Forage advice please!

Sambo

Sambo

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My 14.2 Welsh D is at a good weight at the moment, and has a good amount of grass, it's not really short and equally isnt lush and long. He lives out 24/7, and has a haynet in his stable when he comes in. He comes in every evening for a couple of hours, and sometimes isn't ridden and just eats his haylage. However, haylage is just going off too quickly! One large haynet lasts us about 4 days..

Does anyone have any alternatives other than hay - as hay is rediculously overpriced at £7.50-£8 per small bale, as opposed to £5 for haylage.

The tack shop does bags of dried grass, so i could maybe give him a small bucket of this a night instead of haylage? The haylage I feed is high fibre meadow grass, and is very very dry.

Thank you!!!
 
If he is in good condition and only comes in for two hours, does he really need haylage in the stable? If he was standing in the stable for long periods of time it would be different. I think you may find that feeding dried grass will be just as expensive as hay, if not more so - I know the stuff available in our feedshop is quite pricey.
 
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I would give a scoop of something like Hi Fi Lite for vits and mins but wouldn't be feeding any forage if he's out on grass.

My Welsh D is out over night on very poor grazing and in all day with only a few slices of soaked hay, and he gets worked. I just feed Hi Fi Lite and Formula 4 Feet, will add more hay if I think he needs it but he looks fine at the moment.
 
Our retired cob eats dried grass much faster than she can eat haylage. Does he need to come in for 2 hours? Does he need to be fed?
I can understand that you might want to bring him to a feed rather than just to be ridden (keeps them sweet), so could you give him just a handful of dried grass in a bucket, rather than using it as a hay replacer?
 
Thanks. He is good in his stable and will stand without anything.. I just feel a bit bad as when he does have hay or haylage in there he eats it very quickly - and he generally isn't a particularly greedy horse.

Grass is £5.75 for a large bag, the same size as a shavings bag.. I was thinking just a small bucket full. I'm not sure he does need anything. I always bring him in for a feed, whether he is ridden or not as he's on a few things for sweetitch. Maybe that is enough.

Maybe I'll try without and just give him extra grass if he drops weight a bit!

Damn weather making my haylage go off!
 
I started giving one of mine dried grass recently and it is lasting AGES! She has alfa & balancer and because she was eating it so quickly I wanted something to bulk it out and she won't eat anything like HiFi so I bought D&H Just Grass.

Admittedly I don't give her a bucketful but she gets a scoop once a day which isn't enough to really increase her weight but it just means she isn't waiting around so long whilst my other horse slowly eats her big feed.

I am hazarding a guess here but I reckon I've had the bag about 2 months now and I am just over half way through it.
 
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