Hay OptiMizer Testimonial

Hi there my name is Anne I own and operate Liv Stables. We have six stalls and eight horses. We first thought about an OptiMizer after this past winter when we feeding and noticing about half of the hay we would throw would be wasted either getting wet, getting stepped on, or urinated on. Hay is really expensive these days, so I needed to find a solution and hay bags are not an option in a big paddock like that. So we asked Robin at System (systemequine.com/) what our options were and this fit the bill for us because we don’t feed round bales we have small squares and that’s all I wanted to feed, so this was an option that would hold up to two small square bales if that’s what we wanted to do. We throw only what we need, so if we have two horses out here then we just give them however many flakes that we want, not two full bales. It’s great. We noticed right away there was no waste. The horses become accustomed to it quite quick and it’s a super sturdy net. We haven’t had any issues with that and they can rip and pull on it and it doesn’t move. We have some drafts that are endlessly hungry and they’re able to get what they need all day without a struggle and we’ve had four of them feeding off of one at the same time again with no problems. So after we saw that there wasn’t any waste after a couple months I thought well this is great I need six more for my all-weather paddocks. Again so there was less waste coming out of the hay bags-at that point we used hay bags-and not only was it super time consuming to refill the hay bags at least twice a day and you still get the waste that comes down and sits in the wet or they step on it and just won’t eat it. So this was a great option for us again because it minimizes the waste and it’s super quick to fill. We can just flip this open, put however much we want in there, and then flip it back shut, locks up tight. I just wanted to show you how well-built this unit actually is. If you come a bit closer you can see it’s built with solid plastic. It’s not flimsy at all. If you try to budge it, it will eventually move, but not easily in the least bit. Here we’ve got a nice clip and then the sliding rail. So even though I’ve got drafts ripping on it upwards, it still slides quite nicely. You can see once you look inside we’ve got holes for drainage so if it does rain we’ve got the rain being able to get out and then the smaller dust particles that we don’t want them to actually be eating can actually get out and hit the ground. You can see here the nice handles. To give you an idea of how easy it is to move, it’s easy to lift, and then you just drag. It’s also quite easy to be picked up, thrown in the back of a UTV or it can be moved around by a tractor if you wanted to put it in a bigger pasture. So here’s our all-weather paddock. Before the Hay OptiMizers, we would hang hay bags from the shelter, so we do have loops there. I was finding though a lot of waste hitting the ground and then as the weather comes and goes be wet, frozen, and the horses just wouldn’t eat it. So we really weren’t saving. Hay is very expensive. I want to show what my options were, so then I went ahead and purchased six more OptiMizers so that over the long term we end up saving money and having more for the horses to eat. Here we have Neil coming to check out the fresh flake I just put in for him. Here you can see he’s just working though the rope to grab what he needs and this will seep him busy for a couple hours. Typically a horse like this who’s endlessly hungry, nice Canadian draft, will go through a couple flakes as fast as they possibly can and then stand around on an empty stomach, which we know is not good. So typically a couple flakes will keep him busy with this net in this feeder for three to four hours, so less time with an empty stomach and more time with a happy horse.

[@cleo6205]

I was happy to watch the horse eat and demonstrate how the net works. 🙂

[@karenfalconer4306]

Where can I find this to purchase