How to calculate energy intake from grass?

[Spyda]

I'm playing around with figures, working out the MJDE requirements of my horses and tweeking their diets. But how much does winter grazing add up to energy-wise? Know it's going to vary, but we've got a good amount of grass - albeit winter/frosted grass.

There's plenty of nutritional info for compounds, straights, hay, haylage, straw, etc., but 6 hours grazing per day must contribute to the overall energy consumption, but I can't find figures anywhere?

Can anyone help?

 

[NOISYGIRL]

Try the laminitis trust

 

[wispagold]

I don't have any figures for winter but I could find you some for summer. We have national averages for work (formulating dairy cow diets) but as you said it is very variable. We do fresh grass analysis in our lab so you would be able to send them to someone to do this but you would have to pay. That would give you the protein content, energy, ash, NDF, VFA, PAL, pH etc. You would also have to estimate the grass consumed in kg, not sure how you would do that.

sorry not very helpful! I would be interested to know what you find though!

 

[appylass]

I went to a really interesting talk on laminitis a while ago. One of the speakers was a doctor who works for Dodson and Horrell, Theresa something I think? She was really good and talked about feed values for grass. I know she said she could be contacted via the D&H website. I'm sure she would be able to help - or if not would know where you could find the information.

Found this http://www.dodsonandhorrell.com/help-advice/laminitis.html hope it helps!