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

 

[cowboydoc]

Chip,
It's because they are compressed and time released. Meaning that the horse can only digest so much of it at a time. Without the compression release in the cubes the food would be immediately available for absorption. Becuase of the "packaging" of the cube it is time released and therefore you don't get the buildup of gas which leads to colic or the toxins.

I'm really glad that I can help you out. Horses and cattle have been as much a part of my life from the time I was born as anything, probably more. My Grandpa always told me it's not what you take from this world that counts it's what you leave behind.

 

[LazyK]

Doc...There's a great old baler one of my hay-guys has that punched out a 30-35# little bale with a hollow channel through he middle. Breather hole?Hay-kabob hole? I think it was an Oliver or Mass-Ferg. Any way, when I bought some for the 4-Hkids and non-iron-pumpers, I was a hero. Not for long...too expensive and a real laugh-a-minute trying to get the little peesnots to stay on the hay elevator while loading the loft. The buggers would roll back right at the top of the track and start a cascade of back-sliding/rolling mini bales just like a bunch of pooped salmon trying to make it up a waterfall!

 

[MikePA]

doc, the only time I've ever paid by the ton is when I bought the hay and had it delivered. (I only ever did this once - the minimum delivered load was too large and there's no one nearby to split a load with). With the local guy I buy from now, I pay by the bale because he has no means of weighing the hay. I load my pickup, usually right out of the hay wagon, so I know the difference when he packs the bales heavier /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif. Do you have a scale?

 

[cowboydoc]

Mike,
Yea I have a scale on the one farm that I bought. Back home nobody bought by the bale. Everything was sold by the ton. If they didn't have a scale they weighed about five of the bales and got an average # bales/ton. I had never even heard of buying by the bale, at least with any significant amount, until I came to the midwest.

 

[jdkid]

Hi ya
yep moveing them after wrapping is a prob the bales are shorter ,kinda wrap ya arms around them bout 2-2 1/2 feet long and have to hit the scales at over 65Lb or they don't turn on the wraper ,a few guys stack them on pallets and then swrink wrap them for eaz of moveing ..as with any wrapped hay mice can stuff it realy fast by holing the plastic and letting air in ..there are alot of diffrent ways hay is sold here bale /tonne/dry matter and also MJ .small bales most common per bale others pay on amount in the bale of dry matter ..
catch ya
JD Kid

 

[utahmule]

Out here all I see is by the ton. By the bale seems like kind of a crap shoot.

 

[StoneHeartFarm]

Cowboydoc

Can you think of any reason for stacking the round bales? Theres a guy here who hayed an old farm and stacked his bales 2 high. The bottom bale is stood on end and the top bale is laid on its side on top so the whole thing makes a letter "T". I've never seen anyone else do it, everybody else just leaves em lay or moves them to one corner of the field. At first I thought maybe it was to keep the bales drier, but now I'm not sure that would work. Seems like the top bale would still get the same amount of water on it and the bottom bale would really soak it up. Makes the place look like Balehenge. Is this guy just an artist?

SHF

 

[cowboydoc]

Yea it must be the West Utahmule. You get to the midwest and it's all by the bale, even roundbales.

 

[cowboydoc]

SHF,
I can see no reason for doing it that way. I stack my bales but I stack them so that they all have the wrap facing up so that they shed water better. I have about 300 of them that stack up over the summer for feeding in the winter so I try to take up as little space as possible. I can't see any reason to T them though.

 

[StoneHeartFarm]

Cowboydoc

These aren't wrapped. I've seen a few of the wrapped ones, but most folks just roll them and drop them in the field. I've got to head over that way today and it I can remember, I'll try to snag a picture.

SHF