Our first home hay analysis

Since this is the first year we've hired someone to process our field for our personal use (rather than a shared project where they take and then later give us something, which was not optimal).....

It's our own field we're feeding for the first time in 10 years. And then it rained.

Twice, after our hay was lying there cut. I'll never forget my husband going out there at 5 AM in the rain, to touch the hay and wonder if there was any saving it. I was beside myself with worry - cuz whether or not the hay was edible, we had to pay for the labor.

We learned a great thing this year: Even rained-on hay is fine if given the chance to thoroughly dry. Woo!

So it has become important for me to know the truth about the nutrition left in twice rained-upon hay.

Someone on my blog told me no worries, it's just lower in sugar now. (She was right.)

I was surprised when the application form had two checkboxes: For Bovines and For Swine. OK what about horses?

Apparently in Germany pig and cattle farmers have their feed tested, and horse owners...don't? They told me to just write on the form, "This is for horses." OK then.

Below are our results. How our hay compares to the ideal is shown in the image under "Zielwerte."




     

The two values for our hay are the two columns:  1. Fresh, as-is and 2. Dry matter (in bold font).

I was happily surprised to see that paragraph at the bottom - it's the values for all of Germany for 2019, for the sake of comparison.

This was the basic, 31Euro test. More options are available for additional fees. I was happy to see "Sand" on the list - dirt, I suppose?

These results supported my instinct to supplement protein and fat.

This was fun and informative, and I'm curious what will happen if 1. It doesn't rain or 2. We use fertilizer.