Lucerne Hay (Medicago sativa / Alfalfa)

Major Advantages

• Lucerne hay has become the most popular roughage fed to horses in Australia, and its wide availability helps maintain it at a reasonable price throughout most of the year.
• Lucerne hay provides additional protein, energy, calcium and other nutrients to supplement short winter grass or dried-off summer pastures hi grazing horses, including pregnant mares and late Lactation mares, yearlings and mature working horses.
• Sun-cured Lucerne hay, fed as a roughage to horses in training, helps meet the requirement for energy, crude protein, calcium, trace-minerals and Vitamin D required by stabled horses provided with high cereal grain diets.

Major Disadvantages

• The higher than required protein provided by Lucerne hay as the sole roughage for resting horses is often regarded as being 'too rich',1 increasing urinary outflow, ammonia and calcium content of the mine, hindgut heat production and sweat output as the excess protein is fermented arid eliminated.
• In growing horses. Lucerne hay provided as the sole roughage source to supplement dry, summer pastures may increase the risk of Developmental Orthopaedic Disease (DOD). This is influenced by its relatively nigh energy contribution in the amounts fed, the high content of calcium relative to phosphorus and inadequate levels of trace-minerals, such as copper and zinc.

Lucerne Chaff (Medicago sativa)

Major Advantages

• Lucerne chaff is commonly used as a supplementary feed to resting and lightly
  worked horses, or mixed with cereal chaff as a bulking feed in grain based
  rations.
• Lucerne chaff has the same nutritional value as Lucerne hay on a weight basis, but because of the small fragment size, it is more bulky. It can therefore be used to increase the bulk and fibre content of a grain based concentrate feed.
• Dry Lucerne chaff is usually more palatable and consumed more readily than
  dry cereal chaff when mixed into a hard feed, although all dusty chaff should
  be dampened prior to feeding.

Major Advantages

• Dusty and poorly cured samples that contain fine particulate moulds can
  increase the risk of airway disease, unless the chaff is dampened with oil or
  water when mixed into the feed.

Selection and Quality of Lucerne Hay / Chaff
The highest quality Lucerne hay is green in colour; has a high proportion of leaves with thin evenly flattened stems; contains minimal dust and bleached leaves; has well attached non-fragmented leaves and is free from mouldy or musty odours, weeds or grass contamination.

Lucerne chaff should be free flowing and green in colour and have a high leaf to stem content, with minimum dust or bleached leaves. It should be free from mould odour or clumping.
Mature, stemmy, low leaf hay with more than 30% of grass or weeds is much less palatable or suitable for horses.

Nutrient Composition of Lucerne Hay
(Average value as fed, 90% Dry Matter, unless otherwise stated)

Source: AFIC (1987), NRC (1989), Ensminger at al (1990), Lewis (1995), Frape (1997), Feedstuffs Annual (1997)