Shades of Hay

By Christine Barakat

You can tell a lot about your hay from its color, including the weather conditions when it was baled, how it was stored and its nutritional content. Most important, hay color provides an important indicator of its safety as a horse feed.

Green hay is nutritious and tasty. Alfalfa is generally a brighter shade than grass hay, such as timothy, but all best-quality hay has a definite greenish cast. If your hay is leafy green—and your horse is acclimated to that particular type—you can feed it without fret.

Light gold hay is usually sun-bleached, and often only the material on the outside of the windrow or on the sides of the bale exposed to direct sunlight is affected. If the rest of the bale is green, the hay is still suitable and safe for feeding if it is clean and fresh smelling. Its vitamin content has been reduced somewhat, however.

Yellow, coarse hay throughout a bale indicates that the plants were overly mature when cut. All nutrient values are reduced, but if the otherwise clean hay is fed primarily to give the horse something to chew on in a well-balanced diet, it is a safe, useful feed.

Brown hay has heated and fermented, the result of being baled and stored with a too-high moisture content. A distinctive musty odor accompanies a caked and matted texture. Brown hay most probably contains mold, which can wreak havoc on your horse's respiratory and digestive systems. It should bypass your horse’s feed trough and go directly to the compost heap.

Dark brown or black hay has usually been exposed to rain, heavy fog or dew, and a great deal of its nutrient value has leached out. When dry, it becomes very brittle. Even though black hay may not have a musty smell, mold is probably present, so it is best left unfed.

This article is from EQUUS Magazine, Issue 247 (May 1998), copyright 1998 by PRIMEDIA Enthusiast Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

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