hay or hayledge

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madeleine1

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hi

so basically i have a choose between a £5 small green bale of hayledge or bad quality £4 small hay.
my mare does fine on hay but could do with a bit of weight on her.
also how many bales would i need
will she fizz up to much or should i just lower her hard feed and up her fibre as i have been feeding more hard feed because i was running out of hay
so opinions please
thank you xx
 
every horse is different. I've known some horses go really beserk on haylage (non spooky horse spooking has the rubber surface and shadows) and others that it has no effect on. If i were you i'd get a bale of haylage to try and see whether your horse gets fizzy - if its just energy then i'd continue with it, if its more than that i'd be looking elsewhere but would avoid bad quality hay :-\
 
I would definatly lower hard feed if you go for the haylage.
I feed haylage add lib to all of mine and restrict only for the worse fatties, the only other food they get is either a scoop of Alfa a or HI fi lite with their balancer in and any other supplements they need.
I never have to feed any hard feed to get wieght on them they all look really well and do monitor there earring according to how much work they have done ie they will eat more for a few days after a hard days hunting.
We have all sorts a TB and near TB a warmblood an Irish draught and a cob .
They will eat a lot the 16.3 5yo TB eats a small bale a day but I am not buying coarse mix and this is the worse time of year so it's manageable.
you will just have to feel your way with your horse but definatly cut the hard food at the beginning.
 
I keep my good doer idx on weighed out hay, however I always make sure it's good quality. My tb gets haylage off the farmer. It costs me £21 a week for him, he's on adlib at night and hay in field during day, but gets no hard feed except hi fibre nuts in decahedron in field and he has balancer and joint supp twice daily with handful of unmollassed chaff. I dont find it makes him any sharper than usual and it keeps his weight on. My id though goes loopy on haylage, even the hi fibre type!
 
thank you this has been very helpful.

i will try her on it and see how we go and cut down the hard feed

i dnt think i will give her ad lib as she would just eat all of it but ill see how she goes thanks
 
She has been gaining weight and she will get quite a bit but i dont want her to just eat none stop as i will have the opposite problem but as i said i will see how she goes and if she needs ad lib she can have it
 
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