56 What is haylage—UK horse owners’ perception

Haylage is an extremely popular forage for stabled horses across UK and Europe and is often preferred to hay as it is easier to harvest and store. However, haylage is defined by nutritionists and horse owners using a plethora of different characteristics which can confuse how it is assessed and fed. A survey was circulated in the UK via the JISC survey platform (2020) where participants were self-selecting. to determine horse-owner knowledge of haylage and to investigate how and why they fed this forage to their horses. 838 participants completed the survey and the responses indicated a wide variety of answers especially to quality-related questions such as, what do you look for when opening a bale to determine the quality of the haylage? what the main differences were between hay and haylage? What does your nutritional analysis include? and what are the reasons for not feeding haylage? The top 3 visual signs that owners used as a quality assessment were:1) no mold, 2) no dust when shaken and 3) a sweet smell.785 reported lower dust than hay, 451 a higher nutritional quality than hay and 365 a higher sugar content than hay. The definition of nutrient quality appeared to be confused with hygienic quality and owners were at variance in the range of nutrients they regarded as important to measure in an analysis. 450 owners declared that no analysis was done on their haylage, 160 received analysis via the packaging or the producer/farmer, and 26 paid for a separate analysis. Within this last group, 22 reported testing for nutritional content only, 3 tested for hygienic quality plus nutritional content and one for hygiene quality only. Fourteen of the owners provided details of the specific analytical determinations undertaken which fell into 3 categories: (1)7 included Dry matter, Energy, Protein, Sugar (WSC), Macrominerals, Vitamins and Fiber. (2) 5 included the above but without macrominerals(3) 2 owners were as per 2 but without vitamins. All analyses included sugar (WSC) and protein determinations, suggesting that owners deem these 2 nutrients as the most important information to obtain when assessing forage nutrient quality. This may reflect concerns over insulin dysregulation and risks of laminitis. Of the 317 owners who did not feed haylage 58% said this was because of its high energy content and issues related to this, such as weight gain and excitability; 33% cited practical problems such as bale size and cost and 9% did not feed haylage because they thought it had a gastric ulcer inducing risk. Further work is needed to determine if the variation in responses is because of actual forage variation or perception issues.