Horse hay in Austria
(C) Raumberg-Gumpenstein, R. Resch

Horse hay - what needs to be taken into account - 65. Podcast

(C) Raumberg-Gumpenstein, R. Resch

Horse hay - what needs to be taken into account - 65. Podcast

What is the feed quality of horse hay? 

The approximately 130,000 Austrian horses require around 200,000 t of horse hay every year. That's around 20% of Austria's total hay production. Due to the particular sensitivity of the horse's digestive and respiratory tract, the hygiene status of hay great importance as the most important basic feed component.

That's why the HBLFA Raumberg-Gumpenstein and the Rosenau feed laboratory organized the 2nd Austrian horse hay project to evaluate a total of 718 horse hay feed tests since 2019.
Compared to 10 years ago, the current data showed a positive trend towards better hay quality . Nevertheless, around a third of the horse hay batches were still covered with spoilage-indicating mold hay bales in storage that were too tightly packed In addition, around 80% of the lots examined were harvested too late. Here the crude fiber content was over 340 g/kg DM, the nutritional value of this horse hay is now very low.

 

In this podcast you will find out the practical results about horse hay in short form - listen or just watch:


 

In this podcast episode, Priv.-Doz. Dr. Andreas Steinwidder with Ing. Reinhard Resch about the most important questions about the production and evaluation of horse hay - just take a look:

 

 

Further information about horse hay
  • DLG practical guide to horse feeding - link
  • Book recommendation: Rating key according to Kamphues in the book Horse Feeding (Coenen and Vervuert 2020), ISBN 978-3-13-241178-4, Thieme Verlag, 482 pages.
  • Rosenau feed laboratory for chemical and microbiological horse hay analyzes - Link
  • Hay evaluation for horses - one-page evaluation form - Onedrivedownload
  • Straw evaluation - one-page evaluation form from ÖAG - Onedrive download
  • Presentation on horse hay as part of the 2024 horse conference by Reinhard Resch

 

team

Stone Aries Andreas, Priv. Doc. Dr.

Priv. Doc. Dr. Andreas Steinwidder

Head of Research & Innovation
Resch Reinhard, Ing.

Ing. Reinhard Resch

Head of analytics and feed evaluation department

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