Thread: Prime Lucerne Hay for horses

That is about what we pay in Brisbane but we don't get prime hay anymore. We found it went straight through our pinto's and their poo stunk. Talking to a few people who know a lot more than us the grassy hay is better for them. The roughage stays in there gut longer and fills them up more. We also feed maxi soy, copra and chaff. Grassy hay is $10 -$12 a bale delivered.
It probably depends what you are doing with the horses, ours are for sporting events and pleasure riding.
Lucky we don'own a boat, two horses and a land rover are enough to keep us broke

That's strange because my mares Poo is fine...I'm keeping her up on the Lucerne because I'm avoiding pumping the hard feed through to keep the weight on as she is only in very minimal work.

my grass has really dropped off so the grazing is not good quality either and I'm only on a small parcel of land.

different strokes for different folks; many will find straight lucerne too rich, some won't. Fed alone is not ideal, something to do with the calcium phosphorus balance. We always fed two parts grass hay to one part lucerne for the racers
Of course none of that helps you with an ideal supplier (good luck with that, I think many hay producers cut and bale too late out of greed, all stalk and not enough leaf) but at least you might be able to use less of it and supplement with a nice pasture hay (I personally don't like oaten hay, gave my old boy the runs and he wouldn't even eat it when he came across it again)
yours is very dear, here it is about 12 to 15

lucerne is preetty expensive down here in SA too. i can get good stuff from about $15 a bale to about same price as you are finding. I do not feed much of it, probably 1 smally biccy a day with good meadow or good oaten, what ever i can get at the time. it is good for horses with ulcers/etc. cannot find round bales anywhere either. hope new hay comes soon!

haha and no joke, i own a boat, plus 3 horses, and the landy plus one silly vw gti! haha i am definitely broke. boat is getting sold very soon though!

Hi Dullbird,
There's a bloke up the road from me that grows lucerne year round,from the cheap to the dear stuff.
Will get his number for you and pm it to you later this morning.
He's at Castlereagh.

cheers

We use round bales to keep costs down, but don't feed pure Lucerne. A round bale is equivalent to about 16 small squares. $100 delivered for a round of lucerne/ meadow hay. Not quite what you're after, I know.
Don.

just so you guys know I don't feed a lot of Lucerne (well I dont think I do anyway), and you are correct in relation to calcium phosphorus balance, but you can supplement to balance that out or at least we used to in the UK when we feed alfalfa which is Lucerne.

she is getting 2 biscuits a day (that's if she eats it all)because she wont actually eat any more. she is probably getting enough roughage through the grass at the moment I guess (hence not hungry) as its drying out and dying off...its just that I don't think the grass is really providing the nutrition and energy currently to keep the weight on, and I dont want to pump her full of hard feed. She is working on the weekends but not hard so does need that bit of energy

I'm also going to get a stash of a lesser quality hay too because once the grass really dies off over winter she will need heaps more roughage and I would like to leave hay in the field for them to both pick at. But that hay is not as expensive and is easy to pick up from the produce store.