Haylage?? Yes or No?

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pipper

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With the price of hay rocketing it is seemingly more cost efficient to feed haylage now!!!! I have never fed it before and wondered how many of you thought it made a difference to your horses' behaviour and how many noticed no change?
 
depends on your horse.

some do fine and that is just great.

but a high proportion of the ones I deal with that have problems are having problems because of the haylage and they do better on hay.

even the low sugar haylage is acidic and this can cause problems in the hind gut (caecum/cecum).
 
personally prefer haylage and never noticed any difference in horses behaviour. Although do have friends that say haylage makes their horse loopy
 
Hay is £7 a bale here.

We feed haylage and I get a 5ft bale for £50. lasts a month.

I have a TB and Yes I guess hylage makes her more hyper than on hay, but she does get ridden/worked 6 days, has turnout all day and has a good routine, so her behaviour is under control.

I prefer haylage anyway and so does she. Just as well as hay is sooooooooo expensive! I nearly fell off the chair when they said the price! Encourages me to ride her more!
 
I always feed round bale haylage (£45 per bale). I have a 2 year old, a 7 year old stallion and an 8 year old gelding and they are all fine on it. The gelding is always loopey in the field but to ride is perfectly angelic. The stallion is great to ride but very different and I don't know what is him and what isn't if you know what I mean, he IS safe anyway just loves life so much.

The problem with the gut and loosened droppings - I have picked up a great tip off this forum - plain flour! It does the job straight away. A 25ml plastic spoon (from the pink powders) once a day seems to work FOR ME. They are also on brewers yeast powder (were on pink powders/haylage balancer but changed because of the expense mainly).

The stallion has a bale of haylage in the field to pick at as and when. The other two seem to work better with me keeping a sheep ring feeder topped up daily. I can also move it when the ground gets poached! Hope that helps you.
 
I request only the driest haylage from our supplier. It is less palatable than the wet stuff and therefore not gobbled up quite so fast (though still preferred to hay). Also, it doesn't make them fizzy or have runny poo. Because of the shortage, I have noticed a few wetter bales slipped in with my dry load and this seems to upset some of the horses digestion (even though they love it and it smells beautiful).
 
I changed Arion over to haylage when I went from full livery to DIY. He has kept his condition great this year and last winter and he loves it. I have noticed no change in Arions temperament since he went on to haylage :)
 
I feed haylage. My mare is calm by nature and is regularly worked and turned out but I don't think even without that, that haylage would make her more hyper than she'd otherwise be on hay

I guess it depends on the individual horse and their nature mostly
 
I switched to haylage after last year's awful winter. I made 48 bales of my own at a cost of around £8 per bale. Great as don't need to use hard feed and we have had lying snow for 6 weeks now. BUT have also had to buy in hay as obesity in my two good doers is becoming a real issue. As I have 7 I will probably always stick to haylage now but am dreading the spring for my fatties.
 
I've changed to haylage since the snow also. Had no problems with loose droppings etc. with any of my 4, despite them not having had haylage before (only hay). Didn't notice a change in temperament either - but then again, until we had enoguh of a thaw, I wasn't able to ride them to find out!

Only problem is, that 3 of my 4 are very good doers, and have actually put on weight (am not giving them any other feed), so rather than allowing them ad-lib access to haylage, I've had to restrict the amount. Felt a bit bad about this when the snow was down, as it meant that there were certain times in the day when they simply had no access to feed whatsoever (and I'd prefer them to be able to trickle feed), but seeing the rate at which they started to put on weight, I had to opt for the lesser (I hope) of two evils and restrict access to haylage.
 
Nay......two of mine live on fresh air and I'd rather ad-lib hay than restricted haylage.

The other one I've not had that long- but he is similar in temperament to my previous horse- one net of haylage made him nasty tempered and 'interesting' to ride.....the new one is exciteable enough with risking a haylage-induced whizz-fest.:)
 
We’ve fed haylage for years and they’ve all been fine on it, they seem to like it more than hay – a bit more tasty!! Maybe makes them a bit more frisky but nothing drastic.

At our yard we get haylage included in the price – one lady feeds hers hay at £6 a bale and doesn’t even get any money off her livery!! Mine can sooo make do with haylage!
 
I feed haylage, it is fairly dry, made here and really lovely stuff. I feed six on it, one laminitic, three who would like to eat enough to get laminitis if I let them :) and two poorer doers. They all do well on it, I have not noticed any change in behaviour at all but tbh, I doubt there is a huge difference in feed value with our own stuff, the hay is just a touch drier.
 
I swapped to haylage a couple of years ago, and have never looked back. My TB mare consistantly eats it, where as hay she would eat one bale and refuse to touch it, and therefore is holding her weight beautifully. I haven't ever noticed a change in behaviour either.
 
Iv never had any bother with haylage making them fresh etc. My last Tb was fine on any haylage (horsehage, EH haylage, yard haylage etc) we also had him on hay for a while and his behaviour never changed. I have the new girl on wee green bales of haylage and shes grand its £4.95 per bale so were going to get some hay to mix so its cheaper, hay only 2.80 here!!
 
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