late cut haylage? help!

[jcberry]

my yard has run out of hay and is offering haylage that was supposed to be made into hay but didnt dry. my horse is a cob who gets scoop hi fi original, scoop comp mix and scoop topspec all in one. he is a good doer (greedy!), our grass is used for cow pasture so is very good quality, which is my only worry. he normally gets a slice of hay from the large bales per night (not sure how much kg), will haylage have too much nutritional value? just worrying about calories etc.
or is it possible to mix hay and haylage together? we can try and get hay from other places but everyone seems to be running our round here. we still want to hard feed for the supplements and energy etc. sorry never fed haylage before!

thanks

 

[Toby_Zaphod]

We have been mixing haylage with hay purely because with the wet paddocks & haylage in the stables the horses were getting a little loose in their drooppings. Mixing it 50/50 seems to have done the trick.

 

[dollymix]

Haylage cut this year sent my mare loopy so I have just sourced my own hay. It's a pain as haylage is included in my livery so although I'm not using it, I still get charged
But my mare has settled down loads on the hay so ill be sticking to that until the haylage is a bit less fresh!

 

[Mongoose11]

I had my VERY good doer mare on haylage last Winter as I couldn't get hay. It wasn't an incredibly wet or rich haylage but not hay nonetheless, she did really well on it actually but we lacked grass. It certainly wasn't the awful situation I thought it was at first!

Why not muzzle him while grazing? My mare has now moved and there is an abundance of grass so she will be muzzled for a good bit of the winter.

 

[guido16]

You can easily mix hay and haylage. I have done for years!

 

[DuckToller]

I have a very sensitive pony (he has EMS) so I worry about having hay or haylage that is too rich.

The stuff I am buying is late cut and the farmer was worried because the quality was not as good as last year, but I am delighted as I started off feeding it in small quantities mixed with old hay, and he coped well, so I upped the percentage until he is now on pure haylage and not getting any hint of laminitis.

A lot depends on the type of grass - meadow is usually lower sugar levels than rye, and it also depends on how much the ground was fertilised etc. You can have it analysed by Dodson & Horrell for sugar levels - costs around £7.50 a sample - but unless it was all made on the same day and from the same field, it probably isn't worth it as each batch would vary.

I was told by a vet that if you cut one field of uniform grass and made half into hay and half into haylage, the haylage would have lower sugar levels by the winter as the sugar is used up as it ferments (bit like alcohol!). So even if it's a bit rich now, by early next year it should be fine - try it mixed to start with and see how you go.

 

[jcberry]

Thanks for all your replies. Yea I think what I will do is mix it to start off with, not even sure if he will eat it but then this will answer the question for us!

 

[jcberry]

Llewelyn - how do you go about getting it analysed? It's only a small farm so all made from same field/ 2 fields