Do you think slow-feed nets are good for horses in stalls?

Slow-feed hay nets are one of the most genuinely beneficial management innovations available to horse owners who keep their horses in stalls, and the evidence supporting their use comes from multiple converging directions — behavioral science, digestive physiology, dental health research, and the practical observation of horses managed with and without them over time. The case for slow-feed nets is not simply that they keep horses busy or reduce hay waste, though they do both — it is that they more closely replicate the natural feeding behavior that the equine digestive system was designed to support, and that closer alignment between the horse's management and his evolutionary biology produces measurable benefits in health, behavior, and long-term soundness. The horse's digestive system evolved for continuous slow trickle feeding — a pattern in which small amounts of forage move through the gastrointestinal tract essentially continuously over a twenty to twenty-two-hour grazing day rather than arriving in two or three large discrete meals. The stomach continuously produces acid regardless of whether food is present, and in the horse that grazes naturally the steady flow of forage through the stomach buffers that acid with a physical mass of feed and with the saliva produced by chewing — which is alkaline and serves as a natural buffering agent. A horse that eats his hay allocation in two hours and then stands with an empty stomach for the remaining twenty-two hours is spending the majority of his day with gastric acid pooling against an unprotected gastric mucosa. Slow-feed nets address this directly and effectively by extending the duration of hay consumption from the two to three hours that an uncontrolled flake might last to six, eight, or even ten hours depending on the net's mesh size and the horse's consumption rate. That extension does not require feeding more hay — the same daily hay allocation that would be consumed in two hours from a flat pile may last six hours in a small-mesh slow-feed net, because the net forces the horse to pull individual wisps of hay through the openings rather than taking large mouthfuls. The horse's chewing time — and therefore the saliva production that buffers gastric acid — increases proportionally with the consumption time. The behavioral benefits of slow-feed nets are as significant as the physiological ones. A horse that finishes his hay allocation in two hours and then stands for twenty-two hours in a relatively barren stall is a horse whose behavioral needs for movement and foraging activity are profoundly unmet, and the behavioral consequences — weaving, cribbing, wood chewing, pawing, and generalized anxiety — are well documented. A horse that spends eight to ten hours per day engaged in the slow rhythmic activity of extracting hay from a slow-feed net is a horse whose behavioral needs are substantially better met. Mesh size selection is the practical detail that most significantly affects the net's effectiveness. A mesh that is too large allows the horse to take mouthfuls nearly as large as unnetted hay and extends consumption time only minimally. A mesh that is too small may frustrate some horses sufficiently that they reduce their hay intake. The sweet spot for most horses is a one-to-one-and-a-half-inch mesh that slows consumption meaningfully without creating frustration, extending hay consumption to six hours or more while maintaining intake levels that support body condition.