If you run out of hay....

H

horsegirl

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what are you going to do? Also are you cutting down what you give your horse at the moment, if so what are you giving instead?
 
i personally am leaving my girly out 24-7 and feeding horsehage but getting hay here is gonna be 10 times worse than you guys in the uk... is any where in the uk shipping it in from france?
 
Mine are on horsehage, putting them out as much as i can without trashing the fields. I would put out over night but the rain is so heavy and the last week we have had storms.
 
We won't run out of hay, even though there is also a bit of a hay-crises over here too. We own a hay farm and we know how much hay we use over the winter so if we make less than normal we just hold back and don't sell as much of our hay as usual.

All of my herds are out 24/7 and are still on ad-lib hay so no I am in the luxurious position of not having to restrict any hay.

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So far we have managed to get over 60 1,700lb round bales of this field alone and there is probably another 30 bales in the windrows. We have another 10 acres down at the moment and still have about 60 acres left to cut, so we will be fine thank goodness.

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Yep!
A guy over here whose main income comes from selling hay to horsey people has just left for France to try and source some decent hay to bring back. He's lost ALL of his mowing grass in the floods.
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I'm starting to cut down on what mine have (though minimal in the summer anyway) and will turn them out 24/7 once this weather disappears, otherwise we'll just have a mud patch
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Our summer has been difficult too. Although we haven't had any floods like you guys, we just have not been able to get any windows of 3-4 days, so haven't been able to take any hay until last week when we cut our first 10 acre field - the yield was way down as the hay had to be let go to seed. Normally our first cut is somewhere in June; we're now at the end of July and there is no way we'll get a second cut and unfortunately all of the selling hay will have to be sold as Meadow Hay instead.

It's not a good year for anyone it seems.
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We are already having to feed this years green hay that was only cut a month ago, not ideal at all so I am experimenting with a trug of readigrass and hi-fi in his stable and a small haynet.
 
This is the first year that we've not made hay ourselves due to my grandfather retiring (farmer!), so we were planning to buy it in as and when needed over the winter.
Now we're trying desperately to get hold of as much as possible! Tis already £6/bale here
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You know you can go off people...

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mmm I was thinking he same
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I did know someone that imported their hay from America for their jumping ponies, £20-£25 per little bale!!
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Little bale hay in Australia where my sister is $32 (about £12-£15), they are having freak weather atm (freak for where they are!) it was -9 the other night she said and all her tropic plants have gone black, I said i'd take -9 at night and 21 in the day and she could have the rain and floods instead but she wasn't up for a trade.
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Have to say I am panicking as Gen cant have haylage so it has to be hay. Also now we have Mum and Foal they are going to need a good amount of hay. We currently have 3 of the large bales left then we have nothing and so far we cant get any.

We would normally have plenty of grass to keep us going for ages but our YO has gone mad and we have loads of new liveries. Our field has gone from 4 horses to 8!!
 
Mix it with any haylage and any barley straw I can lay my hands on. Although in a way I'm lucky as I won't have to feed as much this winter (horse turned away, used to eat tons in the stable), I'm going to have to source it myself this year which is going to be awful!
 
Chex won't be getting any hay/haylage until about December, and if there's none then then he'll have to stay out and cope on the grass thats there! Farmer thinks he should get some haylage cut though, just the hay he's struggling with.
 
£6 a bale
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FFS we are going to be paying £8/9 a bale by the end of next winter
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I MUST ring my farmer and buy some if he has any and hope he will let me call it off when I need it
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I've just paid £4 a bale but supplier would only allow me to have 20 bales. I am only feeding the lammi prone pony hay at the moment as she is on starvation paddock but am seriously worried about the winter as I have 4 on less than 2 acres so hve to feed a lot of hay. I don't know if I dare feed the lammi pony haylage, we also have a very excitable pony who I would be loathe to give haylage too, anyone got any tips?
 
mine are out 24/7 on rough pasture at the moment, we hope to get some hayledge done in the next few weeks, farmer isn't too worried as he will cut as late as august it will be stemmy that's all, we are very fortunate in the south east that we have no floods yet.
i work in a feed merchchants so have first dibs on HHage etc!! during the last hay shortage we imported some lovely hay from germany it sold for around £6 per bale, at the mo we are limiting customers to 10 bales, to stop people panic buying and leaving those with no storage or those that can't afford huge amounts with nothing.....
i am very lucky that i have native types and a bale can last my 3 a week, if i top up with hi-fi or readigrass, even the readigrass situation may be interesting...... if worst come to worst it is possible to make a fibre soup from unmollassed beet and high fibre cubes, like you would do for a horse with no teeth! i also have some oat straw in reserve. it will be an expensive winter.
 
have a good reliable source here and will be taking delivery of 35 round bales of last years hay this weekend...

was charged a reasonable £25 each for them.

he did say that if i wanted more nearer christmas and no decent cut's have been achieved this summer, which he wasn't too optimistic of, then i'd be looking to pay £40/45 per round bale!!

so i decided to pre-pay for another 25 and have them delivered at a later date.

also paying £60 per ton for straw!!!!!

it is going to be dire by mid-winter and the quality isn't going to be great.

another knoc-on effect is the price of bagged fodder is also going to rise.
 
My friends sister has just been told by her hay supplier that he has had to import hay from Canada, and it will be £10 a bale!
I think it might be time for people to remember that horses can eat grass!
 
I feed big bale haylage and guess i'm lucky as my supplier made 1200 bales early and is now just waiting on a 2nd cut.Having spoken too various people with far more knowledge than myself on the subject the feed back seems to be DON'T PANIC!! There will be plenty of hay baled at some point but it won't be fantastic quality, apparently the best hay will be from fields that weren't fertilised.
 
mine are out.
feeding hifi as partial replacer.
if i cant find any large bale hay i will buy haylage as that seems to be easy to find here.will have to soak it to try to get rid of the sugars for the laminitic one though.
 
I honestly don't mean to put a dampner on this; but you do realise that hay has a knock-on effect to ALL of the other feedstuffs you are discussing. If there is barely any hay, then you can pretty much be guaranteed that there will barely be any readigrass, haylage, hifi, bricks etc etc.
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similar to my reply further up, Tia.

i'm having a fair amount delivered this weekend, so quite lucky.

it is 16 months old but the way i'm looking at this is something is better than nothing!
even if we do have a reasonable august, the quality will be poor..most mowing grass around here is lying flat and turning yellow, so if and when this i cut, i should imagine it will not be very palatable??

the redigrass/chaff etc will also be very sparse and very expensive mid-winter.
 
You know what? Stock pile as much as you possibly can - so long as the hay is not mouldy or dusty, old doesn't matter, at least it is something to fill them up with.

I honestly don't quite know what we would do here if we didn't have our own hay. I can't imagine trying to feed 25 horses on what is available. Farmers have already put their prices very high and are limiting the amount people can have. We haven't even put a price on ours until we see our grand total - at this rate we will only be selling a small amount of ours.

Incidentally, I have already been approached by UK, US and other Canadian hay merchants and have turned them all down.
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