Can you soak haylage as you would hay???

Lorrie66 said:
as the title really

Does this reduce the cals?

- many thanks
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I'm not sure that it would be very effective to be honest.

Haylage contains twice as much water content than hay which is why you are meant to feed twice as much to the horse.

I suppose in reality if you had mixed hay with haylage and therefore wanted to soak the net (due to the dusty hay) then you could soak the mixture but I mix my haylage with hay every night for my horse and I always soak the hay first then pull it out of the net and mix it with the haylage and then put it back into the next. Its fiddly but its the only way I can get him to eat the hay which he has in small quantities as the haylage on its own is too rich and he gets to fat on it.
 
if youre feeding for calorie control, surely feeding hay or soaked hay would make more sense as haylage is significantly higher in calories anyway? or have you already bought a large amount of haylage?
 
I did this for a few weeks this winter. We only had haylage and the cob livery was a little chubby! YO was away and I couldn't get hay. He did lose a bit of weight. It would probably be cheaper to feed soaked hay though
 
A lady on our yard who has an asthmatic horse who also is a really really good doer (equine metabolic syndrome - literally lives off fresh air) soaks hers and I dont know if it works but her horse has had it soaked for years to reduce the sugar levels and its not done any harm! Water stinks so badly though afterwards!
 
I did last winter when my horse had laminitis. I only had haylage so I reckoned that soaking it would reduce the sugar content just as it does with hay
 
He's currently on haylage as my new yard has difficulty getting hay. tbh I would rather have hay. However, it is apparently low energy haylage , but I was just wondering if soaking would also be a benefit.....it is nice stuff & it is nice not to have the dust but just worried he will pile on the weight. He also eats it fast ( as he did hay) but with hay I could give him a a bit more so he would have some to munch later into the small hours - but I daren't do that with haylage!!
 
I'm sure I read on here once that the fermentation process which haylage goes through, significantly reduces sugar levels. So not much point in soaking it!
 
Lorrie66 said:
He's currently on haylage as my new yard has difficulty getting hay. tbh I would rather have hay. However, it is apparently low energy haylage , but I was just wondering if soaking would also be a benefit.....it is nice stuff & it is nice not to have the dust but just worried he will pile on the weight. He also eats it fast ( as he did hay) but with hay I could give him a a bit more so he would have some to munch later into the small hours - but I daren't do that with haylage!!
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Don't know when it comes to the calorie content, but to help with the boredom factor you could get a haylage net with much smaller holes, so he can't eat it as fast. I even double netted with two haylage nets for a while to help keep a horse on box rest interested and busy for longer (it was on hay, but obviously still worked lol). Just fill your net as normal, then pop inside another net.
 
Yep, I did last year when my mare was on box rest with concussive lami - we have a hay shortage but loads of haylage at the yard, spoke to the vet about it and he said he thought it would work fine,
 
I've been soaking hay & haylage mixed as Im on my last few bales of hay & can't get anymore. Not had any problems. My boy is already on the chunky side so don't want him getting any bigger xx
 
yes soaking it will reduce the sugar content, so it would be better to soak it than not if you can't get any hay. Soaking either for over 2 hours starts stripping the sugars out of hay and haylage so the onger you soak the less sugar there will be present.
 
Thanks - advice really interesting on soaking. He has a double netted elim-a-net to slow him down as it is!!!

I may invent a time release forage machine that allows small chunks to be taken every 10 mins!! is there such a thing???????
 
when mine was on box rest he was double netted with double netted elim-a-nets too. Not sure how he still managed to get it out but it was gone quickly and if not the nets were ripped off the wall :) this was also the hay that he wouldn't touch over the winter!!!
 
I think mines figured out its worth chewing on the actually haylage net for half an hour cos every haylage net I buy ends up with a great big hole in at after 1 night!
 
lochpearl said:
yes soaking it will reduce the sugar content, so it would be better to soak it than not if you can't get any hay. Soaking either for over 2 hours starts stripping the sugars out of hay and haylage so the onger you soak the less sugar there will be present.
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I am doing this at the moment for a box resting laminitic as suggested by our vet. Expensive but we dont have any good hay in our area!
 
Luci07 said:
Do you mean feed twice as much hay as haylage?
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No the idea is to feed twice as much haylage as hay as it has twice the water content. However as it is more nutritious you may need to reduce your horses ration of hard feed as appropriate.
 
I posted a thread about this a few weeks ago.
Apparently you can soak it, for 24hrs in a bin then rinse it before you feed.
This was with regards to killing dust/mould spores because I had a paticularly bad batch of dusty hayledge :eek:
Don't know what it would do to the sugar content in it etc.
 
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