Hay.......Haylage.........Why?

Am on DIY livery and small hay bales are cheaper than small haylage bales (only way I can move into my storage space, big ones too big!) and as horse is a bit of a fattie (for a warmblood anyway) its what he gets. Although he needs the haylage for energy really - may go on it in winter if we can convince the yard owner to let the manager use the tractor to move big bales :)
 
We don't own a barn and Haylage can stand outside. Also Haylage big bales are a lot cheaper than small bale hay. Also the farmer stacks the haylage for us with his tractor so we don't have to unload it off the trailer either.
 
We feed both :cool:

Haylage in the morning as it would be a faff to soak 40 nets of hay and dish them out before they broke the doors down, haylage for lunch and soaked hay at night.

The small ponies and old horses just have hay.
 
I feed hay- for several reasons. My horses are good doers and i like to give loads of forage to last them the night. They would be the size of houses on that amount of haylage!
Its more expensive
I worry about it going off. Unless i bought tiny bales i wouldn't use it fast enough.

I am a big fan of steamed hay and aim one day to be able to get a proper steamer but they are so expensive!
 
Whatever is available will do... :) my horse is in light work (schooling/jumping/hacking 5-6 days a week) I even resorted to feeding straw last winter as we were so short... he was still fat!
 
I have both now. Put my hay into haylage when the weather turned nasty, but I prefer hay as it is easier to handle. As I have Highland ponies, I'll ration the haylage and supplement with barley straw as the condition of the ponies dictates. I fed ad lib hay one winter and they all blew up like balloons!:rolleyes:
 
Some interesting replies........some feed one or the other because of nutritional values.......others use one or the other for convenience i.e can be stored outside or doesn't need soaking etc. :)
 
Toby_Zaphod said:
Some interesting replies........some feed one or the other because of nutritional values.......others use one or the other for convenience i.e can be stored outside or doesn't need soaking etc. :)
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and just to be totally different..... Haylage as it is the only stuff my horse will consistantly eat!

If I get hay I can only usually get her to eat one or two sections out of a bale if I am lucky, although she is not adverse to pinching mouthfuls of other peoples hay. Wierd, picky horse.
 
I use a mixture - small bale hay early winter as mine wouldnt get through a big bale of haylage b4 goes off (my supplier delivers one big bale at a time) and I cant afford small bale haylage. Mid winter I feed big bale haylage (cant afford small bale hay mid winter as they would eat up to one bale a day each) - either netted or adlib and then switch back to small bale hay end of winter into spring as yet again wouldnt get through big bale haylage then .

dont do big bale hay as nowhere to store - have barn that will take small bale hay and the haylage as I said is delivered one big bale at time.

x
 
haylage... because its closer to grass in terms of nutrition.

However, it does go sour.. which is what I'm worried about now. I had my back field baled into haylage a few weeks ago and my pesky horses broke into the yard and managed to sabotage most of the bales. Very annoying. I've had to cover the bales and just hope and pray it isn't off by the time the inevitable snow rolls around!
 
Hay because that's what the farmer sells where I keep Mollie. He doesn't allow any hage or haylage from "outside" as his farm's organic and he wants to minimize contamination from non-organic sources.

It's fine by me, as his hay seems decent quality, not too expensive and Mollie likes it. :)
 
I feed haylage to all of mine, and we make it on the yard so all the liveries have it too. Easier to make in our extremely dodgy summers, works well for all horses and is double/tripple netted for the fatties. Alos find horses tend to be fat less snotty on it than hay.
 
Haylage - because my mare has had RAO and it totally allergic to hay, soaked or not. She does fine on haylage, but I have to know its provenance. Last winter we had some very rich stuff and she got laminitis (though veterinary opinion was that frozen grass had a part to play - she's out 24/7).

This year I've got some 'rough' haylage off set aside fields and it should be fine. She doesn't get much of it either.

My nkghtmare is rolling the big haylage bales around, as tractors can't access our little stable yard. I even enlist the help of the 75-year old gentleman from across the road; but he's been mean enough to fracture his femur - perhaps it's worth it to him NOT to have to trundle them about....
 
Hay. More convenient, my lot are 99% good doers and hogs to boot, they'd get through haylage in half the time they do hay which means I'd be out there feeding twice as much.

In our temperatures I am not sure (never put it to the test though) that haylage wouldn't freeze either, everything else with any kind of moisture content does.
 
Rose Folly said:
Haylage - because my mare has had RAO and it totally allergic to hay, soaked or not.
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Haylage because I'm allergic to hay and if I feed hay in the morning before work, I spend the day sounding like Darth Vader :o

The highlands get it cut heavily with straw though as they don't need pure haylage :D
 
Both! I have a skinny TB who needs the extra energy from haylage, and a fatty cob who gets hay in summer (soaked) and haylage in winter.
 
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