Hay vs haylage for a horse with a small appetite

[now_loves_mares]

Hope you knowledgeable people can help! One of my horses is a 4yo 15hh TB. She is a little bit thinner than I would like. At the moment she is on box rest with a sore foot, so is on haylage 24hrs/day. She doesn't seem stressed at all, and wolfs down her hard feed, but doesn't seem to eat that much haylage. Despite the poor weather here this summer, the haylage seems fine, if a bit drier than some I have used in the past.

My question is this. As haylage is wetter than hay, and they therefore need to eat more volume to get the same amount of DE, would she be better on hay, as she would have to eat less volume to get the same amount of calorific value from it? Or am I confusing volume vs weight, and she's better on the haylage, because although more water, she gets more nutrition for every kg of dry matter?

She had the vet here today looking at her foot, and he also rasped her teeth. They were a bit sharp, so that will I hope help her appetite.

Also, as an aside, would steaming her hay maybe make it more palatable? I feed it from the floor to try to make it as easy as possible for her to eat.

I think she weighs about 450kg (does that sound about right) so maybe I am just over-estimating what she needs to eat, but on the other hand, she does need to put on weight

 

[martlin]

firstly, you do confuse volume vs weight, she needs more weight in haylage than in hay, but it will be roughly the same amount in volume. I would be inclined to give what she prefers... She is about 450 kg you say, so she would need about 9 kg of food or maybe a bit more as she needs to put weight on, so lets say 2,5%, which makes it 11,5 kg of which no more than 20% should be hard feed as she is on box rest. That calculation is for hay as forage, so that gives you 9,2 kg of hay or about 14 kg of haylage.
Hope that isn't to muddled to understand, I'm not very good at explaining.

 

[now_loves_mares]

So if I'm clear, you are saying that approx 14kg of haylage is about the same volume as 9kg of haylage? So in other words, if (say) she will only eat one haynet a night, it shouldn't matter which it is, as the "density" of the haylage will compensate for the fact it is more water, but it won't take more "eating"????

Now who's sounding muddled!

I guess I am just trying to be clear in mind that if, say, she will only take 100 bites a night, she won't lose out by eating haylage vs hay!!!

 

[wonkey_donkey]

How about providing a net of each so she can duplicate her natural behaviour of browsing different forages?
She is probably a bit bored and fed up with being on box rest and it could well be affecting her appertite.
If you supply her with both hay and haylage on an adlib basis and she has her regular feed with some succulents least you can rest assured you are doing all you can to keep her occupied and her condition on.
Some fresh picked grass is good too - if you can find any in this weather!
On a comparision note, good haylage contains more nutrients and protein than hay but weight for weight haylage contains more water (sometimes up to 50% if it's very 'wet').
Therefore, if your mare ate 5kg of hay and 5kg of haylage in a 24 hour period then she would have actually consumed the greater quantity of overall FORAGE from the hay.
Hope that makes sense !

 

[martlin]

[ QUOTE ]
So if I'm clear, you are saying that approx 14kg of haylage is about the same volume as 9kg of haylage? So in other words, if (say) she will only eat one haynet a night, it shouldn't matter which it is, as the "density" of the haylage will compensate for the fact it is more water, but it won't take more "eating"????

Now who's sounding muddled!

I guess I am just trying to be clear in mind that if, say, she will only take 100 bites a night, she won't lose out by eating haylage vs hay!!!

[/ QUOTE ]
Yep, that's pretty much what I was trying to say

If she eats 1 haynet of hay about 5kg, the same haynet filled with haylage will weigh about 7,5 kg depending on how wet it is. From the same volume she will get a bit more nutrients from haylage, but if you go by weight there will be more nutrients in 5kg of hay than in 5kg haylage, as some of the 5 kg haylage will be water