I’m going to need to buy some non-fescue grass hay this year because, as-it-turns-out, i have at least one “oops” bred mare. Possibly more. (we shall see soon!). Our pasture hay contains fescue, so i’ll be looking for canary grass (love the smell of it) or timothy or orchard/timothy. Good news is i can handle round or sq bales. But i’ll need to lay in a good supply.
I suppose i best get on that!
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eightpondfarm Interesting on the Canary Grass hay. Everyone I know said their horses did NOT like it, wasted a great deal. But it got the horses thru winter when literally nothing else was available because of drought. They might have been a bit lean (think athletic, fit looking), even as easy keepers, but not down to skinny.
I believe there is a broodmare management protocal, with stopping the fescue grazing/fescue hay, a couple months before foaling. This prevented the Red Bag problem. Broodmare were in dry lots, fed non-fescue hay and they foaled without issue. Some places the fescue in pastures can’t be avoided, so this dry lot, non-fescue hay feeding change was developed for safe deliveries. The Breeding forum should be able to give current information on that.
I was rather shocked to read my favorite Mare and Foal grass seed mix now has endophyte-free fescue in it!! I had just attended a forage clinic and salesmen tried selling me mixes with fescue. When I said no for horses, they said the new fescue seed was low or endophyte free. I asked “Is that 100% eneophyte free?” Then they back pedaled, saying none were 100% free, but new grass varieties would stay “almost” endophyte free, very low for endophyte contamination in the future. I told them low was not good enough for grazing broodmares on. I was not buying grass seed mixes with fescue in it. We over seeded pastures with the straight seeds, mixed together by us, bluegrass, brome, orchard, some perennial rye. Same as what USED to be in the Mare and Foal mix.
Gotta read all the stuff listed on the bag labels! We may have some blown-in fescue grass, but we never planted any. No one around us plants pasture, so I believe there is little to none for our horses to graze.
Good luck getting your winter hay.
Thank you goodhors!
My plan is to pull my dressage mare and any mustangs that might have been bred on Jan 1 and into a drylot til they foal (expected Apr 1-ish-).
When i first moved to Missouri i sourced many hays and found reeds canary to be the most fescue-free. I actually visited the fields! …as i was concerned then too about endophytes in the fescue and i was then breeding (morgans). I’m telling you, that reeds canary is THICK and tall. Nothing else gets a chance once that has taken over …not even fescue. So that’s what they got. Plus alfalfa. Mares delivered right on schedule and though one mare needed her udders stripped to get the foal sucking, all were healty and quite active. I’m expecting similar vitality with mustang offspring. For sure one will be 50%…and if any of the mustang mares are pregnant, that/those foals will be complete mustang.
anyway…90 days at 2 bales per day… i have a nice loft that stores 250 so i’ll fill it up. And hopefully have it delivered AND stacked. I have a HUGE supply of all-alfalfa for everyone, so mare(s) will be well fed on that 2x per day and have all the grass hay they can eat to pass the time. (I"M SO EXCITED!!!). If one of these mustangs is pregnant, an older mare (18) and very very shy, it will be sort of a bonus. Having been wild for so many years i’m pretty sure she has foaled several and will be easy/no worries. Plus keeping her in with my tame mare, and any of the other already tame mustangs might just give me an opportunity to gentle her some.
As for waste… i’m not concerned about that. Waste to me means bedding.
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Reed canary grass is a non-native invasive here in the PNW. Hay farmers hate it! Lol!! (So do land managers/wetland biologists). It’s baled for cattle but rarely fed to horses unless they get mixed round bales. Sounds like you have a good plan for your broodmares-- so much to think about when breeding, isn’t there?!
i spoke with two farmers yesterday afternoon who hay their bottom fields and always have Reeds Canary. But…both got flooded out on a big rain we had earlier this month and their fields got so muddy they they’re just going to brushhog. I did get a line on one guy who told one of them that he had some that didn’t get ruined. Will be calling him later today.
Well
LOL…it sure was NOT in the plan to breed believe me! Was an uncut ‘gelding’ i adopted from BLM that put me back into breeding mode. I was officially DONE with it 23 years ago!!
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Phew! just found brom (w/a bit of timothy). From my old old hay guy (actually his son…he succumbed to Alzheimers 
) Ordered 300 bales. Waiting to see if they deliver.
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We are mowing our 2nd cutting today. Thank goodness we got a bunch of rain end of July/beginning of August, so the alfalfa took off. I actually think I’m going to be able to skip buying straight alf from someone else and just feed my one hard keeper our own hay since 1/2 of the field is nearly all alfalfa this year.
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OH that’s wonderful! a penny saved is a penny earned!
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I’m very grateful. I ended up having to buy extra hay last winter because the drought meant I had to start feeding hay much earlier than normal. I also had to buy a bunch of fescue free hay for the broodmare, so my hay costs last year were crazy. We’ve had a lot less excess to sell this year, but honestly I’m just happy to be able to fill our own barn!
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The DH is out cutting a field right now. Just starting our abbreviated second cut. First cut is top quality, but not as much of it as there could be. More than enough for our own needs, but we like to have extra to sell. We like to have a LOT extra to sell, but no one much around here has that going on this year. We heard that north of us has only 30% of their normal yield. We’ve seen hay trucks coming from the south loaded with hay! They normally go in the opposite direction. Pretty scary. I’m very glad that we have our own hay fields.
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Second cutting in New England is starting to come in, not that I use it for my easy-keeper. We’ve had storm after storm after storm, so getting a 3 or 4 day window when it’s dry enough to hay has been tough. (Plus who knows how many hay fields decimated in various floods.)
I don’t hear a whole lot of worrying about hay, except for people with very specific requirements, e.g. someone whose horse has FWS and can only have very soft second cut hay.
The field next to my mare’s barn, which is at least 50 acres and has been hayed for decades, has not been hayed this year. I don’t know why. BO said she thought this might happen, before the grass was even growing. They did not do a second cut last year. I don’t think the ownership has changed, so who knows. But I do know there aren’t as many people who can cut hay for someone else as there used to be.
The first cut is now kind of dry and stemmy. Someone said it has higher NSC because of last year’s drought. Anyone care to weigh in on that?
Maybe in some areas of New England. Our hay guy still has not been able to make a first cut on most of his fields here in midcoast Maine. Too much rain and never a long enough window to risk cutting. We’ve just had our longest stretch of no rain, and I’m still not sure if he’s cut anything. We are very worried.
I am in eastern Massachusetts, and we got lucky with a wet early spring, and then almost 3 weeks of no rain in May, so a lot of first cut came in then. So yes, definitely a “YMMV” situation.
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And now in NW Michigan, we’ve had two weeks rain-free, with low humidity. Folks are getting GREAT third cuttting. That lessens the pressure on those of us feeding second cutting.
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Is that third cut alfalfa? We got a good 2nd cutting of grass over Labor Day weekend. We had frequent rains, lots of water in them, after the June drought time. Mid-Michigan here. Still had to wait until noon to get onto the field with the heavy dew starting about 5:30pm that made us stop. Our hay is all grass. Could not have cut and got it in any later this season. The 6 days of 90F helped get it quite dry for baling. Much thicker and more volume than we ever expected to harvest!! Temps dropped back to 70Fs and rain the day after we finished.
My friend by Grand Rapids got four cuttings of alfalfa for cattle, put it all into round bales and silage. She always gets more cuttings with the longer roots on alfalfa plants.
Second cutting all-grass hay is advertised at $8-10 for 50# bales around us. We bale for our horses, not selling it. Sure glad to NOT needing to buy any! Bales still sitting on wagons under cover, barn storage is full. Just thinking of needing to come up with the cash to buy hay quantity we would need, even first cut, is frightening!
There are lots of ads for hay, no one should be having trouble finding it.
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Just problems paying for it!
In looking in my area at prices it seems hay has come down some. Anywhere from $65-$100 for the ads for round bales. Still on the higher side for some but I am guessing they don’t want to hold them over Winter.
We are bone dry again and in our second dry spell. It may sell .
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Yes, that would be 3rd cutting alfalfa. Bovine hay. I’m feeding 2nd cutting grass because 1st cutting this year was stalky and awful. My old girls would have wasted half of it. That said, I was on pins and needles waiting to get my square bales in. Don’t know what any of it will cost, and can’t care. And hi! I’m north and west of GR quite a ways.
our hay guy cut yesterday. The man always bales next day, unfortunately. But it was 90 degrees today, fortunately. I need to drive down there and see if he’s letting it dry in windrows overnight or baled already… Hope it’s still in windrows… I need 26 roundbales to hit my target for this year (60rounds). Kinda afraid to go count. BUT!!! anything is better than none. I’m kinda happy i got him to come round again and do a second cutting actually.
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On the good end of things I found a source of Western hay that is only an hour away. Really nice hay with appropriate price tag. Probably wouldn’t feed it as the only hay in the diet but good to supplement with. She orders once a month and can get different types of hay brought in to her farm. You can’t have too many hay sources.
I think people that are buying locally may be in a bind. Hay grower in this area says he lost his whole September cutting and his Bahia field that normally gives him 250 bales only made 70 bales. There have been spotty showers but I think most of the growers have been in drought situations and hay may be tight locally. If you can afford to go out of the area and pay higher prices I think hay will be available. Just more expensive.
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O Happy Day!!! we pulled 28 nice bales of grass hay out of our back field! 26 was what i needed to hit my target minimum ~60 bales~for this year. This particular hayfield is native warmseason grasses. Purpletop and little bluestem with lower story of korean lespediza and beggar’s lice. Unfortunately purpletop was in 3/4 seed.
So sweeeet! This will be great hay for the cattle and sheep and I’ll feed just my first cut to horses.
This is my neighbor’s ugly field…albeit huge crop of hay. What an ugly stemmy bale huh? one and only hay harvest …overgrown and just a bunch of tall weeds…mostly ragweed.
see how nice and green ours was? and his so dry. both cut and baled same day as ours. the comparison makes me feel good about our timing. (not that i had a whole lot to do with it…but i did bribe our hay guy)
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