Hay Alternatives

Obviously the shortage in hay this year is going to be a concern for lots of horse owners.  The easiest way to help this is get them in the field for as much as possible and manage your grass as carefully as possible. 

Unfortunately most yards nowadays really limit winter grazing so this won’t be an option for alot of people.

Haylage is a good alternative for horses but it is more expensive.  It used to be said that as the haylage has better nutrient content you didn’t need to feed as much as you do hay.  It is true that as haylage is heavier you do feed less by volume but more by weight.  The problem with this is that actually you want to keep a horses gut moving, they are trickle feeders and need to eat nearly constantly for the best health.  Of course this year we may have no choice so try and spread the feeding of it over the day where possible.   Use a special haynet which has smaller holes or if you can’t afford a new net put a normal one inside another and that has the same effect.  It makes the horses work a bit harder for each mouthful so they can’t get such big mouthfuls at a time and what they have tends to last longer. 

Haylage is basically made of grass cut before it goes to seed and instead of allowing it to dry completely like hay it is sealed in a bag at 40 -45% moisture content.  The bag as well as maintaining the moisture content helps to keep the higher feed value of the grass.

You can get really big bales of haylage which might be cheaper than the small ones but once open mould develops quite quickly in them.  Obviously then you don’t want to feed it as it will affect the horses respiratory system – this will make any existing problems worse and could cause some to develop eg:COPD.  So unless you have a lot of horses or can share on a yard this won’t be the best way to go.  A bale will usually keep for 7 days once it has been opened.

If you do change from hay to haylage you need to try to make the change gradually as horses digestive systems are very sensitive to any changes in diet.  Of course this doesn’t always work because often they like the taste of haylage and so won’t eat the hay!

When you start out feeding haylage to your horse it's best to weigh out the amount every day - until you get used to estimating the volume.  Remember that as haylage has something like10% higher nutritional value than hay you will probably need less hard feed to meet your horse energy requirements.

There are feeds available advertised as hay replacers from lots of the feed manufacturers eg: DengieHi Fi so these will be worth considering but again bear in mind that most horses will eat a bowl of this straight off so it won’t last and keep their digestion moving.

Silage – is not suitable for horses

Hay – to make hay go further you can use a small haynet, like for haylage, to make it last longer.  Spread it out aswell so they have some every few hours rather than it all at once.  Horses will often eat what is there until it is gone so by spreading out over the day/night will mean that they don’t go to long without eating and it will help keep their digestive systems healthy.