weighing hay/haylage

noblesteed

noblesteed

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Hi all!
Just trying to work out my horse's required hay ration, as he is porky and I want to get him slimmed right down over the winter. I have been looking at BHS welfare recommendations for forage ration. I have worked out that, as he is overweight, he needs 1.5% of his body weight in forage over a 24 hour period. As a 500 kg horse in light work, that works out at 7.5 kg.
If he is turned out on unrestricted grazing for 12 hours a day then I would assume he eats 12 hours worth of forage during that time. So his nighttime ration would be 3.75 kg. If he has a handful of light chaff with his Equibites as bucket feed I have taken off 250g.
SO he needs 3.5 kg 'forage' per night...

BUT does that mean HAY or HAYLAGE? Because HAYLAGE weighs more, being moist. As I am feeding last year's hay, do I need to soak it first BEFORE I weigh it or weigh it dry?

I am rather confused... am I missing something obvious? pizza for those who can help.
 
All feed and hay should be weighed dry. I was told to add 25% when weighing haylage to take into account the moisture, but I think that soaked hay is a better bet than haylage as it has a lot less sugar.

I can guarantee that he will eat more than 3.50 kgs of grass when he is out though! He doesn't realise he's on a diet, he'll just know he's hungry and needs to stuff his little face.

Good luck!
 
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Lol!!! It's a nightmare! He's already spent the entire summer in a grazing muzzle, ridden every day and is STILL a fat piglet...
I wish someone would invent a zero calorie hay replacer. I'll just stick to soaking his hay til then. And leave him rugless.
 
Yep, everything should be weighed dry.

I had great success with mixing half and half oat straw and hay. I then put it in to small holed doubled nets. This last MUCH longer as he couldn't get it out of the net quickly, and the oat straw kept him munching, happier and is MUCh lower in calorie. It's also not so bloomin messy and heavy to deal with.
 
Hiya, the recommendation for the ration is for dry matter DM so if you need to feed 3.5kg, that would be approximately 3.85kg of hay or 5kg of 60% DM Haylage or if you have dryer haylage - say 70% then that would be 4.5kg
 
Personally I would go with 3.75Kgs be it hay or haylage and if hay soak it after weighing it. You can adjust if you don't see any changes or too rapid a change.

Try to slow his eating as much as possible double nets etc as this really helps to keep their systems helpful.
 
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