Haylage - anyone heard of this??

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Dotty01

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Hi, been spending a long time reading and gathering loads of information and various views - delighted I found this forum. Now im looking for further advice - I made haylage the beginning of October , saw no rain was down bout 5 days and although the grass quality at this time of year isnt great I thought haylage should be ok however, someone told me that haylage which has been baled after (cant remember if it was August or September) should not be fed to horses as it contains some sort of bacteria?? would love your comments on this please..........
 
i've never heard that, but if you're worried, you can send it off for analysis. i was told that one major way bacteria gets in is if the grass was cut too low, so soil gets wrapped too. Baileys horse feeds used to do free analysis of forage samples if you were a regular customer, really excellent service, i'm not sure if they still do though.
 
It depends on how wet it was when baled. Sorry, I can't be more specific, other than if it was too wet, you shouldn't use it for horses but for cattle.
 
Haylage can contain botulism. This is due to soil being baled with it as kerrili said, however this is very uncommon as modern farming practices have made botulism uncommon in uk soils nowadays.

If the plastic wrapping is punctured and you have baled soil with botulism with your haylege, the haylege will not ferment at the correct pH and allows the botulism to grow. There's a lot of if's that need to be there before you give your horse botulism!! Cases of botulism used to be more common in the old days but very uncommon now because of the wa we farm.

It doesn't matter what time of year it was baled, as long as your plastic wrapping is ok with no rips or tears it will be fine.
 
We have been making small bale haylage for over ten years. At the moment my horses are eating haylage that was made very late last year and it is quite wet but they love it. (They are very fussy TB's). As the other posters have said the main problems occur if there has been soil contamination but if the grass has not been cut too short and the field was rolled earlier in the year it is unlikely.
 
OK, so far so good - whereas I know you can learn something new every day sometimes you can listen too much to people!! Every notice at shows all the expert riders are on foot!!
Yeah Id class wet haylage as baled silage - have fed it to horses before (yuk the smell) but does get you to the front (after feeding it)of the queue at Tescos - other shoppers seem to give me a wide berth!

Thanks for the replys
 
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