horses and silage

[jdkid]

Hi ya
has anyone feed there horses baled silage??i'm looking at a bale wrapper that wraps small bales to feed to young stock and also sell to horse type people ,any grasses to keep away from and what other things should one keep a eye out for
thanks
JD Kid
PS these bales can sell for up to 3-4 times the price for grass hay so worth getting right

 

[cowboydoc]

That is a big NO jdkid.

Horses will colic very easily on that kind of a mixture or founder. Even third and fourth cutting hay isn't a good idea to feed to horses as it is too much leaf and not enough stem. Horses guts work very slow and need the long stemmy fiber to move things through. They also need the food introduced at as slow of a rate as possible. That's why horses spend so much time grazing. With silage and other products already chopped up the horses eat too much too fast and it leads to serious and often fatal consequences. When stuff doesn't move at a regular rate through their guts it's bad news for horses. In a cow or others gut the food can sit there and ferment for awhile without complications, ie methane. A horse isn't equipped to deal with this at all. Any fermenting in the guts leads to founder or colic. That's why it is also not recommded to feed horses grass clippings as they will eat too much too fast and their guts won't be able to process it quickly enough. Hay silage is a nono with horses and feeding horses corn silage you might as well just put a gun to their head and shoot them as that is guaranteed to either kill them or at best cripple them for life from laminitis.

 

[radman]

No to horses and baled silage. Any knowledgeable horse people won't buy them. High risk of colic and founder.

 

[jdkid]

Hi ya
Ok what if it was dryer? these bales are ya run of the mill 12-14/18 inch brick bales ,not choped at around 70%dry matter (hay is about 86%+DM) SO strawy (??)kinda stuff is ok like oats but good alfalfa ya keep away from mr Ed or is the stem in alfalfa good for them and soft clover is realy the one to watchout for
catch ya
JD Kid

 

[cowboydoc]

Jd,
Doesn't matter if it's dryer or not. What matters is the consistency of it. You have to feed horses as near to normal feed as possible. Chopped feed, etc., like silage is too fine and they get in big trouble digesting it. Straw, no, horses won't eat much straw. Mostly a good stemmy alfalfa that's cut long or grass hay that's also cut long. Forces the horse to chew it rather than just take a bite and swallow. If you really want to make hay for horses bale it from a moco or swather and make sure there's no mold. Mold will also kill a horse quick with colic or toxins. Horses are really susceptible to alot.

 

[jdkid]

Hi ya
as ya can tell i don't have horses ,i have heard about mold killing them or making them realy sick ,the silage/ balage is the same lenth as norm hay like a inter 440/445 claas 65 NH 276 no choping apart from what dose not fit in chamber on plunger stroke ,like ya small baler but bale is wraped with stuff like cling film /gladwrap.not 1-3 inch cut like pit or slio choped silage..maybe sliage was the wrong word to use, if ya think of ya hay bale being made into fermented grass with no air to form mold could a horse eat that...dumb question here what about chaff oat or alfalfa how dose a horse handle that ??
catch ya
JD Kid

 

[gerard]

Ditto everything cowboy doc said. We use mainly a timothy mix with some second cutting mixed in sparingly. The second cutting has some alfalfa and the horses love it but you can't give them too much. Too rich. (I knew you couldn't but didn't know WHY until reading cowboy docs post. Chalk up another thing learned fom tractor by net!!) /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[jdkid]

Hi ya
i did some surfing around and found out afew things ,like ya's saying some foods do have probs if feed to horses ..the biggest one with haylage and horses is something in the dirt when mixed with water and heat and the right PH all hell brakes lose all the right factors for this to happen is in making balage.. the sickness and death in some cases ,is the same as colic (?)the disease or bug i don't think we have here as none of our vet books have it in them .frozen sliage is also a killer... the lenght of cut is not so important if used in a mixed diet .mold also seems to come into play ...looks like selling to horse type people may be dead in the water look's like small studs , alpacers(?) ,cattle going to shows etc etc
thanks for ya inputs anyway
catch ya
JD Kid

 

[cowboydoc]

I don't know about over there JD but here also people need to be able to move the bales and like the strings on them. People take them to shows or store them up in lofts, etc. Without something to move them with it would be hard to do. Also most hay is put up into lofts with a hay elevator which would rip up the bale like you make it. Also I would think that type of hay is just asking for problems for horses as it can't breathe very well. Another thing to consider is weight of the hay. Horse people over here are not the brightest sometimes. I made hay one year with good heavy bales. The people had been taught that if the bale was heavy it wasn't any good. Also women didn't like them because they couldn't lift them. I was actually giving people a much better deal but they thought they were getting bad hay or the bales were too heavy. So now for my commercial hay I make the bales lighter and people are happy and I make the same amount of money. Also people here don't want to buy hay by the ton. They want to buy it by the bale. It doesn't matter if the bale is 35lbs. or 65lbs they pay the same amount and don't want it weighed to pay by the ton. Go figure.

 

[LazyK]

Doc...re: grass clippings and the greedy cuyooses...what makes compressed cubes ok and grass clippings fonder-fodder? Is it the 'gredients and/or slower forced rate of consumption unique to compressed MacCubetts? Since I don't feed cubes I may just be ignore-unt, nay, I am a bit slow to recognize the obvious. Fortunately for Sandee's horses, I don't do meal planning. I just build what they need, fix what they break and go after tanzy like a Jack Russ Terrier after a rat. By the way, your postings and replies on this forum provide me with an incredible amount of serious, helpful advice that really works! Thanks