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Lisa Keys is a stable owner and eventing rider based in Sarrat, Hertfordshire, England. She has been using haylage as a feed for about 10 years and manages the horses' nutrition herself. "I got them on to haylage because of breathing difficulties caused by the dust and spores in hay. None of them has allergies as such, but when they're doing the amount of galloping needed in eventing, at places such as Badminton and Burghley, the dust really starts to affect them. We used to have to soak hay all the time, so from a work point of view it was much easier when haylage became available. "There are nutritional differences between haylage and hay; haylage has more protein ... we usually buy ours from local farmers. The bales we buy are large square ones, which have to be handled by tractor. The farmers deliver lorry loads and we use a small tractor we have in the yard to move them around. The yard has 20 horses in total and all are fed on the haylage. We get through a bale a day, which is good, because there's less chance of spoilage then. "We talk to the farmers before they make it to make sure they cut it at the right stage - just before hay - and that it's made fairly dry. "The majority of horses competing at the top levels are fed on haylage now; very good hay which is low enough on dust is very hard to find." --------------- Read more about feeding haylage to performance horses |
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