09/06/2023
Judge a hay by its colour?
Many people look for nice green hay, believing that it is better quality or more nutritious.
In fact, the colour of hay has very little to do with nutritients or quality, and more to do with how long the hay was cured and stored, and how much sunlight it has received before it got to you (either during curing, or storage). You will often see bales that are quite pale on one or two sides, but green in the middle, indicating that the outside simply got a little sun bleached!
These biscuits are different types of hay, but I'm guessing many people might assume that the one of the left is much lower in nutrients than the one of the right.
In fact the two hays are in fact very similar in digestible energy and fairly close in sugar/starch content!
Left hay is a mixed Rhodes/kikuyu/other grass (not rye), it's digestible energy was 8.3MJ/kk DM, while sugars (ESC + starch) came in at 6.7%.
Hay on the right wasTeff hay, with a digestible energy of 8.2MJ/kg DM, and sugars (ESC + starch) at 8.9%.
Both hays would be suitable for laminitic or sugar sensitive horses, being under the 10% ESC + starch threshold, and both have sufficient energy to maintain condition for the average horse in light work.
The only way to truly know the nutritional content of your hay (or pasture) is to have it analysed - you cannot tell by looking!
