Re: Keeping aside grass for hay

Thanks for that greyandbay.  Am looking at giving it a go for next year.  Got two horses on ten acres.  Our grass is what I reckon to be good grass for horses, not too rich.  Many moons ago before we had ponies, the grass used to get really long and had lots of lovely meadowey things in it.  For yonks now I've just sectioned off a smallish area so that they can have a treat in the autumn.  One's not ridden and the other goes out hacking now and again.  One's a cob - say now more! and the 16hh warmblood, well he has got a bit of a tummy on him at the mo!  So I'm thinking of dividing the fields into two next year and see what the grass does.  March/April time as you suggested sounds good, so we'll see what the grass does during that 4 to 5 months.  I'm very conscious of letting them have plenty of running-around space which I think they will still have (they live out 24/7/365 with stable access).  A bit suck-it-and-see.  Thanks for you input  x

Re: Keeping aside grass for hay

 Hi Suzy

Ive got about the same amount and the best crop ive had off it was 698 bales (i know i was the one who stacked them in the barn!) If you find a good farmer he'll probably hay it for you and you'll prob need about 250 bales for winter and if you let him have the rest he shouldn't charge you. Or you could pay him and sell the rest, make sure you have somewhere dry to store it though, I've got a w/b and a do-gooder cob too that live in in winter i feed them ad-lib hay. Hope that helps.

Re: Keeping aside grass for hay

SuzyA said:

.  I'm not sure how long the grass is gonna grow, so not sure how many bales the approx 5 acres will give us, but I will give it a go.  

Well to give you a very vague idea, we got 10 big bales off roughly 2 acres last month - last year we got 9 in the first cut, and 3 in the 2nd cut off a similar amount of land, but it does depend on the weather and how well it grows, and when you can get it cut - this year we ought to have got more, but because of all the rain it was very late when it was cut, and had gone past its' best.

Your land looks gorgeous !! I don't know what sort of grass it is or how long it grows - most of ours grows to about knee height, but some is shorter, and we have one quite large patch that is pretty much waist height. We had the field ploughed up and seeded with horse pasture mix grass when we moved  to our field - it had been agricultural land before, so it's a good mix of lots of less rich stuff than cows would have, plus the odd herb.