Laminitic prone horses and haylage

[samuelhorse]

Can I feed my laminitic prone neddy haylage?

He gets mild laminitic symptoms and pottery, (touch wood) never been really bad.

The yard I have just moved to has haylage included in livery and no choice to get my own hay in.

The haylage looks brownish and has seeds in it, so must have been cut a bit later.

Will he be okay to be given haylage???

 

[Nailed]

You can feed it.. but itll have to be soaked for about 24 hours.. and its not really advisable..

Lou x

 

[Damnation]

Our yard has connemara ponies on it that are prone to laminitus. They are all fed hayledge and are ok on it. We double net it and keep an eye on their weight.

 

[samuelhorse]

Thanks for that. I think Im born to worry!

Have been mixing it in with what I had left of his hay that i had left from last yard.

 

[Damnation]

Just monitor your ponies weight and their hayledge intake because I do find that they like to stuff their faces with it because its so nice!

 

[Gingernags]

*mutters*

See now you wouldn't have had that problem if you'd come to stay with us!!! We can buy in what we like!

Hope the move went well and you are both OK though, come visit soon!!!

 

[custard]

My lam' prone 17 year old has had haylage for the last 4 winters with no issues whatsoever, I only swap to hay in the summer because I can't use haylage up quickly enough. I have to say the idea of soaking it makes me want to throw up though and is completely unecessary, not to mention your pony/horse probably won't eat it anyway.

Haylage, correctly made is ok because most of the fructans is used up during the fermentation process. That's why you wouldn't feed it to any horse freshly baled as it needs time to 'cook' and I still wouldn't feed it to a horse actually suffering a bout of lamnitis.

Provided the rest of the diet is correct ie remove as much artificially added sugar as you can, don't feed cereals/starch etc you shouldn't have any problems, you might be wise to cut down any bucket feed though and just use a forage balancer/vitamin supplement since haylage is generally higher in feed value all round.