Strawlage?

[mcnaughty]

Is there such a thing as strawlage? Yard Owner bought a bale of what she called haylage but looks like straw to my inexperienced eye! Very thick stems with what looks like empty wheat heads.....

 

[brighteyes]

Can you stick a picture up? Was it wrapped in plastic?

 

[joe_carby]

if you could get some pics on would help.

 

[Mike007]

It is possible to make silage or high dry matter silage (Haylage) from a cereal crop in the later stages of growth.The crop is cut when the grain is at the milkey stage and not fully formed. Straw itself ,however ,will not ferment so you cannot make any form of haylage from it.

 

[mcnaughty]

Thanks for the info guys and sorry I have not taken a picture yet - trust me - when comparing the stem thickness to my dry hay it is approx 4 x as wide and very obviously yellow gold coloured.

I did look a bit closer though and it seems like the straw was mixed in with hay.

Anyone ever hear of a farmer doing this? I actually think they are just trying to rip of these ladies.

Worst thing is though - I think they are going to try to talk me into ordering my next batch from this guy! I get my hay and haylage from a different farmer.

Fi

 

[mcnaughty]

OK - eventually got some pictures for you. Can anybody out there identify what is going on with this haylage - it smells of haylage and upon closer inspection it looks like it might be hay and straw mixed? The heads look like grass heads to my inexperienced eye....

Left is the haylage, right is good quality dry hay

some seed heads from the haylage

again left haylage, right hay

 

[lisab]

Until I saw the bottom picture, I thought it was definitely haylage. But the bottom one does look like straw. The haylage I buy is often very thick stemmed. And bright yellow. But it is very clean and shiny.

Smell it. Haylage has a very distinctive, sweet smell. Straw smells of straw.

If you don't like it, don't buy it (assuming of course that you are allowed to choose what you feed your own horse, which you should be).

 

[Brownmare]

My OH did this once when manager of an organic farm. He couldn't spray off weeds in the barley crop so when it was ready to harvest he baled and wrapped the headlands which were the worst affected areas and combined the rest as normal. He only did it once because he managed it differently after that but the cattle loved it. Never fed it to the horse though!

The other possibility is that your "haylage" came from a new grass ley where there was previously wheat and there is alot of rogue wheat left in the field. If so then you will find some bales are better than others as the rogue crop will only be in patches of the field.

Hope that helps

ETS: on closer inspection of the pictures it could be one of the coarser ryegrass varieties. Difficult to tell from a photo though...

 

[Box_Of_Frogs]

What sort of bales did it come in? Large round, small round or the branded haylage like Horsehage? I buy Horsehage Timothy for my 2 porky shetties because it's all timothy grass which is very stalky and low calorie and it looks exactly like the suspect haylage in your pix. It comes in a branded, double wrapped, tightly compressed bag about as big as a suitcase, weighing about 5 tons lol.

 

[Mike007]

No . its not straw,(incidentaly straw is by definition ,the remaining stalk after a grass plant has seeded. Wheat Barley etc are merely types of grass). What you have there is a ryegrass ley,haylage. Probably second year ,looking at the thickness of the stems. I would buy it and feed it without hesitation,

 

[K27]

It looks similar to the haylage I have- which is most definitely Ryegrass haylage.

Yours definitely looks like it should, I wouldn't worry!