Just curious: Soaking Haylage?

[Chinchilla]

Is it possible to soak haylage/horsehage to increase its volume?
Read that soaking it makes it +50% its original volume so it lasts longer which is good because horse hage is quite expensive, but wouldn't it deteriorate quite quickly as it already partially fermented?
Obviously soaking wouldn't reduce WSCs much or even at all as they are converted to fatty acids (I think) during the preliminary fermentation process.
Sorry for dumb questions

 

[oldie48]

I make my own late cut haylage which is wrapped drier than normal haylage. I soak it for little fatty and he's fine. I assume I am washing some of the sugar content out, please let me know if anyone knows this is not the case.

 

[wkiwi]

soaking haylage increases the risk of botulism and increases microbe count generally. It also leaches out some of the minerals.
Various research articles on effects on minerals, microbes, sugars etc. when soaking hay and haylage can be found at http://www.thelaminitissite.org/h.html (some of the articles under the hay soaking section also include haylage soaking too).

 

[ycbm]

I soak it every summer to reduce sugar (not all of which is fermented away) and increase bulk.

Been doing it for years. Never had an issue.

 

[Shay]

I too had always been taught that soaking haylage would put the horse at risk of botulism poisoning. The research wkiwi points do does seem to support that - but did only look at a comparison of hay and haylage soaked over 24 hours which is probably longer than we would soak now anyway. Modern thinking seems to be that soaking for 30 minutes is sufficient. But having had a horse on yard die from botulism I wouldn't personally take the risk.

It you are wanting to soak only so you feed less because it is expensive I suspect that is a false economy. Any extra bulk (and I'm not personally convinced it makes an empirical difference) is only water so you would need to feed the same amount of haylage to get the nutrition needed. If you need to bulk out haylage to reduce calorie content then would adding palatable straw be a better option?

 

[ycbm]

Whenever I read of the risk of soaking forage, I wonder how all the horses fed big bale in the field in rain manage to cope. Botulism is very rare and usually, I believe, due to getting soil in the bale from a molehill or too low a cut. And if that's in it, it's in it whether you soak it or not. It really is possible to worry too much on the basis of one-off experiences, I think.