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> I would have to disagree with Susan regarding whether horses like it or
> not. My horses actually prefer it over oaten hay and if I were to present
> them with meadow (grassy, weedy) hay, they would turn there noses up. The
> protein value really depends on when it was cut and if it were cut while
> still quite green but the grains were fully formed, the protein value can
> be quite high.
It's true that if the crop is grown and harvested in the "milk stage",
then the nutrient value is considerably higher, about on a par with
comparable quality oat hay. Even then, however, it's usually still a
fairly low protein, very low lysine content hay. At least here in the
Pacific coast area, for some reason, it's rare to find wheat hay that
has nutritive value much above straw. It could very well be that the
strains and methods of growing in Western Australia produce a much
better forage---if you've ever had samples analyzed for nutritive
profiles, I'd love to see the results just out of curiousity. Forages
do vary from area to area.
Also, I didn't mean to say that wheat hay is totally unpalatable to
horses---if it's good quality, horses like most of the cereal grass hays
and often tend to prefer what they're used to. If there's lots of nice
grain and juicy leaves in the wheat hay, I can well imagine horses
preferring it over grass hays.
By the way, I'd forgotten about the bearded grain heads causing
problems, but I do remember one of the equine surgeons at our local
hospital mentioning once about bearded wheat (I think) getting stuck up
in a horse's gutteral pouch and causing some nasty infection. Ick.
Thanks for the post.
Susan
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