Here is our list of what we consider the most important aspects of making good haylage on a commercial basis and the degree of difficulty and effort required, on a scale of 1 > 10; with 10 being the most difficult and most demanding.
| – Large bales are quick to bale and wrap and easy to handle |
3 |
| – Extremely labour intensive and expensive to produce. Requires lots of manual handling |
10 |
| – This is not easy, the ash content in the analysis shows if you’ve got this right or not. Contamination from soil, manure, slurry etc can be lethal to horses |
5 |
| –This is difficult to get right - it is easy to make it too dry. Such haylage is not good for horses, although it often smells sweet, it does not ferment properly |
9 |
| -The majority of wrap is made for silage, as haylage is drier than silage and the grass is stalkier, the haylage can puncture the bale leading to secondary fermentation – Some effort is required to find the right product |
3 |
| –The more dense the bale, the heavier it is, bale length then has to be reduced otherwise it could be too heavy. The shorter the bale, the more difficult it is to wrap. Many producers just go for a drier haylage to get around these problems |
6 |
| – Unless the bale weighs at least 30kgs, the tension of the wrap can easily pull the bale off most wrapping machines. If the bale is too heavy, it is difficult to handle |
6 |
| – This is the recommend number to ensure a good fermentation, longevity and to reduce a secondary fermentation from say a puncture. It is difficult to actually tell how many layers of wrap are on a bale. As wrap costs around £1.00 for eight layers, to put on less would not only save a considerable amount of money over hundreds or thousands of bales, it would also save considerable wrapping time, which is even more valuable. However, we do not compromise on this |
9 |
| – This is important for the quality and longevity of the haylage and to minimise wastage |
3 |
| – It is extremely expensive to analyse every crop from every field. However, we wouldn’t buy haylage for our horses that hadn’t been analysed and we feel passionately that it is the right way to produce a feed product for an animal that is known to be susceptible to digestive problems such as colic. You cannot tell the quality just by look and smell |
9 |
