Weighing haylage - how much to allow for water

Suby2

Suby2

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My pony has laminitis and is being kept in a small pen which incorporates the field shelter. She has RAO and therefore has to have haylage not hay (one suitable for laminitics).

The vet said to feed a total of 7kg including hard feed but I am struggling to find info on the Internet as to how much to allow for the added water.

Does anyone know the answer?

Thanks
 
It depends on the haylage. Haylage has a typical dry matter (DM) of 50-70%. Assume your vet's working on feeding 2% of bodyweight per day on a DM basis? If the haylage DM is 50% you'd have to feed 14kg haylage (if you were only feeding haylage and no hard feed).
 
Just off the top of my head 7kgs sounds about right for a pony on restricted diet, I would assume that is the weight of the forage and feed before any water added.
I have never heard of working out the Dry Matter to calculate the feed requirement, I may be wrong. The DM is relevant to the percentage of things like protein and sugars, it is more detailed than most people would use in practical feeding regimes.
I used to feed 18lbs of hay to my hunter cob and 3lbs of oats and stuff per day max, that is 21 lbs, roughly 9.5kgs per day. He was 15.2
A 550kg horse can safely consume 8.5kg per day, not 8.5 kgs of Dry Matter
Using this formula:
1.7 (% of bodyweight) x 500 (kg horse) /100= 8.5 kg max feed
 
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Haylage is generaly betwean 65 and 70 % dry matter . 7kg would be a real minimum for a 250 kg pony. You could consider bulking the haylage out with Oat straw.
 
Yes I have just checked my records, I used to weigh the haylage, and a 14.2 [365-385kg] was on 6.00 to 7.00gks haylage, and 1-2 kg of feed, Six hours on winter grass, but I did not consider this gave him much feed value.
I wanted him to grow, but not be fat.
 
Horses are designed to digest fibre in large quantities. They require betwean 1.5 and 2.5% of Correct body weight, DRY MATTER per day. Hay and most hard feeds contain betwean 10-12 % water.So a horse of 550kg for example,would require an absolute minimum of 9.4 kg of hay and hard feed. But this would be considered an ABSOLUTE MINIMUM ,by any competent animal nutritionist.It is hard to guage how much fibre they get from turnout,so it is always better to feed more rather than less fibre. Calculating the dry matter consumption is the absolute first step in calculating any diet for a horse.
 
Have you considered soaking the haylage to help reduce the sugar? That's what I've done in the past for lami horses, then they still got a belly full of food, and I didn't have to faff about with weighing everything. My vet was happy with that approach too.
 
There is less sugar in haylage than equilavent hay as the fermentation process turns in the sugars into fatty acids.

Haylage should not be soaked as it doesn't contain the same high levels of water soluable sugars as hay - as above - and will go off quickly if wet.

If you are concerned I would contact your haylage supplier to ask them what %dry weight their haylage is and work it out from there. The volume of grazing they are on will have an impact. I appreciate there is nothing in the grass tis time of year but its still fibre passing through the gut and needs to be taken I to account when calculating how much haylage you will feeding addition if you are tying to shift pounds.

We buy farm haylage and it does vary in moisture content and do flex a kilo here and there depending on the bale.

This is a useful article on hay -v- haylage

http://rockleyfarm.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/all-about-hay-and-haylage.html
 
Thanks for the replies. She is off grazing at the moment and kept in a pen which incorporates the field shelter. As advised I think the best thing would be to contact Marksway to see if they can give me the dry weight. I didn't mind weighing it but I just want to be sure my calculations are right.
 
MrsD123 said:
Just off the top of my head 7kgs sounds about right for a pony on restricted diet, I would assume that is the weight of the forage and feed before any water added.
I have never heard of working out the Dry Matter to calculate the feed requirement, I may be wrong. The DM is relevant to the percentage of things like protein and sugars, it is more detailed than most people would use in practical feeding regimes.
I used to feed 18lbs of hay to my hunter cob and 3lbs of oats and stuff per day max, that is 21 lbs, roughly 9.5kgs per day. He was 15.2
A 550kg horse can safely consume 8.5kg per day, not 8.5 kgs of Dry Matter
Using this formula:
1.7 (% of bodyweight) x 500 (kg horse) /100= 8.5 kg max feed
Click to expand...

Sorry MrsD, but you're wrong :-)
 
Assuming the vet knows about the ROA, could he have meant 7kgs of haylage anyway, in which case you don't need to worry about dry matter/added water? Is it worth checking before you contact feed companies?

If he did mean 7kgs of hay you can't find out the dry matter weight, one thing you could do as a rough guide is weigh out 7kgs of hay (if you have a friend who feeds it, borrow some of theirs) and then weigh the same volume of your haylage and work out how much heavier the haylage is....
 
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