HAYLAGE

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K_T

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Looking for some advice on haylage as I've never fed it before. I am fed up with getting dusty and/or mouldy hay and having to soak it so I bought some haylage last week and can't get over how lovely it is!!

I think I would rather feed this but am unsure on how much. My mare is 20 yrs old and normal weight is about 490kg. She is out during the day and in at night. Her 3 acre pasture, which she shares with 1 other horse, is of low quality but she is a good doer and keeps her weight easily over winter.

I thought I would feed her about 9kg overnight, would this be enough and would I contine to feed a vit/min supplement as well?
 
I have always feed half the amount of halage as to what I would feed hay.With my horse its like having spring grass all yera round makes him so bloody springy lol
 
Thanks, well I normally feed her 6kg of hay over night and so I estimated 9kg haylage would give her the same dry matter but I wondered if the vitamin and mineral content of haylage would need supplemented...
 
i would give more haylage as weight than hay as it has a higher water content(which obviously makes haylage heavier and the same weight has less fibre than hay)

but be aware it has lots more sugar-esp with an older horse who is at more risk of laminitis or good doers.so for that reason you may need to feed less per volume.

i find it keeps for 10 day in winter but much less in warmer weather-around 4 days in spring.not used it in summer.
 
Thanks, how much sugar is in haylage? I thought is was quite low (around 3 or 4% - the same as horsehage). I would only use it in winter months as she is turned out 24/7 from April until October.
 
You need to feed more haylage than hay. Haylage seems more because its heavier but most of this is water (as has been said above). If your horse normally eats quickly then with the added yummy sweetness of the haylage she may be left for a long time through the night with nothing.
 
These posts about feeding haylage always get confusing! Because of the moisture content, haylage is heavier than the equivalent volume of hay, therefore you should feed more haylage BY WEIGHT than hay. But you should be feeding approximately the same VOLUME of haylage as hay (that is assuming all other factors are equal).

The amount of sugar in hay and haylage will depend on the grasses used and the time the grass was cut. Ryegrass is higher in sugar than timothy, for example, and early cut forage will be higher in sugar than late cut.
 
Yes, it is VERY confusing! Thankfully my mare does not eat quickly and so I think 9kg overnight is acceptable, if I go for a late cut timothy then the risk of sugar and energy overload is reduced and I will continue with the vit/min supplement.

Thanks for all the advice!
 
My vet assures me that more of the sugar in the grass is used up in haylage due to the fermentation that takes place, so it is often lower in sugar than some hay (although that does depend on when it was cut and what sort of grass etc, as TGM has explained so well above).

I have always fed my haylage ad lib, even to my ponies, and not had a problem, but it is meadow haylage so not too full of proteins and sugars. After years of soaking hay and several years on haylage, I would never swap back! My cob sizes probably eat their way through 9kg, but my horses now get about 15kg a night I would guess.

I haven't weighed it this year so might just do that to see what they actually do get through - scary thought
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oh just to add - you can send a sample off somewhere to get it analysed if you really want to know how much sugar is in it, but that's only useful if you are using the same batch for the whole winter!
 
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oh just to add - you can send a sample off somewhere to get it analysed if you really want to know how much sugar is in it, but that's only useful if you are using the same batch for the whole winter!

[/ QUOTE ] That'll be Dodson & Horrell - they do a proximal analysis service for a fiver!

This is the link, but you may not be able to get to it, because their site is often incredibly slow, and regularly seems unattainable:

http://www.dodsonandhorrell.com/helpline/forage/forage-analysis/
 
I'm sure any decent comp yards or riding schools would (or should) be aware that you should always feed MORE haylage than hay weight for weight.
The idea of feeding less haylage than hay is very out dated and is incorrect.
As explained above haylage contains significantly more water than hay so depite being higher in energy you should feed more to compensate for the less fibre content your horse is receiving.
In order to cut down on the energy less hard feed should be given and not less haylage.
By not feeding enough haylage you risk the horse lacking sufficient fibre and all the serious problems associated with this.
 
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thats the way ive always done it becuse of all the energy.

[/ QUOTE ] The thing is, these days you can get all sorts of haylage with different energy (calorie) levels, so rather than feeding limited quantities of a high energy (calorie) haylage, you are better to feed more of a lower energy (calorie) haylage, and as others have said feed less hard feed as well, if necessary.
 
Ok I just come back from a top event yard and they didnt give no where near as much halage as I would hay. Ive been doing this way for years. I worked in a riding schhool for over a year and we did the same.
 
Did you know that 60% of sports horses suffer from gastric ulcers, compared to 37% of non competition horses? One reason stated for this is the high concentrate, low fibre diets fed in many competition yards.

So I think I'll stick to giving my horses plenty of haylage, thank you very much!
 
Such an interesting subject and so many different views and beliefs! Here's something I found on Dengie's website regarding the sugar content....

So far in 2007, the forage analysed by us for our customers showed that the average sugar content of hay was 10.5% whereas haylage is 9.8%. It would normally be expected to see haylage with a significantly lower sugar content than hay as the sugar should be fermented during the ensiling process. However, there seems to be a tendency to create drier haylages which may be compromising sugar fermentation as can be seen from our analysis; all the haylages with sugar values over 10% had a dry matter in excess of 65% whereas haylage would normally be expected to be 50-60% dry matter.

My views on haylage have completely changed over the last couple of days. I thought like a lot of people that it was full of sugar and very high in energy when in actual fact it isn't!! The only down side I can see to it now is that alot of horses would eat it quickly because it is so yummy!
 
I've actually found that my horses (two of which are terrible pigs
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) eat haylage at the same rate that they eat their hay, but I feed a low energy haylage, so perhaps that is not quite as yummy as some of the other varieties!

Thanks for posting that Dengie quote - makes interesting reading and goes some way to correct some of the misconceptions people have about haylage!

ETA: I think some of the misconceptions come about because when haylage first became available it was quite a specialist product used mainly for hardworking animals and therefore was made from ryegrass to produce a high calorie product. Nowadays it is used much more widely for a range of animals including leisure horses, and consequently the variety of types of haylage produced and the range of grasses used has increased dramatically.
 
Thats very interesting i always believed haylage had a higher energy value than hay, so how does horsehage compare as at over£5 a bag it would cost a fortune to feed volume for volume with hay?
 
Horsehage is very compressed in those little bales, which makes it hard to compare. You get a better idea by looking at it's shaken out volume, rather than sections out of the bale, and compare that to shaken out hay. If you would give enough shaken out hay to fill a small haynet, then give enough shaken out Horsehage to fill a small haynet.

It still works out very expensive though!
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[ QUOTE ]
Did you know that 60% of sports horses suffer from gastric ulcers, compared to 37% of non competition horses? One reason stated for this is the high concentrate, low fibre diets fed in many competition yards.

So I think I'll stick to giving my horses plenty of haylage, thank you very much!

[/ QUOTE ]

I'll second that. My mare is NEVER in her stable without forage.
 
When I moved over to haylage I did some reasearch and discovered that you need to feed 1.25 x as much haylage when compared to hay.

ie 7.5kg net of haylage is the equivalent to a 6kg of hay
 
That's why people generally feed big or medium size bales of haylage or like you say it costs far too much with those little bales.

It worrying when you hear people say one of those tiny bales of Horsehage lasts their horse 2 or 3 days as they weigh very little and there is no way their horses are getting enough forage.
 
I feed hay and haylage.

Hay by day when in, about 8 sections but adlib in a big hole net...
Blue horse hage haylage by night about a quater to a third of a bale in a haylage net, he leaves a couple of mouthfulls and is always ready to eat (like all the men in my life!).

He looks very well and is 17hh.
 
I have fed Jerry on haylage for the past two winters, I give him about 10-11kg over-night and about 6kg in the field during the day. He is 17.1hh and a bit of a poor-doer but this amount certainly keeps his weight on so I should think your horse would have plenty of haylage if you plan to feed him 9kg at night.
 
When I started feeding haylage this year (for the same reasons - rubbish hay) I did a search on it and most sites came up with the formulae of feeding 1 kg of haylage to every 100 kgs of bodyweight, e.g. a horse weighing 550 kgs would need about 5.5 kgs of haylage a day under normal circumstances which would assume that your horse has access to grazing throughout the day. I found an old fishing weight (I think) spring loaded thing in my garage so used this to weigh out their haynets. Even so, the two mares are looking a bit fat off it so now the grass is starting to grow have cut it back a bit.
 
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