Haylage getting warm and mouldy?

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Lucinda_x

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Hello :)

Just wanted to ask about haylage going warm and going mouldy. So i've always been taught never to feed haylage when its mouldy and i dont really like giving it warm but the lady i keep my horses with and her mother insist its ok to do both which confussed me about the mouldly bits? So when should you feed with haylage?

We're thinking of swapping over to hay for the summer as we usually do - is this a good idea?
 
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OMG, as far as I am concerned you are right. Any hayledge left should be thrown away after a week, after that it starts to therment and can build gases up in the stomach.

Even hay should not be fed mouldy
 
We get our haylage from a local farmer and in general its ok, but we are getting to the time of year when some of the bales have peck marks and whats underneath is turning yeasty (white). We have a rule that says if its white its ok, but we wont give it to the in foal mares. If its any other colour, green blue or purple pull it off and chuck away! Its a bit difficult now to get totally perfect bales but as long as you dont mind a bit off waste ie no more than about 2% of the large bale just carry on. I have had my last delivery tho , I go on now to small bale hay and I have a super supplier of good quality hay at 3 quid a bale. Hope this helps.
 
Daisydo said:
OMG, as far as I am concerned you are right. Any hayledge left should be thrown away after a week, after that it starts to therment and can build gases up in the stomach.
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It completely depend on the brand. I buy 220kg bales for one of mine, and in winter that easily lasts her 12 days/2 weeks and never goes off in that time, so no, I don't throw out what's left after one week. I judge it by how it looks, feels and smells at the time.

As my girl has cushings she isn't allowed good grass and so I feed haylage to her in summer also. Then I tend to open a bale, spread it out in sections in the barn to dry out, and it never goes off. If I were to leave it in the feed room wrapped up in that weather, then yes, it would spoil and not be safe to feed.

However I do agree that once it goes damp and smelly it should NOT be fed. I had a little disagreement with my haylage supplier over this recently as he thought that a couple of bales I had returned were fine to feed. He said that it will only cause colic if it's 'contaminated' and I disagreed and said it wasn't up to scratch for my mare. To my mind if when I open them they are already damp and smelly they aren't good enough to be fed to my horse. The fact he passed on the bales to others whose horses ate it is irrelevant IMO - I gues some people are more worried about cost than quality. :rolleyes:
 
Agree with the above. Of course it depends on how wet/dry the haylage is in the first instance. Mine is quite dry and I'm not having any problems with wastage - my 2 horses take about 10 days to use up a 4 foot bale. However, wetter haylage will start to ferment in this warm weather and at that point it will need to be discarded. You will find that it starts to smell yeasty and might have lots of small flies around it. In that case I would throw it away. With regard to mould - I understood that white mould was fine and anything else was bad.
 
Warm weather will make it heat up quicker. With big round bales we will pull it out and spread on floor when it starts to heat up, usually at end of season. It then doesn't heat and we just feed it. White bits are fine to feed but NOT the black bits.
 
We have 250kg bales that are two smaller bales wrapped as one. I get through one in about a week. We spread the haylage out and then it does dry out and keeps for 2 weeks even in the summer. We had some wet smelly bales and had to return ours. I never feed it if it is mouldy esp green or blue mould.
 
A few facts first: when silage is made, a big bale of wilted grass is wrapped in polythene or similar plastic - this includes varying kinds of fungii and pathogens that happened to be on that grass and nothing more - farmers do not sterilise the grass first before adding a special "brew" as happens in say, making beer. Once the air is used up inside the airtight wrapping the bugs that like that kind of atmosphere proliferate and gradually ensile the grass by partly digesting it.

There was a huge debate as to whether it was ever any good for horses mainly because of the possible inclusion of nasty bugs.

Properly made silaged has a pleasant tobaccoy scent and what is sold as "haylage" shouldn't be much different - if it smells off or is powdery etc., etc., there's usually been some secondary fermentation caused by holes through the wrapping.
 
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