I’ve done a bit of research on Sudan hay and found that most people say it’s not suitable for horses. Has anyone here had issues with it, refuse to feed it, feed it and have great result?
I’m on the ‘I won’t feed it bandwagon’, but I’d like to get some stories from others. One of my employers feeds it to all of her livestock (llamas, alpaca, sheep, goats, cows, horses, and donkeys) and it doesn’t look like a horse quality forage.
Not sudan, but I worked for a barn years ago that fed sorghum hay to the pasture horses one winter. It’s supposed to have the same problems? It smelled kind of weird, but all of the horses ate it well, no one seemed to have any issues with it, and they kept their weight fine through the cold months.
Any kind of haygrazer type cane hay should be tested before fed to horses.
Some here feed it and get by, a neighbor lost two mares one year to the kind he was feeding.
Most here avoid feeding those to horses.
FWIW, I haven’t seen any for sale here (CA) in years. I recall that it had the reputation of having high starch and sugar.
Sorghums and sudans are notorious for having toxic nitrate levels.
I wouldn’t ever take a chance feeding them…
Actually, it the prussic acid/cyanide as well as nitrates that is thought to be a problem with sorghum and Sudan. https://www.vetary.com/horse/condition/sorghum-poisoning- http://msue.anr.msu.edu/news/frosted_sorghum-sudangrass_pasture_poses_prussic_acid_poisoning_risk
you can do a forage test for both. http://forages.tamu.edu/PDF/Nitrate.pdf
My barn fed it once and a bunch of horses’ legs swelled. My shoer said they mostly use it for cattle. We stopped feeding it immediately after noticing the swelling and swelling resolved.
If it is related to Johnson grass in any way , I would steer clear.
I thought Sudan was another name for Johnson grass? Like Bermuda and coastal?
Johnsongrass is a sorghum species, and afaik Sudan grass is a sorghum hybrid cross, so related, but not the same.
Bermuda is a broad category of grass. Coastal is one variety, as is Tifton, Bahia, and many others.
Coastal is a Bermuda, but not all Bermudas are Coastal.
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