Me again - another haylage size question

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millyspaniel

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I like to feed my 2 welshies, 18month coblet and poor doer TB hay and haylage mixed together. They all live out with natural shelter, only the TB is rugged the oters are happy and hairy. I bought a huge big bale of haylage, had it 7 days and not even half way through it so obviously i dont need bales so big as its going to have to be discarded soon, what a waste
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they have currently been getting through 1 bale per day with 70% hay and 30% haylage for the 3 ponies and 50% hay and 50% haylage for the TB.
Have found someone who sells 15-20kg haylage bales @ £4, am currently paying £16 for a huge one. I know this sounds a bit of a numpty question but how long does it take you to go through a 15-20kg haylage bale per horse??
I basically want to be feeding 1/2 bale of hay per day mixed with haylage for all of them but slightly confused to how big a bale 15-20kg is!! thanks
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This will be about the weight of a normal bale of hay - will probably appear slightly smaller due to compression. Be very careful when sourcing small bales of haylage, as most of the non-branded ones are made by re-baling big bales, which will introduce air, and may result in the bales going off, or worse, fermentation will have already completed, so botulism could be a problem. Always check that any haylage sold is in its "primary" packaging - ie that in which it was originally made.
 
I dont think i will bother with haylage - more trouble than what its worth! managed to find someone who does the large bales of hay (18-20 small bale eqivilent sized) thinking of just feeding hay instaed!
 
Is there any particular reason for using half haylage and half hay?

I have used both hay and haylage in the past over winter, but now I just buy in good quality hay, as i found I just couldn't stop the large bales from going off. I bought in the 'medium round' bales which were approx £25 per bale and in the depths of winter when they were all eating it (no grass) it lasted approx 6 days. the only problem I had was my horse getting to the bales and destroying them all so I lost about 5 bales. the small 20kg bales I used for competitions and they only last about 1 -2 days.

In the end I gave up an started feeding hay instead!
 
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