They have VERY precarious digestion and digestive anatomy. They can very easily colic (colic is a very generalized term here btw) and die. Almost saw a horse die this past spring because it had an empty stomach for just a little too long.
Colic is my biggest fear as a horse owner. My childhood horse died from it. We don’t know what exactly happened with her. We found her exhibiting all the symptoms and we did what we could but by the time the vet got there, she’d been deteriorating for almost 10 hours. She couldn’t stay standing at that point and had nearly crushed me and two other people trying to keep her on her feet. She was put down and the whole thing fucked me up real bad for a long time.
She put up one hell of a fight for being as old as she was. She was 33 and didn’t act it at all.
Hay ≠ silage. Hay is tedded and dried grass/straw. Hay is normally baled, but you can just throw it in a pile. Silage is grass that has been fermented to make it easier for cows to digest. Silage must be baled and wrapped, or stored in a silage silo so that it can ferment.
I grew up in farm country surrounded by pigs, horses, cows, and an absolute FUCKTON of tobacco, corn, and soybeans. Also a fair amount of weed if you knew which cornfields to go into.
Hay silage often has species in it that are hell on horses, like clover and ryegrass. And silage can just be piled and covered to ensile, we put up about 2500 tons of it each year, both hay and cereal silage.
In fact, I’m prepping the swather right now to start cutting for a silage chopper showing up this week.
TIL. Apparently the farmers in my parents area are a bit more picky. They made hay for the horses, and silage for the cows. The pigs get slop, grain, and any bio-trash that’s available.
Oh yeah, I forgot that silage bunkers exist. Again not used in the area I grew up in. I don’t know why. I don’t use them in Farming Simulator, because they are buggy as shit, and the bales and silos aren’t.
Edit: also, 2500 TONS‽‽ are you Australian? That must be an absolutely enormous farm.
Canadian. Actually, it’s what I would say is a small to medium sized farm, we have about 350 cows which is about average for cattle operations around here, but we also do about 2000 ac of grain production as well, canola/barley/oats/peas.
You’d probably have seen a lot of corn silage in the US, which is rare here, corn takes too many heat days for us, though of course that’s changing. We will do barley or oats into silage in August, besides a round of hay silage at this time of year.
Don’t forget that they can die of a tummy ache!
They have VERY precarious digestion and digestive anatomy. They can very easily colic (colic is a very generalized term here btw) and die. Almost saw a horse die this past spring because it had an empty stomach for just a little too long.
Colic is my biggest fear as a horse owner. My childhood horse died from it. We don’t know what exactly happened with her. We found her exhibiting all the symptoms and we did what we could but by the time the vet got there, she’d been deteriorating for almost 10 hours. She couldn’t stay standing at that point and had nearly crushed me and two other people trying to keep her on her feet. She was put down and the whole thing fucked me up real bad for a long time.
She put up one hell of a fight for being as old as she was. She was 33 and didn’t act it at all.
Gods help them if they get into the hay silage.
Hay ≠ silage. Hay is tedded and dried grass/straw. Hay is normally baled, but you can just throw it in a pile. Silage is grass that has been fermented to make it easier for cows to digest. Silage must be baled and wrapped, or stored in a silage silo so that it can ferment.I grew up in farm country surrounded by pigs, horses, cows, and an absolute FUCKTON of tobacco, corn, and soybeans. Also a fair amount of weed if you knew which cornfields to go into.
Hay silage often has species in it that are hell on horses, like clover and ryegrass. And silage can just be piled and covered to ensile, we put up about 2500 tons of it each year, both hay and cereal silage.
In fact, I’m prepping the swather right now to start cutting for a silage chopper showing up this week.
TIL. Apparently the farmers in my parents area are a bit more picky. They made hay for the horses, and silage for the cows. The pigs get slop, grain, and any bio-trash that’s available.
Oh yeah, I forgot that silage bunkers exist. Again not used in the area I grew up in. I don’t know why. I don’t use them in Farming Simulator, because they are buggy as shit, and the bales and silos aren’t.
Edit: also, 2500 TONS‽‽ are you Australian? That must be an absolutely enormous farm.
Canadian. Actually, it’s what I would say is a small to medium sized farm, we have about 350 cows which is about average for cattle operations around here, but we also do about 2000 ac of grain production as well, canola/barley/oats/peas.
You’d probably have seen a lot of corn silage in the US, which is rare here, corn takes too many heat days for us, though of course that’s changing. We will do barley or oats into silage in August, besides a round of hay silage at this time of year.