Discussion-is forage still the most cost effective way of feeding?

a kind of magic

a kind of magic

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With the rising cost of hay and a bad year for grass growth I wanted to ask if people still think that forage is the most cost effective way of feeding?

We cut hay off a neighbour's field and paid in total £3.60 a bale for it off the field but out of 130 bales we have 40 left as we have been feeding hay almost all summer to the girls because of the lack of grass. I will have to start feeding the boys hay or haylage very shortly due to their field now not recovering as well, current hay prices in the shop per bale are between £6.50 and £7.00. Haven't asked about the price of haylage yet. We have 6 horses on 8 acres, all rotated accordingly.

Do any of you use hay replacers? Or feed more hard feed/fibre feed and less forage?
 
I feed only forage - even my hard feed is a forage feed - Simple Systems and I reduced that dramatically last year. So my horses went through winter on ad lib haylage ( i charge my liveries £11.0 per horse per week for ad lib) a scoop of unmolassed sugar beet, linseed and brewers yeast. One meal a day, at night, in all but the coldest weather. I added in some lucinuts to my TB and some red lable grass nuts to my warmblood. They looked fantastic. I never haylage the fields as to be honest they just waste it if it is out there, it is truly adlib haylage as I always make sure there is something to eat all night. My horses are all calm, sane, well covered and fit enough to hunt all day should I want them to. I truly believe horses in the UK are overfed hard feed to their detriment, feed is probably the major cause of beahvioural issues. And is so overcomplicated by the feed industry to fool people into believing that unless they feed mixes and balancers they are neglecting their horses. Horses are designed to eat forage, that keeps them warm, provides slow release energy and keeps them sane. if I can keep a horse on £11.50 a week and it looks good, is fit and healthy - then why waste money on hard feed.

You need to provide forage to keep the gut working correctly, Horses on a fibre diet rarely have ulcers, unless caused by a previous non forage diet.

If you have 6 horses then buy big bale. One round bale shoul dlast 6 horses about 5 days so by far the cheapest way to buy it.
 
Bosworth said:
You need to provide forage to keep the gut working correctly, Horses on a fibre diet rarely have ulcers, unless caused by a previous non forage diet.
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Or a bacterial infection - ulcers are caused by an awful lot more than simply not feeding a forage-only diet.....
 
I agree with Bosworth that with that amount of horses you should be investigating big bale hay or haylage, which will help cut your feed bills down significantly.
 
Actually the majority of ulcers are from feeding a no/ low forage diet. The majority of racehorses have ulcers. They are fed a very limited amount of forage. Horses guts need forage going through them for approx 16 hours. if not then that starts to impact on the gut causing ulcers. Of course there are other causes of stomach ulcers but a non forage diet is the single highest cause.
 
Maybe I didn't make myself clear, apart from our mare and foal who are on Baileys Stud Cubes (she was on fibre feed but was struggling so we had to reassess her, as soon as foal is weaned I am sure she will pile on the pounds and will be back on her normal ration-we struggle with her as she chokes on chaff so she has soaked grass cubes and beet normally) all our others are on fibre based feed. Not a particular brand but they all have grass nuts, alfalfa chaff and beet and a vitamin and mineral supplement. No cereals at all.

I will still be buying hay or haylage for ours, they have to have it in nets in the field as they live out 24/7 but wondered if anyone else had a different approach and fed an alternative, say, I have seen Fast Fibre also marketed as a hay replacer, as well as a bucket feed. :)
 
akindofmagic said:
With the rising cost of hay and a bad year for grass growth I wanted to ask if people still think that forage is the most cost effective way of feeding?
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This is not a question I would even ask myself. Forage is the best feed for horses and I will feed my horses ad lib forage (except the Shetland!) and top up with hard food no matter what it costs to do so. If that gets too expensive I would sell a horse rather than feed the ones I have with less expensive stuff. If I only had one and could not earn any more money than I do, then I hope I'd have the strength to realise that I couldn't really afford to keep the horse and either swap it for a 24/7 live out good doer or accept being horseless. It would be very hard, though.
 
Mine are fed crap (ie fairly coarse, not mouldy) wheat straw and decentish oat straw as forage. They get a couple of flakes three times a day (more at night) and a mix of straight oats, unmolassed beet and a scoop of general 'horsemix' twice a day in a bucket. They are hardly fading away and have hooves like iron.

They are eating all day, but just a tiny amount of rough forage....as they would in the wild. They are not standing knee deep in an 'ad lib' buffet all the time. They would explode.

Oh yes, no hay or grass here! Just bare earth paddocks :)
 
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Ours are all good doers, I prefer really to have extra grass handy but got dropped in the proverbial when the farmer we rented our largest field from (10 acres) said he was going to plough it up and re-seed it so we wouldn't be able to use it for a very long while. I had been saving it all summer so they had lots of grass to keep them ticking over but instead will be having more hay/haylage instead!
 
No brainer...of course forage is essential, nevermind what it might cost it will be fed. Our big bale haylage is only £25 a bale inc delivery, okay we're in the rural Wales and have a very loyal farmer who supplies the yard weekly so I'm lucky but even without him and his low prices I'd find the money, all over 'luxuries' (travelling in lorry, days out, etc) would be stopped over winter if I found paying for hay or haylage got out of hand. I would stop hard feed before I even considered feeding anything but forage.
 
I feed my 2 ad lib haylage in depths of winter - this is large bale delivered one at a time if needed by local guy for £20-25 per bale (very dry haylage so doesnt go off quickly) - beginning and end of winter they have hay as needed. I have large field shelter on harstanding they have it in - netted buy as many as needed not to run out - if weather gets snowy I get him to put a big bale haylage on arena and just unwrap it for them to eat when want.

They were on speedibeet, pony nuts and chaff in the depths of winter last year but were on so little of it is was barely worth doing. This year they wll just be on topspec lite with a himalayan salt lick.

If you are struggling to get hay or haylage then I would seriously consider contacting someone down somerset way to get a job load sent to you - my guy made 600 big bales haylage this year compared to 200 last year and hopefully the price will be coming back down to £20 per bale ! everyone round by us has had a bumper year with 3 cuts in most cases !
 
akindofmagic said:
I have seen Fast Fibre also marketed as a hay replacer, as well as a bucket feed. :)
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Fast Fibre seems to retail for about £8.60 for a 20kg bag and has a calorie content of 8 MJDE/kg. The calorie count of average hay is usually about 9 MJDE/kg and most small bales are at least 20kg, if not a bit more. So on that basis, even your £7 a bale hay is more cost effective than feeding Fast Fibre as a hay replacer, and obviously hay also satisfies the horse's need to chew. (Fast Fibre is a good hay replacer for oldies with dodgy teeth though).

Is there any reason you don't want to get big bale hay or haylage in?
 
Im hoping it doesnt go up too much here as its not been a bad year for grass growth regionally and many locally have just taken a third cutting off their fields so I'll be miffed if they put prices up on the 'bad year-no hay' premise :)

I have noticed an increase in adverts for horse feed stating they can be used as a partial or complete hay replacer but havent looked into them too closely or the economics of it, as unless there was a dire hay shortage here and I suddenly couldnt get forage, I prefer to stick with hay(lage). However I have used hay replacers with an old pony with few teeth, but that was necessity rather than being based on economics :)
 
Never thought of looking further afield for a job lot-may be worth a try, can buddy up with another couple of people so could in theory buy enough for 12 horses.

The problem I was having was the variety in quality. Bought a large round bale to save the home cut stuff for winter as we KNOW it's really good, past the first couple of layers it started to go dusty and the middle bit was mouldy. We had two like that, tried someone else. Same thing happened with another supplier, it was the large rectangular bales this time, same thing, half the bale was awful. It was expensive to buy and then useless and a waste of money as was no good to feed! I did mention it to the merchant but they said 'it was just one of those things'.

Hence why I was thinking of trying haylage to see if the quality is better/more uniform.
 
touchstone said:
Just to throw a spanner in the works, there is recent research to suggest that most hay in the uk doesn't contain enough protein or vits/mins for most horses and they recommend feeding hard feed or a balancer alongside. I only feed forage myself.

Here it is:- http://www.horsetalk.co.nz/news/2011/10/024.shtml :)
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Interesting. :) Ours all have a balancer or vit and min supplement with their bucket feed although it is completely fibre based. They did have Globalvite but stopped eating it, think the smell and taste was too strong! At the moment they have Benevit and they love it. The alfalfa and grass nuts I feed to supply the protein. :)
 
It is at my yard. My TB is out on 5 acres of good grazing all to himself! He doesn't eat all his hay at night as too full of grass.
Hay/haulage is more expensive but I would always fees forage over grain :).
 
touchstone said:
Just to throw a spanner in the works, there is recent research to suggest that most hay in the uk doesn't contain enough protein or vits/mins for most horses and they recommend feeding hard feed or a balancer alongside. I only feed forage myself.

Here it is:- http://www.horsetalk.co.nz/news/2011/10/024.shtml :)
Click to expand...

I have to say I don't think that hay alone is an adequate diet for most equines, and that eventually, horses fed without a balancer or hard feed would become deficient in nutrients that are low in the local hay, haylage and grazing.
 
TGM said:
Is there any reason you don't want to get big bale hay or haylage in?
Click to expand...

Sorry-didn't see this, although I sort of answered it unintentionally- the quality of the bigger bale stuff round here is awful, incredibly dusty and mouldy, and about £70 a bale still. Last big bale stuff we bought we fed ad lib and at least half of the bloomin bale was rotten as a pear.

Haven't fed haylage for a long time (all a bunch of fatties) but it's looking more desirable if it means the whole bale actually being useable! :)
 
touchstone said:
Just to throw a spanner in the works, there is recent research to suggest that most hay in the uk doesn't contain enough protein or vits/mins for most horses and they recommend feeding hard feed or a balancer alongside. I only feed forage myself.

Here it is:- http://www.horsetalk.co.nz/news/2011/10/024.shtml :)
Click to expand...

It is a shame they didn't include haylage in the study, as I suspect the results would be rather different. But then, as the research was financed by the commercial feed industry, I suspect that is exactly the reason haylage wasn't included!
 
Bosworth said:
They looked fantastic.

My horses are all calm, sane, well covered and fit enough to hunt all day should I want them to. I truly believe horses in the UK are overfed hard feed to their detriment, feed is probably the major cause of beahvioural issues. And is so overcomplicated by the feed industry to fool people into believing that unless they feed mixes and balancers they are neglecting their horses. Horses are designed to eat forage, that keeps them warm, provides slow release energy and keeps them sane. if I can keep a horse on £11.50 a week and it looks good, is fit and healthy - then why waste money on hard feed.
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I completely agree with this. Sorry for hashing your post in my quote but I wanted to be specific.
No wonder they looked so well, they are eating what horses should eat and no Macdonalds. :)

Mind you, it would cost more if you needed to supplement minerals deficient in your forage.
 
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akindofmagic said:
Sorry-didn't see this, although I sort of answered it unintentionally- the quality of the bigger bale stuff round here is awful, incredibly dusty and mouldy, and about £70 a bale still. Last big bale stuff we bought we fed ad lib and at least half of the bloomin bale was rotten as a pear.
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Whereabouts are you? You should be able to get decent big bale haylage for a lot less than £70 a bale.
 
TGM said:
It is a shame they didn't include haylage in the study, as I suspect the results would be rather different. But then, as the research was financed by the commercial feed industry, I suspect that is exactly the reason haylage wasn't included!
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My thoughts exactly... How convenient...
 
I 'm an other who feeds straw, have done for about 15years. If the grass is still growing they get a bale every other two days, then when it stops they get half big bale haylage and straw.
I bought 4 heston bales of wheat straw to make a straw shelter and the little b*****s have eaten 3 bales in three weeks and there is grass in the field so they are getting fatter.
 
TGM said:
It is a shame they didn't include haylage in the study, as I suspect the results would be rather different. But then, as the research was financed by the commercial feed industry, I suspect that is exactly the reason haylage wasn't included!
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Yes, I agree! Those were my first thoughts on reading it.
 
Bosworth said:
Actually the majority of ulcers are from feeding a no/ low forage diet. The majority of racehorses have ulcers. They are fed a very limited amount of forage. Horses guts need forage going through them for approx 16 hours. if not then that starts to impact on the gut causing ulcers. Of course there are other causes of stomach ulcers but a non forage diet is the single highest cause.
Click to expand...

I know all that - I spent 2 years treating a horse with ulcers, who'd always had a fibre only diet, who lived out 24/7 for six months of the year and who always had ad lib haylage. Correlation (your first two sentences) is not the same as causality, and there are other factors at play with racehorses - the type of work, the infrequent turnout, the possibility of bacterial infection. Lack of forage alone, on a horse stood in a stable, is not what causes ulcers, it is in combination with the workload a racehorse has to do that it becomes a problem.
 
I too know of horses with ulcers who had the ideal forage based diets-2 of them out 24/7-all had been imported, most at least 2 years before. some of these horses are very stoic and it was only when they found more advanced work more difficult than they should, were they investigate.

if you can't afford to feed them then you can't afford them. mine get a mix of hay and straw although I don't tend to feed straw in huge amounts in extremely cold weather as they do drink alot more and I've seen a few straw impactions, particularly in heavier type horses.
 
I am in Dorset. Just got a few more phone numbers to ring round and see what their prices are for haylage, don't really want to bother with hay after the repeated crappy hay. Not sure how much the large bale haylage is but when I asked in the spring it was the same price as the hay at £65 a bale.
 
TGM said:
I agree with Bosworth that with that amount of horses you should be investigating big bale hay or haylage, which will help cut your feed bills down significantly.
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I also agree and fed ad lib big bale last year - mine didn't last 5 days though, and less than 5 horses per bale - grump.
 
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