Re: Haylage vs Cubes

["Liz Carpenter" <cvsec@south-01.novell.leeds.ac.uk>]

Susan wrote:

> It takes 3 pounds of haylage to replace 1 pound of cured hay (long stem or
> cubes or pellets), due to the differences in moisture content.  

This is what a lot of people fall foul of. They 
think they can feed the same weight as dry hay 
and the horse starts to lack sufficient fibre. 
Someone told me that feeding the same volume is a 
safeish way of figuring it out. The moisture 
content varies a lot over here between brands and 
also bag-to-bag within brands depending on all 
sorts. So there's a little bit of 'black magic' 
needed when trying to gauge the right amount to 
feed <g>

I have noticed that haylage fed horses over here 
always seem to have a healthy bloom when 
compared to cured hay fed horses...maybe it is 
because our weather has been terrible for curing 
hay over the last few years...?

> BTW, good quality silage is also perfectly acceptable for horses.  The only
> difference between silage and haylage is that silage is any sort of plant
> material that also contains grain products, while haylage does not contain
> grain.  Good quality of either is fine---poor quality (meaning air has been
> reintroduced and it's no longer anaerobic) is harmful regardless of whether
> its silage or haylage.

I dunno about over there, but over here farmers 
don't seem to be too particular when making big 
bale silage for cattle <g>. The bags always seem 
to have holes in them, etc, etc, etc......But if 
you can persuade your local silage makers to wrap 
the bales properly then you'd be OK as long as 
they aren't adding stuff to it (which sometimes 
happens). Only trouble with a big round bale of 
silage is that you need to be sure that you have 
enough horses to eat it up as it doesn't remain 
good for long once opened <g>

Cheers!

Liz and Basil The Nag
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr E Carpenter
Institute for Cardiovascular Research
The University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK
+ 44 (0113) 2334169/2334803 (voice/fax)
+ 44 (0498) 783129 (mobile)
e.carpenter@leeds.ac.uk
http://www.netlink.co.uk/~snaffle/rogues/scun1.gif
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net.    
Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/RideCamp   
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=