Square Bale Wrapper. For Silage?

[Renze]

I see a lot of people are feeding it for the lack of dust reason which makes perfect sense. However, and I'll have to ask my boarder, there are some dangers of horses such as colic no?

My father had a mixed farm, pigs and cows, and sold the cows in 1979. Then he started to use the grassland to hold some horses for hobby.
We began feeding from a cow perspective, then adapted the details to horse digestion.
We have fed them heaped silage, both grass and corn. Horses tend to grow too fat on corn silage, you easily give them too much. Grass silage and a wee bit of energy feed (with soy and grains) is a better diet for the breeding horses during winter. We grow horse feed just like we did for the cows 30 years ago, (fertilising) just the grass is cut 1 or 2 weeks later so it is taller, rougher, the protein level is lower, and it is dried a day more.

The general anxiety of horse people against silage is due to the people who's horses got colic after feeding them high protein dairy feed !!!! IT has nothing to do with the way of conservation, just with the basic grass they started with !!!

As a rule of thumb, a horse should eat as much fiber as it wants, and get most of its energy from it. Then the pelletised feed is fed to add starch.
What some people sell as "horse hay" is something we wont feed to breeding or sport horses: you can only give it to a 30 year old donkey that walks only 5 feet a day. Some people insist on a small amount of this straw-like "horse hay" and keep feeding lots of pelletised feed to keep the horses at weight: Then the horse gets in trouble because they lack the rough matter to stimulate the intestines, so the digestion organs cannot take up the nutrients from the high energy feed and they stilll loose weight. We've seen that at horses that boarded here.

High levels of protein with little rough matter is dangerous, but that doesnt have anything to do with the method of harvesting.

 

[slowzuki]

Need to tell the woman up the road that! She feeds her stall bound horses good quality alfafa with grain supplements and wonders why they are always having the vet in.

High levels of protein with little rough matter is dangerous, but that doesnt have anything to do with the method of harvesting.

 

[mark.r]

Need to tell the woman up the road that! She feeds her stall bound horses good quality alfafa with grain supplements and wonders why they are always having the vet in.

Now I know this is something we won't do.

 

[Renze]

Need to tell the woman up the road that! She feeds her stall bound horses good quality alfafa with grain supplements and wonders why they are always having the vet in.

Did the lady ever think of, how her own, stall-bound grandmother react on a high-protein diet of onions and beans !!!


We had people that boarded their horses here. Soon they didnt like our feed, and brought their own, straw-like hay, and fed loads of pellets to them. They had fat legs, yet were too thin, poor stamina, etcetera.
They blamed it all on our haylage (well whats haylage? this feed i'm talking about, was inbetween hay and silage, e.g. hay that's just not dry enough.) and decided to buy their own hay, the kind of energy-less stuff that is left after threshing grass for seed.
they had more and more vet costs, but didnt take our advice, they didnt even admit that OUR horses thrived well on the same feed, the calm old broodmares as well as the sport horses that ride matches every week. (They fed more pelletised grain to their old mares, than we fed to the sport horses, yet the old mares still didnt gain weight !!)

We told them a hundred times that they needed to feed more hay(lage) to make the digestion apparatus of the horse work. They kept thinking the "silage" wasnt good for a horse, though they just didnt know WHY it wouldnt be good...

A horse is a grazer, it should take up most of its nutrients in high quality roughage with reasonable (but not too much) protein. Then a bit of grains can be added for extra energy for those who perform in sports.

At this time they broadcast the Tour de France on TV. (2 week during French bicycle race - Do you guys actually watch that, in the States ??? ).
Do you think these sportsmen will perform on some dry rice crackers for roughage, and next to that, only Red Bull and Dextro-energy drinks ??? That is basically what you do when feeding gutless rough hay, combined with loads of pelletised grain feed to horses !!!



The best horse hay we buy, comes from dairy farms: They fertilise it enough, but if the weather doesnt allow harvesting and its a bit too tall and rough for a dairy cow, its ideal for horses ! It contains all the nutrients, yet its grown 2 weeks more so there is more roughage and the relative protein level has dropped. Dairies like high protein, for horses its dangerous. Gotta find the proper balance in protein.


Take my words for what they're worth. Dont debate too much with horse people, they are all stubbard, poorly informed, and follow their own biased opinion in this matter. Dont loose your customers by telling them how to feed their horses, because nowadays even rookies know better than my father, who bred and raised horses for more than 30 years