Thought I'd answered this, but apparently it didn't go through. Probably got distracted at work and never clicked "post."
Anyway, silage here is generally made from corn (maize) by chopping up the whole cobs and often the plant entire. It's loaded with carbohydrates, both starches and simple sugars. In fact, it usually ferments to alcohol and then the alcohol goes on to vinegar before you feed it. Ruminants like cows and sheep can handle it just fine, but the high carbs tend to founder horses pretty quickly unless they are introduced to it very gradually over a long period of time. I've seen the feet on some ponies who were allowed to eat silage along with the cows, and they were totally ruined. Handling wet silage requires bunkers or a silo and I have neither here in any case.
Haylage, being made mostly from grass, can be fed to horses as long as it has been kept free of mold. The mold can be really bad, though, and I have one guy who gets the heaves from mold spores already. This year's weather was weird enough that we didn't have a problem, and that was good.
I understand that haylage is widely used for horses there in Sweden, but it's pretty unusual here. Dry hay is more typical here, and I've never actually seen anyone producing true haylage in sealed bales or bunkers. Because of the extra wrapping and the careful moisture control needed, I'd expect prepared haylage in sealed bales to be quite a bit more expensive than ordinary hay, if it were available at all.
That's odd; the way Wikipedia presents it the distinction between silage/haylage appeared to be that silage is wetter, essentially. If it's made from stuff other than what hay's made of over there, no wonder it's no good for horses. We're going to have to look around for someone who makes the wetter stuff when we run out of our current supply, as Albert's asthma can't handle what we currently have very well and soaking hay gets messy real quickly.
Honestly haylage tends to be cheaper here, because it's so much less sensitive than good hay (unless you have idiots on the farm who don't get the concept of "do not break the plastic wrap on the haylage on pain of death" - long as the wrap is intact it's fine). Which is just as well, because we do occassionally have to throw out like half of one of those great big bales. Small haylage bales do get more expensive, mostly because at that point you have proportionally more wrapping.
That's a major reason we feed it, as well; we can't seem to get good hay to stay good throughout a whole winter, our loft is too damp. Straw is usually fine, but hay tends to get iffy and possibly moldy pretty quick.
Climate differences probably account for the difference in farming practices. This has been an exceptionally wet season for us. Normally, hay making and storage is not difficult here. In ten years, we've had a mold problem just once, and I think a slight change in our storage practices has reduced the chance of it happening again.
The stringent requirement to maintain haylage in airtight containment seems to be a worse complication to me. I also imagine things like putrifaction and botulism could be issues unless the moisture level of the preparation is perfect. Corn silage is pickled in its own vinegar, which prevents the growth of most anaerobic infections such as botulism. It's rather like making sauerkraut, only from corn. Cows love the stuff but I get really tired of the vinegar smell in a hurry.
Anyway, silage here is generally made from corn (maize) by chopping up the whole cobs and often the plant entire. It's loaded with carbohydrates, both starches and simple sugars. In fact, it usually ferments to alcohol and then the alcohol goes on to vinegar before you feed it. Ruminants like cows and sheep can handle it just fine, but the high carbs tend to founder horses pretty quickly unless they are introduced to it very gradually over a long period of time. I've seen the feet on some ponies who were allowed to eat silage along with the cows, and they were totally ruined. Handling wet silage requires bunkers or a silo and I have neither here in any case.
Haylage, being made mostly from grass, can be fed to horses as long as it has been kept free of mold. The mold can be really bad, though, and I have one guy who gets the heaves from mold spores already. This year's weather was weird enough that we didn't have a problem, and that was good.
I understand that haylage is widely used for horses there in Sweden, but it's pretty unusual here. Dry hay is more typical here, and I've never actually seen anyone producing true haylage in sealed bales or bunkers. Because of the extra wrapping and the careful moisture control needed, I'd expect prepared haylage in sealed bales to be quite a bit more expensive than ordinary hay, if it were available at all.
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Honestly haylage tends to be cheaper here, because it's so much less sensitive than good hay (unless you have idiots on the farm who don't get the concept of "do not break the plastic wrap on the haylage on pain of death" - long as the wrap is intact it's fine). Which is just as well, because we do occassionally have to throw out like half of one of those great big bales. Small haylage bales do get more expensive, mostly because at that point you have proportionally more wrapping.
That's a major reason we feed it, as well; we can't seem to get good hay to stay good throughout a whole winter, our loft is too damp. Straw is usually fine, but hay tends to get iffy and possibly moldy pretty quick.
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Climate differences probably account for the difference in farming practices. This has been an exceptionally wet season for us. Normally, hay making and storage is not difficult here. In ten years, we've had a mold problem just once, and I think a slight change in our storage practices has reduced the chance of it happening again.
The stringent requirement to maintain haylage in airtight containment seems to be a worse complication to me. I also imagine things like putrifaction and botulism could be issues unless the moisture level of the preparation is perfect. Corn silage is pickled in its own vinegar, which prevents the growth of most anaerobic infections such as botulism. It's rather like making sauerkraut, only from corn. Cows love the stuff but I get really tired of the vinegar smell in a hurry.
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