350 kg) 16 $39
A year 9,392 lb (4,260 kg) 188 $470

The arithmetic underneath is simple: a horse eats about 2% of its body weight a day in dry matter, hay is roughly nine-tenths dry matter, and some of what you put out gets trampled rather than eaten. The daily figure is the only one that matters — everything else is that number multiplied.

How much hay does a horse eat in a week?

180 lb (81.6 kg), or 4 bales. Weekly is the interval most people actually buy on, and it is the one where bale weight bites hardest: get bales that weigh 40 lb rather than 50 and you are a bale short every week without noticing.

How many bales of hay per horse per month? It depends on the month

Hay for a 30-day month, by circumstance
Hay for the month Bales Cost
A 1,000 lb horse 702 lb (318 kg) 15 bales $35
An 1,100 lb horse 772 lb (350 kg) 16 bales $39
A 1,200 lb horse 842 lb (382 kg) 17 bales $42
In moderate work 1,081 lb (490 kg) 22 bales $54
At 20 °F overnight 1,089 lb (494 kg) 22 bales $54
On full-time pasture 244 lb (111 kg) 5 bales $12

Two rows there do most of the work. A cold month takes the same horse to 1,089 lb (494 kg), and full-time grazing takes it down to 244 lb (111 kg). Between those two, the hay bill varies by more than a factor of three across a year.

That is why a flat monthly figure misleads. Budget on the annual total, buy on the season.

How much hay does a horse eat a year?

9,392 lb (4,260 kg) with no grazing at all — 188 bales, around $470 of hay. That is the dry-lot number.

A horse with summer turnout eats far less than that in hay, because the pasture is doing the work for part of the year. What it does not do is halve neatly: grazing intake is not proportional to turnout hours, and a horse out for a few hours eats at a much higher rate than one out all day.

What moves the number most

  1. Bale weight. Everything scales off it, and it is the input people are most confidently wrong about. Weigh one.
  2. Temperature. A cold month is roughly 41% more hay than a mild one, for the same horse doing the same nothing.
  3. Grazing. The largest single swing on the page, and the least predictable, because it depends on what the pasture is actually carrying.
  4. Waste. From 1% to 13% depending on how it is fed. A feeder is the cheapest hay in the barn.

Working out your own monthly figure

Weigh a bale, count how many you go through in a fortnight, double it. That is your real monthly figure, waste included, for your horse and your hay — and it will beat any table on the internet, this one included.

Use the numbers here to sanity-check that against what the horse should be eating. If your count is well under the table, the horse is probably being under-fed; well over, and you are probably feeding the ground.

Common questions about hay by the month

How many bales of hay does one horse eat per month?

About 16 bales of 50 lb small squares for an 1,100 lb horse at maintenance with no grazing. Bales sold as fifty-pounders actually run 40 to 80 lb, so weigh one of yours — that single number moves the answer more than anything else on this page.

How long will a bale of hay last for one horse?

A 50 lb small square lasts about two days for an 1,100 lb horse in mild weather, once waste is counted. Through a cold snap, closer to a day and a half.

How much hay should a 1000 lb horse eat per day?

23.4 lb (10.6 kg) of grass hay at maintenance, fed from a rack — which comes to 702 lb (318 kg) over a month.

How much does it cost to feed a horse hay per month?

At hay valued around $100 a short ton, about $39 a month for one 1,100 lb horse — rising to about $54 in a cold month. Local hay prices vary far more than the arithmetic does, so use your own price per short ton rather than ours.

Does a horse eat less hay in summer?

If it is grazing, yes — dramatically. Full-time turnout on decent pasture takes the same horse from 772 lb (350 kg) of hay a month down to 244 lb (111 kg). Without grazing, summer and winter differ only by temperature, and it is the cold that raises the figure rather than the season itself.

Why is my hay bill higher than this?

Three usual reasons: the bales weigh less than you think, more is being wasted than you think, or the horse is bigger than you think. Waste alone runs from 1% with a good feeder to 13% fed on the ground outdoors, and that difference is roughly a bale a month.

Related calculators and guides

Where these figures come from

Every figure on this page is published and cited. Where sources disagree we take the more conservative one and say so. Our full approach is set out in how we source our numbers.