Haylage, please help!

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Megibo

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We are looking at a yard that sounds lovely, very close to home BUT they only feed haylage.
I have a welsh D that lives off air super good doer. How would you advise feeding this to her? She'll be worked on my days off college so 3-4 days a week and my mum will exercise her once a week on one of my college days.

can you soak haylage? any information will be appreciated :)
 
Interestly when we had both our hay and haylege analysed last year we found out that the haylege actually had a lower energy content than the hay - its made by a local company and is 'meadow' rather than 'seed' haylege. It may be worth looking at getting it analysed if the yard provides it, or if you have to provide it go for a high fibre low energy version. I second using small holed nets doubled up to make it last longer.
 
I might stand corrected on this but hay generally has a higher nutritional content than haylage. I am sure that is what a Dodson and Horrell feed rep told our riding club 10 yrs ago. Because halage does not contain as much dry matter you should feed mor haylage than hay pound for pound. I think, because to our noses it smells richer we assume it is richer.
We have 17 section d's, and whilst most of the mares live out all year all the ones that are in are fed basically ad lib haylage, we tend to get through roughly 70 to 80 big bales a year, and they do not do as much work as yours and have no problems with fizziness, in fact in the winter the stallion just stands in the stable and gets fat. He is turned out in the school three or four times a week but after half an hour he just wants to come in.
 
You can soak it!

I quadruple my boys nets as he is on a diet and that keeps him happy for hours.

Haylage contains a lot more water so generally you feed pound for pound but weightape regularly to check if weight is creeping on.
 
My vet told me that it can be soaked but only for a few hours and then it needs to be rinsed well as can ferment.
Mine are going to be on haylage so I will mix it with oat straw so they have enough to much during the night but with less calories.
 
A section D I had had COPD so I had no choice but to use haylage.... I fed him two haynets (those smaller hole haylage ones) and those small bales of haylage that are about 2feet wide lasted 3-4 days, so I was using just under two per week. He did well on it and looked in excellent health. The vet said to introduce it gradually as it could make them a bit colicky.
 
Right-from doing some rooting about on various sites we've figured out a diet to transition her to (when she moves she will be on haylage all night). she's a good weight at the moment so we were thinking: 6kg of haylage a night and a scoop of mollichaff high fibre alfalfa.
how does that sound ?
 
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