Hay or Haylage? The big question.

Hay or Haylage?🌾

With most farmers hard at work🚜 you may be starting to contemplate what supplementary forage your horse will get over the winter.🐴

Many yards offer the option of hay or haylage, but some yards still prefer to supply only haylage.

Why is this?🤔

For multi-disciplined yards (i.e. those who also keep livestock such as cows🐮) haylage/silage will be their primary feedstuff over the winter. Feeding in a brush-stroke manner is more efficient meaning haylage takes priority - besides, you can easily make a drier haylage for horses and a wetter silage for cows.🐴🐮

Haylage production and storage is 𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗶𝗲𝗿, which is great when the weather is 𝒖𝒏𝒑𝒓𝒆𝒅𝒊𝒄𝒕𝒂𝒃𝒍𝒆. 🌧

Why is hay harder to make?🚜

Whilst hay and haylage are made from the same crop, the production of hay is arguably more challenging. Hay requires a 𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 5 day window of dry, preferably sunny weather with a light wind. Until the last few years, that dry weather was pretty hard to bet on! 🔆

Hay is arguably cheaper to make (there is a great video from @baldys_farm talking about the cost of silage vs hay) but as a product it comes with a few challenges:

🐴 Some horses cough due to the dust particles

↔There can be a large variance in quality and nutritional value

👀Moulds can be harder to spot in comparison to haylage

So which should I choose?🐴

As with a lot of horse decisions, sometimes the choice goes down to what options are available to 𝘆𝗼𝘂.🫵 Instead of focusing on an ideal world, let's look at some common scenarios.

If your options are either a mouldy, dusty bale of hay or a well stored, dry haylage, then 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲 haylage is the better option.

If you want to feed hay but have no means of storing it under cover, then feeding haylage is 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲 better than a moulding wet hay.

If your horse has a dust allergy but you are on a water meter or unable to source dust extracted hay, then, again, haylage is your better option.

If your horse is finding hay hard to chew or digest, then haylage is, 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲 , better than starving.

However, hay is widely regarded 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗶𝗰𝗲 where possible.

Here's why 👇

Hay is, by all accounts, just dried grass. It is closer in form to that which horses are meant to eat than haylage which, although still grass, has been fermented.

Hay has a longer chew time and requires a large amount of saliva to be safely swallowed, this is great for a trickle feeder like the horse.

As hay does not go through the fermentation process, it is less likely to disrupt the gut microbiome than haylage, this was studied here 🦠

On a dry matter basis, hay usually provides a lower energy delivery than haylage, making it a better option for good-doers.

Hay is typically lower in sugar than haylage, but not always.

A study showed that haylage caused a larger insulin response when compared to hay.

Having the ability to soak hay is a great tool when dealing with breathing difficulties or insulin dysregulation. You shouldn't soak haylage.

But here's the slightly confusing bit😵‍💫

There are low calorie haylages available for good doers, some of which will likely have lower NSC than some hays. On an "𝒂𝒔 𝒇𝒆𝒅" basis, some haylages can potentially provide less energy than hay of the same kilo weight. This means you would need to feed more haylage to provide a horse with their dry matter requirements . Confused? Let me explain.🌾

Haylage typically has a lower dry matter value than hay - it contains more water. 💧

If we think of water as just "taking up space", this means that when compared to hay your horse may be getting a smaller delivery of some nutrients with the same kg weight of haylage, so 10kg of haylage will have more water in it than the hay.

This means that you can end up underfeeding nutrients when feeding haylage, if you decided to swap your 10kg net of hay for a 10kg net of haylage, particularly if your horse is on a restricted diet. If you haylage was 70% dry matter 3kg of your 10kg net could be all water - wheres a 90% dry matter hay would only have 1kg (disregarding the weight of your haynet).

Some dry haylages can have a similar dry matter value to hay (e.g. 82%) and so feedrate would be similar to hay, which is why analysis is so useful.🔬 The crossover with low calorie haylage and normal hay is because farmers can choose to focus on some of the variants that go into making forage, to suit the customer. If your customer is horses rather than liverstock you may look at:

🚜Time of Cut: Hay is typically harvested later in the year than haylage, but some haylages are purposefully cut late to give lower nutritional delivery. As with hay, a more mature plant will likely have more fibre and less nutrients, far better suited to horses.

🚜Type of Crop: Some farmers may look at using mixed meadow grasses rather than high yield grasses (e.g. Rye) to make their product more suitable for horses.

🚜Moisture Levels: Farmers can decide to bale their hay when moisture content reaches a low level (e.g. >15%) reducing the nutritional value.

🚜Time of Day: Hay/haylage baled early morning or during overcast days has been thought to reduce NSC of the crop, but could be risky due to moisture levels.

So can we feed haylage? 🤷🏻‍♀️

It is my opinion that not all haylage is inherently bad; it can be the lesser of two evils when we are made to compromise with how we keep our horses. Things like dental health, poor hay crop and even finances can mean some owners have no choice but to chose haylage (some yards will include haylage in their livery bill, but charge separately for hay so the owner feels they are paying for both products).💸

It is also my belief that when we make generalisations about haylage vs hay, we are usually comparing haylage produced for cows (e.g. the soft, wetter type) vs hay produced for horses; as I said earlier, a farmer can decide to make haylage that is more suited to horses and many do, but there are still a handful of multi-disciplined farms which choose not to do this and this is where the problems occur.

I believe further research is needed into the effect of all feeds on the gut microbiome, (though, in having followed Dr Fritz for a number of years I feel there is a lot of credit in what she is putting out and I am learning more and more through her). Anecdotally, I do observe a higher proportion of horses with loose stools when fed haylage, but I am careful to not jump to conclusions in this statement.🦘

A lot of other factors can cause digestive inconsistency or upset, particularly when changing from one forage to the next (as the horses in Muhonen et al did). It is so important that we introduce new forages slowly, even when moving to this year's cut. 🚜 Similarly, I think the main problem with feeding haylage is that a lot of providers still don't focus on making a horse focused product. I have been to a number of yards where the stench of the haylage hits you the moment you get there, and this is not what we want to be feeding to our horses.🤮

Like anything, the choice to feed haylage is best if you can make an informed decision - like getting a forage analysis. 🔬

I have been really lucky to collaborate with a number of livery yards who have their haylage and hay analysed, and we have presented the options to their customers with evidence and science, allowing them to make an informed decision.

Do you think you can make an informed decision now?