Hay Exchange

Know Your Hay

The quality of hay depends on the value of the crop, as determined by weather conditions and maintenance of the grass before the harvest. Hay should be done in hot, dry and ideally cut the afternoon. Once cut, the grass must be given sufficient time to dry to remove moisture before baling. Health and dryland farming, the better the hay.

What to look for?

If you are looking for a high-quality hay, knowing what is inside account. Before you buy hay, open at least a ball and look inside. Slight discoloration is not a problem, which often occurs with hay stacked.

obvious signs of bad hay are heat, bleaching extreme sun, mold, dust, fermentation or abnormal burden. Avoid hay that contains weeds, dirt, insects or garbage.

Look at the texture of straw, it must be thin stem, green leaves and sweet.

Good hay should smell sweet, hay poor often feels musty.

Try to feed hay in the year of harvest, to ensure it retains its nutritional value.

How to store hay?

Storage is always vital to ensure high quality hay. Hay should be stored in sheds and barns of hay that offer complete protection against wind, rain, snow and sun.

Shop areas should be cleaned before the hay is stacked again in. If dust is left of old hay, mold spores can be mixed with forages own. old hay bales must be separated further. Unless the floor of the barn has a membrane impermeable (concrete), bullets should be raised from the ground to prevent moisture rising through the floor.

Once baled hay is still drying so it is essential to keep it well ventilated, leaving the ball on the ground to develop for a few days, so sunny, can be beneficial.

There are generally two main types of barns, hay storage: a fully enclosed, which can be opened at one end for ease of filling, but are completely closed, and "one roof" structures, accessible from all sides.

When planning storage, ventilation is the key to good hay. Storage must allow air exchange, either by natural ventilation or a ventilation system. This is particularly the case if the hay is not perfectly dry, so that air can enter for hay and dry completely. Proper ventilation will also remove excess moisture, that moisture is left, it can move more heat for colder areas of the battery, damaging more than bullets. Ventilation will also remove condensation that may form in the steel.

Visitors' hay barns (chickens, foxes, rodents, etc.) may contaminate hay and leave their "calling card" - adding to the bacterium - and smell, whose horses think much more acute than humans. (The cats are great to kill rodents.)

Bales of hay must be stacked with the latest in the back and further forward, while older ones are used first, and leave a narrow space between rows for extra airflow. Try to keep them on the ground to ensure maximum air flow, open lofts are ideal, an alternative is wooden pallets.

Steaming Hay

Even the best quality hay may contain levels of dust and spores, which can cause coughing in horses, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), among other respiratory diseases.

Soaking hay to remove dust and dirty is not only cumbersome but also reduces the nutrient content and produces liquid waste that is classified as an environmental pollutant, eight times more than the effluent from human .

Steaming hay hay steam HAYGAIN has been scientifically proven to kill harmful spores found in hay and thus effectively sterilize the hay, without losing their nutritional value.

The boat hay HAYGAIN has been studied and tested at the Royal Agricultural College, for Equine nutritionist.