Winter forage desperation...

Nudibranch

Nudibranch

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We've been in a drought for months. I usually have my winter supplies in the barn hy the end of June. My usual hay and straw suppliers have had nothing to sell due to ridiculously low yields. Nobody round here has anything spare to sell.

A good 2-3 acres of my grass is bare soil. I moved the sheep off months ago and the grass just didn't grow - it has started now with all the rain but it's so late in the season I'm not at all confident there will be enough winter cover. Usually if I rested the fields this long I'd have acres of knee high standing hay.

So im going to have to suck it up and buy haylege by the pallet, probably in small bags as that's all that seems available. Locally the price has gone up about £2 a bale in the last fortnight so I will probably order something from further afield. I have a couple of questions, as all my life I've just been doing regular meadow hay collected off the field for £2.50-£3 a bale so this doesn't feel great!

Does anyone have any genius ideas for keeping rats and mice off? My main worry about buying a pallet or two is that they'll nibble the wrappers and ruin the lot. Does it stand a better chance outdoors? I have 2 collies on patrol most of the day.

A lot of it will be consumed by goats so I really resent paying megabucks! Rye grass seems to be cheapest - how horse safe is it?

Does anyone have any alternative forage suggestions for goats to spin out the haylege a bit longer? They have 24/7 access to grazing but even in a good year it's not enough. I can't get hold of straw to mix this year. I'm wondering if feeding some chaff alongside might be cheaper than just haylege.

Haylege pallets delivered - any recommendations? As I say the goats will eat a good half of it so it doesn't need to be top of the range.
Thanks!

Now watch this be the coldest, snowiest winter in a decade....
 
My hay supplier put their prices up from £38 to £44 which didn't seem too bad, then a month later it went up to £50 and we're now getting bales of this years hay which are about 20% smaller. They won't take on any new customers and are telling their existing ones to cut down and weigh hay or they will run out.

My experience with small bale haylege was that one bale out of 10 got eaten into and was ruined, they're only stored a couple of weeks here, this might get worse in winter when the mice and rats get hungrier so I'll also be interested if there's anything to help with this. I've also noticed that Marksway have reduced the size from 22kg to 18kg and while mole valley still claim 20kg, the actual weight of 6 I got last week is 16kg.

I've bought bags of cheap chaff to bulk out the feeds and am also getting a delivery of sugarbeet so that the feeds are a lot more substantial than normal, and at least if the bags are nibbled the whole lot is not ruined.
efeed do 15kg chaff for £6.57 and 25kg sugar beet for £10.69. Delivery is £6 if you get 20 or more items and 40 or more gets a discount on everything. Their own haylage is OK but doesn't weigh 20kg as claimed.
 
That's a good idea actually.
They do have about 1km of native hedges to trim but they've eaten everything they can reach over the fencing so a new supply would be good!
 
Looking at bulking out fibre then sugar beet and original mollichaff may help you. It seems to be safe for goats and no minerals are added. (for horses I would use the mollichaff lite because low sugar)
I think MVF haylage is probably the cheapest. I use a different make and only buy as I need it which is 12 bales a week ATM Vermin are a problem but I found with the last lot it was poor and there were damp parts at the end of bales. This wasn't Mole's own make (I won't put the make as the rest of their product has been good)
If you buy in quantity and you get a bad lot you will have a lot to go back. At the price it is I take any sub standard haylage bales back for replacement. I can't afford to take the losses at that price.

When we kept goats many years ago we had no money and had to shop around for anything we could find. No idea of your set up or area of course but forget hedgetrimming and cut and bring in bundles by hand and tie up to keep them occupied/browsing. What about veggies. In those days farmers grew mangolds which we got for free. Swedes or root crops to bulk out their diet? our local feed merchants sell bags of carrots I think they are around £3.5 for 10g. No idea what the carrot crop will be like this year so the price may go up. Any other veggies, if you were near anywhere get a regular order in to take old/unusable vegetables from a market perhaps. We used to feed ours (and us as we couldn't afford anything else0 on rice pudding, semolina and ambrosia custard. We used to buy seconds which were in fact perfect at 2p a tin from the local Ambrosia factory. You had no idea what you would get, the goats ate anything, thrived and loved it but it was heaven the times we got custard. :D:D

If you are anywhere near rough grazing cut and tie up some gorse. Dorsetladette came up with a good idea. What about similar local activities with waste products.
I think we are all going to have to think outside the box a bit this year. :D:D

ETA
if you or anyone else is in the position then what about small areas of long grass say in hedgerows, fenced of field corners even if not your own, side of very quiet roads with not too much pollution. a strimmer with a blade cuts this sort of grass easily. We will be doing this with some odd areas of our grass later on when it had become rougher and older. It takes time but then time may be worth less than actually having to pay for forage this year.
 
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I store small bag haylage direct on floor, not on pallets. Rodents seem to like to hide under pallets, so purposefully having a stack of haylage direct on the floor is a good antidote to prevent them claiming it as ‘home’.
Also rodents don’t like crossing open spaces, so if you have an outdoor area, don’t stack against a wall/corner - leave space around the stack - I do this so my cat can get round all sides and hunt for any rodents thinking of trying.
 
Oh just another idea depending on the area your in.

When we were small we lived on a housing estate, but kept our horses out of town. Our nieghbours didn't mow the lawn. So on the way to a show in a morning we would pop a broodmare in their garden for the day to help them clear the grass. have you any neighbours that could benefit from some free lawn mowers?
 
Following with interest.

The option of straw is talked about a lot but that is £7 a bale from the local equestrian place here (Yorkshire) so not exactly a cheap option !

I think focus on lack of waste and investing in feeders etc. that stop it being wee'd on or used for sleeping are going to be well worth considering too.

For my good doers they are going to find I'm pretty mean with their rations this winter.
 
A girl in my town has a small number of goats and last year she put an add on community facebook whereby she would bring the goats to areas people wanted trimmed down. She had portable fencing and brought them home at night.
Especially commercial yards like farms etc which can often get over grown during the business of summer

She was inundated with offers.
Especially this time of year people want the brambles etc gone but its alot of work to manually remove whereas the goat made short work
 
Do goats do ok on bread? We used to get the leftovers from a bakery for ponies when I was younger so might be worth asking local shops if you can have waste bread products

(We used to take the stale iced doughnuts before they got anywhere near the horses!)
 
SEL said:
Do goats do ok on bread? We used to get the leftovers from a bakery for ponies when I was younger so might be worth asking local shops if you can have waste bread products

(We used to take the stale iced doughnuts before they got anywhere near the horses!)
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We used to feed all the left overs from a bakery as well. They had crossiants and loaves of stale bread nearly everyday.
 
The chap at the local market selling veg used to give me big bags of leftovers for the goats - cut off cauliflower leaves, etc. Definitely worth seeing if any gardeners or tree people could put aside clippings for you. Bit of a faff collecting and carting it about.
 
Nudibranch said:
We've been in a drought for months. I usually have my winter supplies in the barn hy the end of June. My usual hay and straw suppliers have had nothing to sell due to ridiculously low yields. Nobody round here has anything spare to sell.

A good 2-3 acres of my grass is bare soil. I moved the sheep off months ago and the grass just didn't grow - it has started now with all the rain but it's so late in the season I'm not at all confident there will be enough winter cover. Usually if I rested the fields this long I'd have acres of knee high standing hay.

So im going to have to suck it up and buy haylege by the pallet, probably in small bags as that's all that seems available. Locally the price has gone up about £2 a bale in the last fortnight so I will probably order something from further afield. I have a couple of questions, as all my life I've just been doing regular meadow hay collected off the field for £2.50-£3 a bale so this doesn't feel great!

Does anyone have any genius ideas for keeping rats and mice off? My main worry about buying a pallet or two is that they'll nibble the wrappers and ruin the lot. Does it stand a better chance outdoors? I have 2 collies on patrol most of the day.

A lot of it will be consumed by goats so I really resent paying megabucks! Rye grass seems to be cheapest - how horse safe is it?

Does anyone have any alternative forage suggestions for goats to spin out the haylege a bit longer? They have 24/7 access to grazing but even in a good year it's not enough. I can't get hold of straw to mix this year. I'm wondering if feeding some chaff alongside might be cheaper than just haylege.

Haylege pallets delivered - any recommendations? As I say the goats will eat a good half of it so it doesn't need to be top of the range.
Thanks!

Now watch this be the coldest, snowiest winter in a decade....
Click to expand...
How many goats have you got, will they tether on roadside verges?
In the 60s, early 70s, local farmers’ wives / convenient family members used to take a book or knitting or something, go to furthest extent of ‘their’ verge, stop for a couple of hours preventing their cattle grazing any further, then send them back. Even sitting under umbrellas! It kept the verges clear and wasn’t an issue until increasing vehicles made it too much hassle.
But not unknown to see goats, donkeys and the odd pony from a smallholding tethered along verges with a pail of water, until fairly recently. Obviously depends on location, width of verges, busyness etc. I don’t know what local bye laws state, only that it was not unusual to see , including by rural police.
In my (limited)experience, goats will eat pretty much anything edible, including stuff you never thought was, and stuff you would prefer they hadn’t…..
Ryegrass hay, probably better soaked for horses.
Rats - don’t provide crevices to lurk in, get a couple of feral cats, if your collies will permit.
If you have transport - westwards to buy hay??
 
The Fuzzy Furry said:
Have you tried the likes of https://haysales.co.uk/ for a quote?
He does do one off and smaller loads.
A couple of friends have got together and already had a 'shared load', 2 drops about 4 miles apart.
Worth asking?
Click to expand...

Useful to know TFF, he’s about 10 miles from me if my usual supplier in the village runs out.
 
Polos Mum said:
The option of straw is talked about a lot but that is £7 a bale from the local equestrian place here (Yorkshire) so not exactly a cheap option !
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I'm North Yorkshire and while straw is silly money from equestrian suppliers close to larger towns, it's still about £3.50 per bale from our local farmer. Could collecting from a farmer be an option to keep prices down? I can get 16 bales in an Ifor 401.
 
Just a heads up if you are trying to buy a pallet of haylage…lots of companies are not taking on new customers due to the shortage!!

I rang round a few today and got the same answer…in the end I’ve got my local feed shop to order a pallet on my behalf under their account because they wouldn’t take me as an individual. Bizarre but true! I can’t store more than one pallet at a time realistically so once I’ve used the first pallet I will try and reorder but assuming they sell out…just have to hope for the best or make lots of trips to my feed store and buy whatever they have 🤪

So I would recommend you start ringing now and see who you can get to supply you…because even the haylage is not guaranteed this year sadly!
 
Ryegrass is ok for horses that aren’t lamintic or overweight. I usually get Timothy but my supplier didn’t get a great cut this year.

We have sheep and they won’t touch haylage. Never had any trouble with rats eating into ours either, ever. I could see why they might though, it smells lovely!
 
My sheep won't even touch hay when its snowing (mostly Herdwicks so they don't actually need it unless it shows close to lambing). The goats will eat pretty much anything...just depends what I can actually get hold of this year!
 
Polos Mum said:
Following with interest.

The option of straw is talked about a lot but that is £7 a bale from the local equestrian place here (Yorkshire) so not exactly a cheap option !

I think focus on lack of waste and investing in feeders etc. that stop it being wee'd on or used for sleeping are going to be well worth considering too.

For my good doers they are going to find I'm pretty mean with their rations this winter.
Click to expand...
I said to my hay supplier I might consider straw, I have natives so they'd cope. He said there isn't any straw either.
 
My sheep are far fussier than the horses/donkeys. They will not touch hay while there is a blade of grass around, but then devour hay like it is going out of fashion. The ring feeders get emptied out for the equines to have the left overs at every bale change.

For the sheep I put a ratchet strap round the bale, just below half way down, then I cut the plastic a couple of inches below the strap ( my hay is wrapped), it is fed in a ring feeder. When the bale starts to resemble a mushroom, I slacken the ratchet strap and pull a round or two of hay down, before tightening the strap again. The sheep will not eat wet hay and this allows me to keep feeding dry hay daily in wet weather. Messing about this way does save a lot of wastage.
 
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