Forage plus help

[alex_mac30]

Hi
Does anyone use forage plus? Has anyone gone into having it specifically made for your grazing or are you just using the summer or winter balancer?
What do you feed with it?
I am looking at giving my horse allen and page fast fibre this winter could I feed that with the balancer?
Thanks
M

 

[JillA]

I had my forage tested a couple of years ago (all made here so the grass would be similar to the haylage) and apart from the magnesium which I know about, there was nothing much out of whack. So I bought the generic summer mix, and it was fine. TBH it's worth having an analysis done because then you can pick Sarah's brains and she is very knowledgeable. Every time I have a problem I refer her to my results and ask her if there is anything that might account for it. If you buy in your forage from different suppliers it wouldn't be worth doing, it isn't cheap, you might be better just buying the generic ones. Soil tests would give you an idea for summer but then different forage sources would all give different levels.
My lot all get a low sugar diet of Equibeet, grass nuts and supplements, including salt and magox all year round, with ad lib forage when the grass has gone.

 

[alex_mac30]

Thanks for the reply, I'm not sure if the hay we have comes from one source, it doesn't come off the land at my stables so that might make the individual testing worthless as the farmer could take it from multiple locations to bring to us. I have sent an email to forageplus but not heard back yet.

 

[sonjafoers]

I spoke to a few companies including ForagePlus when I was thinking about having mine done, but as we were in 20 acres with varying grasses, hedges, woods etc everybody I spoke to said it would only be a 'snapshot' result and therefore not totally accurate. It made sense therefore to buy the off the shelf versions rather than pay for the bespoke service.

I later moved yards and did get it done as the grazing area was much smaller so I forked out for it and had many discussions/emails with Forage Plus who were very helpful and I also emailed the results to 3 feed companies for their thoughts.

I buy in haylage from a large company so I emailed them to see if they had an anaylsis done or could provide any info or samples for me to get tested. They said it just wasn't possible due to the large area they use and the variations such a large area would provide. ForagePlus then advised it wouldn't be a totally accurate result if I couldn't get the haylage done.

My farrier & I had many a discussion about this and he told me one of his clients was employed to analyse grazing for cows and as a horse owner would never do it as the information changes from metre to metre in each field, the variations the weather causes etc etc. My vet completely dismissed it as a waste of money!!! Basically everyone seemed to tell me the detailed info I'd paid for was only a snapshot of the grazing at that time and it would not be the same in 3, 6 or 12 months. That combined with the irregularity of the haylage made it not worthwhile for me.

I think it's very worthwhile if you can do it accurately ( grazing & hay/haylage ) and can afford to get it done regularly. I decided that the off the shelf supplements would be worthwhile for me and I didn't go down the route of making individual supplements for each of my horses.