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Posted by Loren NC on 3/21/2009, 7:34 am, in reply to "Re: Jullian Steele Ranch"
166.82.136.200
Maybe I can provide a couple of answers for you. First a side suggestion. While you have her out and about on a rope, put a couple of obstacles out for her and let her learn to jump. Ours jumped logs and loved it when they were little. I also liked the pictures of Sammi Jo letting her zebra walk over canvas, etc.
As for the hay and the sweet feed, the answer is "it depends." Depends on how much milk you are giving her, how potent the sweet feed is and what kind of hay you are feeding. Let me explain a bit more. I started ours on 16% protein sweet feed because that is what the milk replacer contained. Particularly with Zelda (our second one), since she refused milk, that seemed to make sense to me. But if yours is getting plenty of milk, then the sweet feed only serves two purposes. One is to get her used to eating it so the transition off of milk will be easy. Second is to get her used to coming to you for a special treat. For that purpose, a handful each time you feed her won't hurt anything. Just keep in mind the high protein content and the fact that they don't get that in the wild.
As for the hay, what kind are you feeding? I have known a LOT of horse people over the years who feed their horses grain twice every day and then straight grass hay. If your hay is grass, give her all she will eat. I chose with my horses and now with my zebras to feed alfalfa. Again you have to keep in mind the protein content. We actually are giving our zebras both sweet feed and alfalfa hay, which is unnecessary, in my opinion, for nutrition, but which works well for them to come for their sweet feed treat when we call. We give them four cups each, morning and night. On cold, wet nights, that can easily double as we make sure they have plenty of fuel to keep them warm.
Now I might create a bit of controversy with my next comment. We feed our sweet feed out of our hands. There are people here who say NEVER let them eat out of your hands because they will learn to bite you. One of ours is so gentle when she takes the feed that is like velvet massaging your hand. The other one is a more aggressive eater, but she has never bitten our hands. We have been told for years that they will become more difficult as they become older. They are almost eleven now, so I don't believe that story at all. I will admit that she has bitten my arm a few times when she was much younger and I tried to corner her for one reason or another. They will defend themselves, but that is a different issue. Incidentally, she is not still hanging on my arm either. There are people who come to this site who insist that if a zebra bites you it won't turn loose. Everybody has to learn in their own way, I guess.
I want to toss out one more opinion on the hay issue. I looked at MANY zebras when we were trying to buy our first one. Nearly all of them were being fed grass hay and nearly all of them were pot-bellied. You can observe the same results in horses. My horses died of old age and never had pot bellies and my zebras are getting older and also are still slim and trim. I am convinced alfalfa provides a reasonable amount of protein without the huge, unnecessary amount of bulk that grass gives.
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