Bitter hay

Clodagh said:
I did used to farm, you know, and make and sell hay.
Click to expand...
Yes, lots of people do, and you are perhaps more liberal with nitrogen fertiliser.
We are clearly tight-fisted in this respect, and so seem to be all our equally tight-fisted neighbours and co-growers - probably a northern thing, heigh-ho.
There is much expense, red tape, environmental and legislative protocol around use of nitrogen, so we misers tend to reserve it for dairy grazing and silage crops, in accordance with whatever the RHIZA analysis may have shown.
Coincidentally, taken delivery of 40 tons N this verymorning, arrived through the snow, lying in wait, and one reason why all my best hay’s been shifted round again, to make space.
The hayfields far more likely to get rotted manure 😀
 
Steamers up and running, I didn’t have vinegar, thought I had loads but remember now I gave it to a friend to spray her straw bed with!
Didn’t make any difference so this morning we have ratchet strapped it all back together and it’s going to the livery yard round the corner, apparently it’s the same as they use and their horses eat it so that gets rid of that.
All loose stuff has gone to the sheep who seem quite pleased!
I went with Me P and sure enough all my nice hay is still stacked neatly so we put one on the back of the old farm truck 🙄 Not sure how safe that was but we didn’t have to go far.
Hopefully that’s the hay situation normal again 🤞🤞🤞
It’s what Ive used until just recently with no bother so they should be happy with it!
IMG_5826.jpeg
 
poiuytrewq said:
Steamers up and running, I didn’t have vinegar, thought I had loads but remember now I gave it to a friend to spray her straw bed with!
Didn’t make any difference so this morning we have ratchet strapped it all back together and it’s going to the livery yard round the corner, apparently it’s the same as they use and their horses eat it so that gets rid of that.
All loose stuff has gone to the sheep who seem quite pleased!
I went with Me P and sure enough all my nice hay is still stacked neatly so we put one on the back of the old farm truck 🙄 Not sure how safe that was but we didn’t have to go far.
Hopefully that’s the hay situation normal again 🤞🤞🤞
It’s what Ive used until just recently with no bother so they should be happy with it!
View attachment 172300
Click to expand...
Brilliant - sorted!🤣
 
Unfortunately neither have touched it. Steamed or unsteamed

Now it’s open I’m still slightly dubious it is actually what we made, the hay they have eaten happily since June last summer when it was cut.
It’s kind of wirey and shiny. Again smells nice, no dust.
I am currently super stressed as I literally have nothing they will eat now.
This is the 4th lot from various places they won’t touch.
 
poiuytrewq said:
Unfortunately neither have touched it. Steamed or unsteamed

Now it’s open I’m still slightly dubious it is actually what we made, the hay they have eaten happily since June last summer when it was cut.
It’s kind of wirey and shiny. Again smells nice, no dust.
I am currently super stressed as I literally have nothing they will eat now.
This is the 4th lot from various places they won’t touch.
Click to expand...
😖 sounds like could be drying agent, but most hay got last year was got very dry, so a bit odd wasting the money on that. Guess you could have it tested.
Always a problem when they’ve got accustomed to the good stuff!
I really would try if it can be disguised by steaming alongside a strong flavour in the unit, but they’ll eventually eat up when nothing else is forthcoming. Got any decent straw (oat = best), meanwhile?
 
poiuytrewq said:
Unfortunately neither have touched it. Steamed or unsteamed

Now it’s open I’m still slightly dubious it is actually what we made, the hay they have eaten happily since June last summer when it was cut.
It’s kind of wirey and shiny. Again smells nice, no dust.
I am currently super stressed as I literally have nothing they will eat now.
This is the 4th lot from various places they won’t touch.
Click to expand...
That’s weird for them not to touch multiple batches. We can assume there’s an unknown issue with 1 or 2 batches…but 4 is unusual.

What I’d do at this point of frustration is tempt with some small bag haylage mixed with this current hay - from Devon or marksway…a ryegrass mix usually smells sweeter than other grasses. Mix 1/4 that in with this new batch clean hay. The smell of it will permeate the whole net. If you make up nets hours beforehand that allow the sweeter smell to really permeate the boring hay smell.

You’ll likely just need 1 bag of some super sweet smelling haylage to convert them over. The best smelling I tried was Devon Haylage Timothy and ryegrass mix. Pure ‘crack’ to tempt them with.

Side note- ryegrass fermented haylage is far far safer than ryegrass hay and much lower sugar. Its smells sweet due to sugars converting via fermentation, not because it’s sweeter in analysis. Many meadow hays read higher sugar content than ryegrass haylage when analysed.
In your instance mixing just 25% to tempt them to eat again is a angle worth exploiting with sweet smelling haylage.

Just thought - are your nets ok? Have you washed them in soap or something that the horses are struggling to cope with? Left-field suggestion just popped into my mind. That could possibly explain why horse won’t eat anything put in the nets.
 
Exasperated said:
😖 sounds like could be drying agent, but most hay got last year was got very dry, so a bit odd wasting the money on that. Guess you could have it tested.
Always a problem when they’ve got accustomed to the good stuff!
I really would try if it can be disguised by steaming alongside a strong flavour in the unit, but they’ll eventually eat up when nothing else is forthcoming. Got any decent straw (oat = best), meanwhile?
Click to expand...

Yeah, but during the uk’s drought last year (am I remembering correctly? I’m in Ireland) I doubt hay makers would have been using drying agents and preserving vinegars. Unless OP is in a region that suffers high rainfall and drying agents used routinely no matter what?
Even if glyphosate is used as a dessicant to increase drying, that usually tastes sweet..or so they say as I’ve never tasted it!
 
Just joining in.

4 out of 7 wrapped round bales have been awful.
I think they were made from the bit of a field under the trees.
A couple of layers are OK then the majority of the bale is dirt, oak leaves and sour hay.
Too awful to steam.

This will be the last year of big bales as it takes so long to fish through the hay to find some that is vaguely edible.
It's also such a pain to get rid of all the waste hay.

I'm going to ring the hay guy on Monday to see what he says.
He won't have known they were like that but on the other hand I didn't pay over £800 to buy rubbish.

Thoroughly fed up.
 
PurBee said:
Yeah, but during the uk’s drought last year (am I remembering correctly? I’m in Ireland) I doubt hay makers would have been using drying agents and preserving vinegars. Unless OP is in a region that suffers high rainfall and drying agents used routinely no matter what?
Even if glyphosate is used as a dessicant to increase drying, that usually tastes sweet..or so they say as I’ve never tasted it!
Click to expand...
We certainly didn’t use any drying agent on ours no. It was also made early so pre drought on water meadows so in theory shouldn’t have been affected.
(As I say I’m not convinced at all that this is ours through)

I can’t say I’ve ever heard of hay being sprayed off though. At what point would it be done?
They spray the wheat/barley off, combine and bake the straw straight after
Hay though? Would a grass field be sprayed then baled to cut drying time or would it be mown then sprayed 🤷‍♀️
 
PurBee said:
Yeah, but during the uk’s drought last year (am I remembering correctly? I’m in Ireland) I doubt hay makers would have been using drying agents and preserving vinegars. Unless OP is in a region that suffers high rainfall and drying agents used routinely no matter what?
Even if glyphosate is used as a dessicant to increase drying, that usually tastes sweet..or so they say as I’ve never tasted it!
Click to expand...
Errr, that is exactly what I am saying, also said right at the beginning - using drying agent during last summers drought would seem counter intuitive, odd.
But there was also plenty hay made on the west of the country where there was rain and plenty of grass growth, so would make sense if this batch has been bought in, and apparently ‘Mr P’ has been buying and selling hay -up thread. OP will just have to pin down her OH, but from lengthy experience, one has to keep very close tabs on one’s best hay on any farm!
If baling tightly compressed Hestons and there’s any issue with moistness, then drying agent makes sense, because each bale represents a disproportionately large amount to go mouldy, so understandable why a commercial producer might do that. Little bales have far greater chance to air-out.
Not being dismissive, but the environmental angst there currently is over glyphosate, never mind the cost - a farmer is not going to sling that stuff about, either.
Farmers do not add nitrogen, herbicides, chemical agents, etc, etc to grassland unless there is a very sound reason for doing so: the sheer cost, time, labour and paperwork is prohibitive - even if they didn’t give a fig for ‘nature’, which of course they do, their livelihoods depend on it.
hopefully OP’s horses will overcome their objection, whatever the source.

,
 
poiuytrewq said:
We certainly didn’t use any drying agent on ours no. It was also made early so pre drought on water meadows so in theory shouldn’t have been affected.
(As I say I’m not convinced at all that this is ours through)

I can’t say I’ve ever heard of hay being sprayed off though. At what point would it be done?
They spray the wheat/barley off, combine and bake the straw straight after
Hay though? Would a grass field be sprayed then baled to cut drying time or would it be mown then sprayed 🤷‍♀️
Click to expand...
No, it would be an unusually wet year that glyphosate might be used by farmers for their hay, thinking if it works as a dessicant for tillage crops, it’ll work on hay. During the wet summer a few seasons back, when a good window for hay making was scant, the farming forum was testament to such thinking that ‘sunshine in a can’ might work to make hay in a shorter window of opportunity. Most though just baled and wrapped hoping they could make haylage.
If it was done, it would be on standing crop before cut and bale.
Although studies show it’s not worth it as a dessicant, as it dries the crop average just a further 3%max, so it’s valid use is more as a herbicide.
 
Exasperated said:
Errr, that is exactly what I am saying, also said right at the beginning - using drying agent during last summers drought would seem counter intuitive, odd.
But there was also plenty hay made on the west of the country where there was rain and plenty of grass growth, so would make sense if this batch has been bought in, and apparently ‘Mr P’ has been buying and selling hay -up thread. OP will just have to pin down her OH, but from lengthy experience, one has to keep very close tabs on one’s best hay on any farm!
If baling tightly compressed Hestons and there’s any issue with moistness, then drying agent makes sense, because each bale represents a disproportionately large amount to go mouldy, so understandable why a commercial producer might do that. Little bales have far greater chance to air-out.
Not being dismissive, but the environmental angst there currently is over glyphosate, never mind the cost - a farmer is not going to sling that stuff about, either.
Farmers do not add nitrogen, herbicides, chemical agents, etc, etc to grassland unless there is a very sound reason for doing so: the sheer cost, time, labour and paperwork is prohibitive - even if they didn’t give a fig for ‘nature’, which of course they do, their livelihoods depend on it.
hopefully OP’s horses will overcome their objection, whatever the source.

,
Click to expand...
The larger commercial hay makers are very happy to use herbicides and fertilisers to gain a crop 3-5X yield, than without those imputs. I’ve personally emailed the larger well-known suppliers of uk and ireland haylage and hay to assertain the use of herbicides. Specifically to know the type of herbicide used, rather than conduct a survey of imputs. They’re dealing with multiple thousands of acres. They also tend to own more than 1 farm. And UK/EU law states that no forage should contain noxious weeds. Unfortunately thistle and docks are included in that group, so complying with law demands the use of herbicides for these ‘major’ suppliers.
The profit margin on these companies is worth the extra expense to increase yield. They have very large farming outfits. They re-seed very regularly too, which I found surprising but considering the strains of grass they use, the fields tend to ‘thin out’ in yield by year 3.

Yet, of course as you say smaller singular farmers doing a few hundred acres won’t bother so much due to cost of these chemicals. These suppliers make up a large part of forage supply, so it really is a roulette of what has been used on the crops we buy.

There’s one hay supplier for equine market specifically, a very large farm in Ireland who visited Italy to find the most fast growing weighty GM ryegrass currently developed. He was very proud to show us his fields of this monstrous strain of ryegrass as it stood 8 feet tall. Truly a sight to behold. The yield (thus profit) from that field would have been enormous compared to ‘heirloom’ strains. The hay bales of that strain looked like bales of straw it was that stemmy and long!
He confirmed application of fertiliser and herbicide to obtain a clean weed-free strong growing maximum yield crop. He’s an outlier of the majority of producers of course, but is an example of the direction major producers are preferring to move towards, to maximise field use and profits.
 
PurBee said:
The larger commercial hay makers are very happy to use herbicides and fertilisers to gain a crop 3-5X yield, than without those imputs. I’ve personally emailed the larger well-known suppliers of uk and ireland haylage and hay to assertain the use of herbicides. Specifically to know the type of herbicide used, rather than conduct a survey of imputs. They’re dealing with multiple thousands of acres. They also tend to own more than 1 farm. And UK/EU law states that no forage should contain noxious weeds. Unfortunately thistle and docks are included in that group, so complying with law demands the use of herbicides for these ‘major’ suppliers.
The profit margin on these companies is worth the extra expense to increase yield. They have very large farming outfits. They re-seed very regularly too, which I found surprising but considering the strains of grass they use, the fields tend to ‘thin out’ in yield by year 3.

Yet, of course as you say smaller singular farmers doing a few hundred acres won’t bother so much due to cost of these chemicals. These suppliers make up a large part of forage supply, so it really is a roulette of what has been used on the crops we buy.

There’s one hay supplier for equine market specifically, a very large farm in Ireland who visited Italy to find the most fast growing weighty GM ryegrass currently developed. He was very proud to show us his fields of this monstrous strain of ryegrass as it stood 8 feet tall. Truly a sight to behold. The yield (thus profit) from that field would have been enormous compared to ‘heirloom’ strains. The hay bales of that strain looked like bales of straw it was that stemmy and long!
He confirmed application of fertiliser and herbicide to obtain a clean weed-free strong growing maximum yield crop. He’s an outlier of the majority of producers of course, but is an example of the direction major producers are preferring to move towards, to maximise field use and profits.
Click to expand...
Luckily we’re hundreds not thousands, and of course we use glyphosate, nitrogen, agchem etc wherever warranted (RHIZA quite useful, here), and of course it’s cost/benefit, like anyone else.
My point being that cost-benefit of using nitrogen, dryer or even glyphos as desiccant(!) to produce hay in the middle of a drought doesn’t make much sense.
However, if said hay’s been bought in from a wetter part of the UK, or from international suppliers in EU, it surely could have all sorts on, altho OP doesn’t suggest her husband deals forage on that scale. We don’t sell forage, altho do buy in supplementary, and v interested in all rye plot trials - silage /dairy. Must say, rye grazing or rye hay for horses wouldn’t be my first choice, actively reject both!
My suggestion to OP was to see if the objectionable hay taste can be disguised by adding another powerful taste into the steamer - based on a mistake I made and inadvertently discovered my own horses actually liked hay infused with good old vinegar steam….
But this is sweet hay to start with, so purely guesswork as to whether vinegar, peppermint essence, whatever, might do the job on OP’s sour hay, and seems guesswork as to what the cause is anyway.
Hope it gets resolved happily and quickly.
 
There is an actual science or even art to perfect hay isnt there!
I used to think it was purely shall we cut this week or leave it and see if next looks better!
 
Well, I've done something i don't think I have ever done. After a morning of watching Box rest boy winding himself up because hes bored and now hungry I went to the local farm shop and bought two small bales! As I don't usually buy hay from them they were very apologetic but couldn't give me any more. I wasn't actually expecting them to say yes to any so was very grateful for that.
They are woldfing that down. It's only going to last until tomorrow at this rate but its so nice seeing them demolish hay as they should!
 
poiuytrewq said:
Well, I've done something i don't think I have ever done. After a morning of watching Box rest boy winding himself up because hes bored and now hungry I went to the local farm shop and bought two small bales! As I don't usually buy hay from them they were very apologetic but couldn't give me any more. I wasn't actually expecting them to say yes to any so was very grateful for that.
They are woldfing that down. It's only going to last until tomorrow at this rate but its so nice seeing them demolish hay as they should!
Click to expand...
How bloody frustrating!
Maybe use the small bales mixed with big bale you have and see if the wolfing it down continues?!
 
It really is! I’m almost through them already! They have a bit of the morning and a bit to mix for the night.
I do have yet another big bale coming on Wednesday morning. I may have to go try and find another little bale or two from somewhere to last me!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top