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Concept
Hay
Summary
Hay is grass, legumes, or other herbaceous plants that have been cut and dried to be stored for use as animal fodder, either for large grazing animals raised as livestock, such as cattle, horses, goats, and sheep, or for smaller domesticated animals such as rabbits and guinea pigs. Pigs can eat hay, but do not digest it as efficiently as herbivores do.
Hay can be used as animal fodder when or where there is not enough pasture or rangeland on which to graze an animal, when grazing is not feasible due to weather (such as during the winter), or when lush pasture by itself would be too rich for the health of the animal. It is also fed when an animal is unable to access pasture—for example, when the animal is being kept in a stable or barn.
Hay production and harvest, commonly known as "making hay", "haymaking", "haying" or "doing hay", involves a multiple step process: cutting, drying or "curing", raking, processing, and storing. Hayfields do not have to be reseeded each year in the way that grain crops are, but regular fertilizing is usually desirable, and overseeding a field every few years helps increase yield.
Commonly used plants for hay include mixtures of grasses such as ryegrass (Lolium species), timothy, brome, fescue, Bermuda grass, orchard grass, and other species, depending on region. Hay may also include legumes, such as alfalfa (lucerne) and clovers (red, white and subterranean). Legumes in hay are ideally cut pre-bloom. Other pasture forbs are also sometimes a part of the mix, though these plants are not necessarily desired as certain forbs are toxic to some animals.
In the UK some hay is harvested from traditionally managed hay meadows which have a highly diverse flora and which support a rich eco-system. The hay produced by these meadows is species rich and was traditionally used to feed horses.
Oat, barley, and wheat plant materials are occasionally cut green and made into hay for animal fodder, and more usually used in the form of straw, a harvest byproduct of stems and dead leaves that are baled after the grain has been harvested and threshed.
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Related concepts (55)
Hay
Hay is grass, legumes, or other herbaceous plants that have been cut and dried to be stored for use as animal fodder, either for large grazing animals raised as livestock, such as cattle, horses, goats, and sheep, or for smaller domesticated animals such as rabbits and guinea pigs. Pigs can eat hay, but do not digest it as efficiently as herbivores do. Hay can be used as animal fodder when or where there is not enough pasture or rangeland on which to graze an animal, when grazing is not feasible due to weather (such as during the winter), or when lush pasture by itself would be too rich for the health of the animal.
Fodder
Fodder (ˈfɒdər), also called provender (ˈprɒvəndər), is any agricultural foodstuff used specifically to feed domesticated livestock, such as cattle, rabbits, sheep, horses, chickens and pigs. "Fodder" refers particularly to food given to the animals (including plants cut and carried to them), rather than that which they forage for themselves (called forage). Fodder includes hay, straw, silage, compressed and pelleted feeds, oils and mixed rations, and sprouted grains and legumes (such as bean sprouts, fresh malt, or spent malt).
Forage
Forage is a plant material (mainly plant leaves and stems) eaten by grazing livestock. Historically, the term forage has meant only plants eaten by the animals directly as pasture, crop residue, or immature cereal crops, but it is also used more loosely to include similar plants cut for fodder and carried to the animals, especially as hay or silage. While the term forage has a broad definition, the term forage crop is used to define crops, annual or biennial, which are grown to be utilized by grazing or harvesting as a whole crop.