Baleage and Hay

[Herefordcross]

What's the rough consumption you guys see when free choice feeding baleage and dry hay at the same time?

 

[PaMike]

I fed round bales and baleage this past winter. Usually a grass hay bale would last 2 weeks, while a baleage bale only lasted 1 week. So from my experiance they ate 2 times the baleage.

 

[tytower]

What do you guys refer to as Baleage?

 

[dun]

Baleage is hay that is put up wet and is stored in an air tight package (for a better word) so it ferments. It's basicly silage in a bale form

dun

 

[mnmtranching]

Yes its haylage. High moisture, so the digestable dry matter pound for pound is about half of what hay would be.

The only advantage I can see with baleage, is to get the crop off the field. Damp rainy weather in some areas makes haying difficult. Putting up haylage is more expensive, more labor, you have to take care not to poke holes in the bag.

mnmt

 

[Herefordcross]

And getting it off the ground and into the bags or wrap saves a lot of nutrients normally lost to the drying process. It's kind of like Barley hay around here, it's tuff to get it dry enough to bale but, Barley baleage is out of this world in protien because it's taken up with the moisture still in it.