This service is limited to supply in Nidderdale and North Yorkshire until March 2025
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Are you buying the right kind of hay for your horse?

Get on the list for a high mineral, low sugar, locally grown Meadow hay supply.
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Tested Hay Register

Metabolic problems are on the rise particularly in leisure horses. The reasons can be complex, but many of us underestimate the vital part that forage plays in good health. Whether your horse is healthy and in full work or suffering from a metabolic problem such as laminitis... this is where we help you locate it.

What we do
The Tested Hay Register acts as a database for all types of hay and haylage across Nidderdale and North Yorkshire. We register contact details for farms with surplus hay to sell and send them a detailed questionnaire and sampling kit to return to us. We then perform a subjective appraisal before sending it on for testing. The NIR test is performed by the only NFTA accredited lab in the UK, which means that results are calibrated to the main forage testing body in the US. Wet testing Mineral analysis is carried out at Nottingham Trent University
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How to Choose Hay

Livestock hay and Conservation hay can both work for horses if it is made in the right way. With Livestock hays, the time of year and time of day that hay is mown will be dictated by the ideal weather window. If this means that the grass is cut in hot sunshine, early in the growing season, the sugar levels will be high.

Conservation hays are usually mown when they have done their job, dropped seed and sheltered nesting wildlife. This means less starch from the seed heads, higher cellulose content from less leaf, more stem and the sugar levels drop as the glucose is stored in the roots.
Livestock Hay
Livestock Hays are grown for putting weight on livestock. They are often extremely palatable and have high nutritional value. The crop tends to bring in more revenue for the farmer because by adding fertility to the soil in the form or synthetic and farmyard manure (NPK), rapid leaf growth is encouraged and several cuts can be achieved in a growing season. This means that production is often well-oiled and a very consistent product is achieved. Most hays produced in this country fall under the description of Livestock hay because in modern farming, soil fertility is high and grass species tend to be limited to dominant strains. They tend to be higher in proteins, sugars and potassium, more leafy and palatable and often are better suited to horses with high calorific requirements.
Horse hay and livestock hay serve different purposes. Livestock hay is primarily for increasing bodyweight. Horse hay should be chosen with the aim of keeping the gut moving in a healthy way and producing energy out of fibre by means of hind gut fermentation .
This is from a field which has been a 20yr project for insect diversity. It has plantain (black) and sorrel, some buttercup and tough stemmy grasses. They are either useful or harmless and should not be considered ‘weeds’.
Conservation Hay
Conservation Hay is a term used to describe hay taken from land which has had minimal or no feeding, herbicides or cultivation. The result is an increase in grass and herb species and a lower yield , usually just 1 cut per year. Included in this category are Wildflower meadows, which are grown for diversity of insect life and soil health. These hays can test a bit high in potassium because of the nitrogen-fixing plants in the sward. They can have a very useful function when fed mixed in with a more bland hay to add variety. Wildflower Meadow hay is not widely available today, but with a greater diversity of plant species, grown in lower fertility soils, it is often more appropriate for the equine digestive system.

Meadow hay is no longer an accurate term for this type of forage because frequently it will be fertilized for additional yield, despite possibly being made from permanent mixed grassland.
Late, single cut, no fertilizer is the secret for horse hay.
Some very good Horse Hay growers have managed to over-rule their farming instincts and dealt with their hay meadows In a very different way from how they grow for their livestock. Some leave meadows as late as august or even September to mow. Some take on land which has Nitrate restrictions placed upon it , either by choice or contractually and such farmers play a vital part in preserving these natural seedbanks. They are often frustrated by horse owners wishing only to buy sweet, leafy bright green hay. They are not in a good position to educate horse owners to the benefit of feeding horses in a more natural way, since they have a product to sell.

But these hays are often the most valuable to horse owners. They can be as close as we can get to 'empty fibre'. For horses with metabolic problems the aim is to feed ad lib fibre. Even with horses who are overweight, it should be possible to stop weighing and soaking.

It is important to educate ourselves about meadow species. Most are harmless or useful. Ragwort, Hemlock and Foxglove are the main plants which are toxic in hay. They are easily identified and most farmers wil not tolerate them in the sward.

Support Re-Naturing Farming practices
https://www.pastureforlife.org/
This restored horse pasture has hawksbill in it and lots of other useful plants. It could be confused with ragwort but is harmless. Twigs, and diverse species should not rule this out.
The Analysis

How to Feed Hay

Palatability & smell

Palatability is determined by:
The quality of the hay - meaning it is baled and stored under good conditions.
The nutritional availability – how easily it can be chewed and digested
The amount of soil fertility that the grass was grown in and the sugar levels, which can be dictated by what time of day it was cut.

We need to steer a path between a hay which is very palatable and a hay which is suitable for feeding in the required bulk.

When choosing hay for laminitics in particular, you should select a hay with low to mid-range palatability with a good neutral smell.

Smell can tell us a lot about the suitability. Contaminants, such as heavy slurrying will create an unpleasant brackish smell.

Nutritional Analysis

The main values we concentrate on are Sugars (ESC/WSC/NSC), Crude Protein (CP) and Digestible Fibre percentages (NDF - Neutral Detergent Fibre)).

Ideally, if ESC is below 8% DM and CP is below 9% DM. As long as the potassium is below 1.8%, you should nt need to soak the hay for a horse prone to metabolic disorders, however these figures could be lower in more vulnerable horses with active laminitis.
Where a horse is experiencing an acute laminitic episode, it is always best to soak all hay and consult an experienced nutritionist to decide adequate supplementation. In this case, the soaked hay will only supply the crucial fibre part of the diet and very little of the nutritional components which are especially necessary at this time.

Non digestible fibre has a lot of confusion surrounding it; when choosing hay for meat and dairy production, an NDF value lower than 50% is preferred. This is termed 'quality fibre' It is not a definition which applies to horses. Horses are hind-gut fermenters, not ruminants. They are designed to derive energy sources from high cellulose content.
Fibres which are rapidly broken down at an earlier stage in the gut can create dysbiosis (acidic environment) whereas higher NDF levels can improve the gut microbiome and should not be overlooked. Always transition slowly onto higher NDF hay to give gut microbiome time to adjust.

Mineral availability

Generally speaking, diets suitable for horses are low in the elements associated with fertilizers; N,P & K. Potassium (K) can be problematic when occurring in figures above 2%DM.

Iron can be problematic if fed consistently at high levels. If you feed a hay with high Fe levels, you should consider alternating with a different supply that has acceptable levels.
Mostly it can interfere with the absorption of other crucial menerals, particularly Cu & Zn

Mineral availability for horses is a very complex subject with many differing views amongst Nutritionists. This may be partly due to the perceived reliability of NRC (National Research Centre. US) charts. Factors of mineral ratios and requirements are beyond the scope of this project currently and you are advised to consult a nutritionist to decide upon correct supplementation.
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Bring diversity back to agriculture. That's what made it work in the first place.
David R Brower
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We very much want to hear from you, whether supplying hay or wishing to buy.