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Testing hay would make me crazy and since I board it's totally a moot point.  However I could see where hay nutritional analysis would be worth it in certain cases.

 

I've seen a lot of difference in my horse's condition with the different hays they've been fed at my boarding place, especially over the last year when hay supply was a little bit iffy.  I've seen them not eat strawy oat hay and become skinny, not have enough nutrition/skinny from grass hay, have a hay belly from grass hay, and have good hay come in and their condition does a 180 within a week or two. This year they had a wierd shed out even with a BIG worming regimen, so I'm pretty sure that was nutrition related.  If I were to do hay analysis everytime they changed feed, I probably wouldn't be able to get it tested and therefore balanced with supplements before the hay gets changed again.   All I can do is to feed by eye and stuff extra calories in them when they look thin, and back off when they're fat.

 

If I were an owner of a performance training barn, it probably would be worth the extra time and expense to look at these issues, along with all those other things that you micromanage for high performance.

 

K.

 

 

On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 11:36 AM, Diane Trefethen <tref@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Mary Sutliff wrote:

It is not at all hard to put this info into practice.  We buy anywhere from 4 to 8 tons of timothy at a time.

Sometimes we don't think about things from the other guy's point of view.

You should have said, "It is not at all hard to put this info into practice when you buy anywhere from 4 to 8 tons of hay at a time."
At 4-8 tons per test, that's $0.25 - $0.50 per bale additional cost, assuming 100# bales.  Even more per bale if the bales are heavier.

I often buy hay 1-8 bales at a time.  At 1-8 bales per purchase, a $40 test adds $5 -$40 per bale additional cost.  [Note that small buys are usually at feed stores where hay from different loads may be mixed together rendering a test on one bale not necessarily valid for any of the other bales.]

If you with your 4-8 tons had to absorb that extra expense, you'd be paying $100 - $800 more *per ton* so an 8 ton buy would cost an extra $800 - $6400.

Would that be "not at all hard" for you?

Horses eat an average of 4.5T per year so whether I buy a bale at a time or you buy 8T at a time, we both still have to buy the same tonnage per horse.  Figured that way, I would have to pay $450-$3600 more per horse  per year for my small buys vs you with your larger buys.

I *would* find that hard.


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