Feeding Wrapped Bales

[dominiquer60]

Does anyone feed baleage or wrapped bales to their horses? We have been advised to give Botulism vaccinations before we start feeding them. Our bales are wrapped round bales. They are an all crop cutting of fair quality, the hay was on the dry side when baled and wrapped, in other words they are not the wet type bales that freeze hard, just a little on the ends. The steers like most of it, but leave the coarsest material in the manger. It would be good to here from anyone else with their experiences feeding wrapped bales. Thanks in advance.

[carl ny]

I would never feed “baleage” to horses,period. Wrapped dry bales are different, I have fed them when my regular hay supplier ran out of small square bales. JMHO

carl ny

[dominiquer60]

Carl can you explain why you would never feed a moister wrapped bale to horses.

I recall a Thoroughbred farm in NY that only feeds wrapped bales during the winter, but now I can’t remember if they were low or medium moisture. What is the difference to you?

Thanks,

[carl ny]

Baleage ferments, causes listeriosis in horses(not a pretty sight). Cows can eat it because they are ruminants(four stomach’s), horses are mono-gastric(one stomach). There are some places that feed it to large numbers of horses that will consume it rapidly. If any part is exposed to the air for any length of time(small hole in bag or if it last your two horses for a week), and it gets a chance to mold it’s not good. I will not take that chance, not worth it, there better way’s to feed my horses. I got a bale by mistake once. I got to thinking about it after I put it in the feeder that it seemed kinda heavy on the front of the tractor. I went up and checked it out and took it and fed it to my beefer. New guy at the place I got it from took it out of the wrong row of bales. The other bale I got at the same time was ok,dry bale he must have got from a different row. The next time the farmer gave me a free bale to make-up for the mistake.

[Tim Harrigan]

Erika, I am not feeding horses so this is an observation, not a recommendation. Botulism toxin requires an anaerobic environment to develop. If dry hay bales were that wet when put in storage you would know it. I agree feeding baleage would be risky, particularly if you did not know exactly how it was harvested and stored. If there were wet slugs in the bale it could go anaerobic.

[Billy Anderson]

Accross the pond here i feed ours wrapped bales. We have two different moisture content types. Silage which is wet and for cattle only, def not for horses. Then Haylage. not as dry as hay or wet as silage. Haylage is great for keeping condition on them. Swear buy it for the bigger horses. The farmers produce these specifically for horses. Bale has to be used within 10 days or so, or starts to spoil. They are chopped and wrapped tighter. Good value for money but hell of a weight. easily over half ton which makes transporting and moving them a problem.

[dominiquer60]

There certainly seems to be a lot of success when the bales are made right, like in New Zealand and Europe. But a lot of risks if the bales are not made right. I have a feeling ours are best fed to the beef.

Here is a good article I found: http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/livestock/horses/facts/info_botulism.htm

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