Ryegrass Haylage

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samleigh

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Does anyone else's horses behaviour go nuts on the RYEGRASS Haylage?
My TB is bonkers at the moment, not just spring fever, far far worse, I dismounted yesterday on a hack and walked him home, he was just looking for excuses to explode and after the umpteenth I wasn't risking him going home alone! & honestly it isn't for lack of work, I'm shattered I have ridden him constantly in canter when schooling as per my instructors advise & jumped him everyday for over a week, rode twice on Saturday including taking him for a SJ lesson, I can't get to the bottom of his energy!..our livery yard brought it in about 6 weeks ago, horses love it, I've cut feed over the last few weeks and it hasn't made any difference! Just ordered 10 small bales of hay to be delivered tonight & will start weening him off it to see if it is the Haylage that has been sending him loopy.
 
Ryegrass haylage is the highest energy haylage you can give, commonly used for race horses/hunters etc. So unless a horse is in very hard work I can imagine it would upset some.

Have a look at the Marksway Horsehage website as gives more details on the energy levels of different haylage. They produce a high fibre one and a timothy one more suited to horses requiring less energy. Hopefully the hay will settle him down too.
 
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samleigh said:
Does anyone else's horses behaviour go nuts on the RYEGRASS Haylage?
My TB is bonkers at the moment, not just spring fever, far far worse, I dismounted yesterday on a hack and walked him home, he was just looking for excuses to explode and after the umpteenth I wasn't risking him going home alone! & honestly it isn't for lack of work, I'm shattered I have ridden him constantly in canter when schooling as per my instructors advise & jumped him everyday for over a week, rode twice on Saturday including taking him for a SJ lesson, I can't get to the bottom of his energy!..our livery yard brought it in about 6 weeks ago, horses love it, I've cut feed over the last few weeks and it hasn't made any difference! Just ordered 10 small bales of hay to be delivered tonight & will start weening him off it to see if it is the Haylage that has been sending him loopy.
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He's probably getting super-fit with all that work too, so he's going to get more energetic, rather than less!
 
Would be interesting to know when it was cut - early cut haylage has higher energy levels than later cut. Weird that it is not affecting the other horses on the yard though....
 
ryegrass haylage is very fattening so good for poor doers, so high in sugars, we feed the racehorses timothy first cut, we do not go near ryegrass, good for cows
 
Sidney said:
Would be interesting to know when it was cut - early cut haylage has higher energy levels than later cut. Weird that it is not affecting the other horses on the yard though....
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Out of the 9 horses (6 owners) on the yard we have all seen a difference but in different ways, 5 are retired or ridden very very rarely,although the 32 yr old did jump a 4ft fence last week into the adjacent paddock! 1 has become bolshy, 2 have become much more forward but owners not complaining, enjoying the easy riding. H just can't keep 4 feet on the ground, even leading on the ground, he's finding everything so exciting. It is a shame as he looks fantastic and it looks and smells yummy. On the plus side tho he's competition fit already..
 
Could it be that he isn't coping with the acidity of the haylage rather than the fact that it's ryegrass? If he has an acid gut it can present as this sort of behaviour.
 
As Sidney said, it is the highest energy haylage HorseHage make - not good for laminitics / good doers etc. Can you request / buy in some of the High Fibre version? It's much lower in energy and doesn't seem to affect behaviour like other varieties.
Ryegrass can certainly affect some more than others - I recently introduced it to my mare as she is extremely fussy and wasn't touching any of her 'normal' haylage. I mixed a little bit in with her normal haylage, though was extremely wary as she's already very highly strung - even so, a few days later she was completely bouncing off the walls!
 
Dunno about anyone else but the 0NLY haylage I've been able to get at the mo (I buy the large bales for £25) is the Ryegrass.

I fed it to my two (both cobs/good doers) with trepidation; first of all I started off mixing it in with some "ordinary" hay which i had, then when that ran out i just had to feed it neat. They're just happy hackers but we haven't noticed any weight gain with them - they are ridden for about one and a half to two hours both days at weekends plus I do a ride-one-lead-one hack for about an hour midweek at the mo; with occasionally one other hack midweek for about an hour. So not a huge workload.

Luckily........ they've both been OK on it; they have managed to have some (very limited) turnout but have been cooped up a lot in our "holding pen" - and eating ryegrass - but there haven't been any temperamental issues (yet!!!). We're nearly at the end of the bale now, and as we're drying up a bit and the weather forecast is optimistic for once, I'm threatening to chuck them out 24/7 within the next couple of days hopefully, so problem should be solved anyway.
 
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