rye grass hay

In general yes, but the Pure Italian rye grass hay at my yard gave my horse terrible runs no matter how carefully it was introduced. Soaking it for 24hrs didn't help either. Lots of other horses were fine on it, if a bit fat! I came to the conclusion that she must have an allergy or digestive intolerance to it. Horsehage is rye grass I think.
 
The yard I work on feed it to all (30+) horses bar the lamanitics. No problems whether hay or haylage form - in fact when we tried to feed normal meadow hay to them most went on strike and refused to eat it! Only the piggies and the lamanitics did :)
 
I won't feed it - it's too fattening. I keep my horse at a farm and the farmer told me that they grew the meadow hay to make hay for horses and the rye grass hay to make silage for the beef cows (so it's supposed to be very high calorie) - the only reason they turned it into hay was there wasn't enough of it. Fortunately we have meadow hay as well so my horse can eat that.
 
I'd prefer a mixture of grasses. Pure rye grass is not ideal for horses as it's relatively high in sugar/starch and low in fibre.
 
unbalanced said:
I won't feed it - it's too fattening. I keep my horse at a farm and the farmer told me that they grew the meadow hay to make hay for horses and the rye grass hay to make silage for the beef cows (so it's supposed to be very high calorie) - the only reason they turned it into hay was there wasn't enough of it. Fortunately we have meadow hay as well so my horse can eat that.
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same here, our farmer grew it purely for the cattle so it was highly fertilised, too rich for my fatties:eek: most meadow hay will have a percentage of rye in for sure but should have a variety of grasses, tis what makes it meadow hay not seed hay;)
 
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