Haylage and fat Fly!

[moneypit1]

Now Fly IS a foodie. OK, so he is a 16.3hh DWB but I struggle to keep weight off him. He is ridden 5 days out of 7 and has one net of haylage at night and one in the morning if he is not being turned out. He has two small feeds a day of 1/2 scoop HiFi Lite, half scoop Comp mix and carrots and apples. He is too "round", not massively but too much on the good side for coming into grass growing season. Today I went out and bought hay, not the best quality but must and dust free. He chomped it. Surely this will make a difference! Surely haylage is more nutritional than hay? (p.s. have to say the haylage I bought was exceptional quality, almost dry but sweet smelling, it was 2 yrs old.)

 

[DuckToller]

It's hard to compare your hay with the haylage without having both analysed, but...

I have been told by a vet that generally hay has more calories than haylage, because more of the sugars in haylage are used up as it ferments. We need a farmer or nutritionist to comment on this now.

So in theory hay is more calorific, I guess the nutritional value re vits and mins varies in both according to what grasses were used, quality of crop, time of cut, etc.

How about soaking hay for half hour or so, this gets rid of some of the calories (but also some of the nutritional value!). You can't win...