Can you believe it’s November? I’m too hot in my autumn jumper, it certainly doesn’t feel like a November day! Sadly I think we all know one day soon it will turn typically cold and dreary and we’ll wake up to find ourselves in a winter wonderland.

We’ve been beavering away at Silvermoor getting ready for our busiest season and we’re pleased to say we feel set to go. We have an ENORMOUS pile of gorgeous haylage in front of the farm, I think spaceships would struggle to miss us it’s that big! All fantastic news as it means we are able to provide continuous supply throughout the cold spell and into the spring.

Since joining in April I’ve been over the moon to hear the brilliant feedback you’ve told me about Silvermoor, thank you. The only common concern I heard was that some people found haylage too rich for their horse/pony. We’ve worked really hard to find a solution and I am delighted to introduce (drum roll please) …Silvermoor Lite!

Silvermoor Lite is our lowest protein, lowest sugar and highest fibre haylage specifically developed to aid weight management and suit laminitics. As with Recreation and Active, Lite provides all the nutrition a horse requires from its forage, it is deliciously sweet and aromatic.

We’ve managed the rye grass that goes into Lite to make sure it meets our strict criteria. On average Lite is 62.57% fibre (Recreation is 57.62), 8.48% protein (Recreation is 10.65) and 7.6% sugar (Recreation is 11.5).

We’re so proud to offer such a different product I really believe it is exactly what has been missing from the forage market. With all products under the Silvermoor logo you can be confident we have grown all the grass ourselves and controlled every aspect of production to enable us to guarantee every pack.

I can’t wait to hear what you think of Lite! Please do email me any feedback at Lindsay@silvermoor.com and send in your pictures to be added to the Hall of Fame on Facebook!

I’ll be in touch soon,
Lindsay x

Where is the summer going? It is absolutely flying by. Well we’ve certainly been kept out of mischief while we’ve been busy with our first cut which is all done now. The yard is jam packed with lots of lovely haylage and we really are over the moon with the quality of the grass we’ve cut. Not only have we had record breaking yields but it has all looked and smelled absolutely delicious so much so I have had a taste and can tell you it tastes great too! We’re going to have some very happy horses and ponies this coming year!! The signs for the next cut are also really positive so fingers crossed for some lovely hot and dry weather soon so we can crack on.

We had a brilliant show at the Royal Highland last month, thank you to all our customers who came along to say hello, it was lovely to meet you all and hear how happy you are with our haylage. Huge congratulations to Jenny Croft who won our prize draw for the free pallet of Silvermoor Haylage, her horses Aero, Willow and Harley are certainly in for a treat when it arrives next week. Our next stop is Blair Castle from the 18th to the 21st August, we’ll be in the Allen and Page tent again so please do call in and say hello.

We have some brilliant news for all our customers in Cumbria, Lancashire and Dumfries, WCF COUNTRY CENTRES now stock Silvermoor haylage! They have Recreation and Active hitting the stores this week which will make it even easier to pick up the best haylage on the market. It will go into all 11 WCF stores, we’re delighted to be working with such a reputable company and feel it really demonstrates the quality of our products.

We’re putting the final touches onto our new product which will be launched at the end of this season, I’m not going to give too much away just yet but can tell you it is going to be FANTASTIC and is worth getting excited about! I’ll bring you more news on this very soon…………

If you have any questions, suggestions or feedback we’d love to hear from you, feel free to email me on lindsay@silvermoor.com or call me on 01665 602 587.

Here you should be able to find out lots about Silvermoor Haylage, what we have been up to recently, Silvermoor Haylage stockists and also what our riders have been doing over the competition season, or at the moment how they are managing to cope with the lovely festive weather we are having!

In case anyone was wondering who it is dressed in purple on the lovely Showjumper taking pride of place as the main photo, it is the fabulous Vicky Tulloch on Solligette from Darlington.  Vicky has recently started to use Silvermoor Recreation Haylage and just happens to have the perfect coloured show jacket!

With a bit of luck we should have a blog from Vicky too, which I’m sure will be more interesting than the one I do! I think zooming around the country with a wagon full of gorgeous and very talented BSJA horses might be better than zooming around with a car full of Haylage, or at the moment it is full of chocolates and presents for retailers!

Have a look at the new page at www.silvermoor.com and see what you think, any suggestions are more than welcome and if you have a Silvermoor story you might find your horse taking pride of place on the homepage too!

 Just in case anyone was wondering we have a great way of getting Silvermoor Haylage out to retailers; take a look at the delivery vehical we have been using ! 

We have had an interesting few days down on the farm, with 16” of snow now and more to come, the lads are going to have to work extra hard to keep warm!

We did have a bit of an adventure on Friday with a articulated lorry arriving to fill up with over 1000 bales, we had to drag it onto the farm with a tractor and fill it up then drag it back out.  Unfortunately it slipped a bit and fell off the farm road, oops! We had to cut through the fence and rescue the bales before it tipped over and then harness up two tractors and drag it onto the main road to re-load it all! Although it took a tad longer than we thought it would we managed to get it out and on its way to the retailer!

The worst bit was no one had a camera so we missed a golden photo opportunity! 

xXx

Mickey already has his eye on the Haylage!

       When we delivered their Silvermoor Recreation Haylage it turns out her mum Sara Ussher is a horse behaviourist, which would explain Mickey’s impeccable manners, and she is incredibly interesting, not to mention useful, to talk to about any sort of phobias and habits that horses have. It is defiantly worth taking a look on their site www.saraussher.co.uk as the testimonials really show the difference that Sarah’s training can make, in fact I think my two and I might need a lesson or ten!

       I’m sure that they will love the Silvermoor Recreation Haylage, Daisy was so thrilled to receive it as when she had passed the Silvermoor stand at Blair Horse Trials the smell had enticed her in and the bit she took for Mickey as a sample was very quickly munched, so receiving 10 bales of Recreation for free was the icing on the cake!   We hope to see Daisy at Blair Castle Horse Trials 2011, possibly even in the CCI**?!

       If you would like the chance to win 10 bales of Silvermoor Recreation Haylage, like Daisy did, then visit the website at www.silvermoor.com and click on the big star for your chance!    

       Although the snow is very pretty and good fun I hope you are all managing and staying safe, it’s a bit interesting here with the A1 north of Morpeth getting very wintery but the boys are working away in the shed getting loads and loads of Silvermoor bagged and ready to go out to your retailers so do not worry we will not run short!

       As usual if you would like some Silvermoor Recreation Haylage or Silvermoor Active Haylage into your retailer please just ask as we are always happy to take on more outlets as we have lots of the best quality Haylage for horses for sale!

xXx

Did you know the studies recently published by Dengie feeds shows that there are more sugars in hay than in Haylage?? This means that haylage would be more suited to laminitic horses and ponies as it is the sugars reaching the hind gut which are one cause of laminitis in horses.

This difference in sugar content is due to the haylage being fermented, this is a natural process which involves naturally occurring bacteria turning the sugars in the grass into acid and so preserving the grass.  This therefore uses up some of the sugars. 

Haylage has another advantage over hay, it is dust free.  Due to the higher moisture content in haylage compared to hay any dust particles on the grass become so full of moisture they cannot become airborne and it is only when they are airborne that they will be able to cause respiratory problems for both horses and their owners!  Many of us regularly come out of the feed room sneezing after filling nets with what looks like perfectly good hay.  Just think what this is then doing to your horse who has his nose in the hay to eat it, no wonder so many get coughs and sniffles over winter.

Haylage has more of the nutrients found in the growing grass available to the horse than hay, which means that you can often cut down on your hard feed ration, not only does this save you money but it is also the more natural way to feed; horses evolved to eat a high fibre low protein and sugar diet, little and often rather than having the bulk of their nutrients in two large meals a day with not much in between. 

Feeding in a natural way will help to avoid stereotypical behaviours which develop through stress and also gastric problems such as ulcers which can be a result of not enough fibre in the horses diet allowing the stomach to become too acidic and so cause problems.

So when you are looking around your feed store this winter just think about the most natural way to feed your horse, start with their forage – could Silvermoor Recreation Haylage make up the main energy supply for your horse?  If your horse is only in light to medium work then the answer is probably yes! (to put it in perspective my 15.3hh Mare is hunted once a week on Saturday and schooled or jumped on the Sunday and only gets Silvermoor Recreation and a feed balancer with chaff to make sure she chews, twice a day! And she is still a bit chubby, bless her) this way of feeding is also very useful if your horse tends to be a bit excitable in the winter with lots of time inside and not enough time to ride.

We are still looking for more stockists for Silvermoor Haylage so if your local supplier does not stock us, why not?!

xx

We have been hearing about the ‘forage crisis’ a lot in the farming and equine press, in fact it’s a topic that seems to pop up everywhere! The very dry spring with the hot weather that followed meant that the grass really struggled across many parts of the country, especially those areas which are fairly dry anyway. In some parts a second cut was not even possible! That must be so scary for horse owners, the prospect of having nothing to feed my horses would give me sleepless nights, and I’m sure it would most people.

Be it by luck, good judgement or a combination of the two (I’m sure Ralph and the boys would insist it is the good farming technique) Silvermoor Farm has actually produced more Haylage for horses this year than ever! This means that we are actually out and about looking for new retailers all across the country, we are always open to suggestions about where to visit so any retailers out there who are struggling to get Haylage to sell this winter, give us a call we have plenty of Haylage for sale and of course being Silvermoor Haylage it is suitable for native breeds, hunters and pleasure horses!

I hope you all have a lovely time over bonfire night, don’t forget this weekend to check for hedgehogs under your bonfire and to keep your horses in and calm with all the fireworks, a big net of Silvermoor should help take their minds off the noise!

Pppppssssssstttttttt, come a bit closer, I’ll let you in on a bit of a secret, we haven’t even started advertising it yet…We are branching out with Small Holder Supplies, anyone with a few sheep, goats, cows, pigs, llamas, alpacas, camels??, watch this space for more information on how to get hold of small bagged silage, straw and haylage for livestock. Ultra convenient being able to store your straw outside and carry 25kg bags of silage for you sheep/goats/cattle. If you would like some more info just email info@silvermoor.com and we will let you know how you can get your forage stocks for winter!

xXx

How about this then, we have recently found out that the haylage used by Royal (Dick) School of  Veterinary Studies at The University of Edinburgh is none other than Silvermoor Recreation Haylage! Pretty good hey?! (or should that be haylage!)

It is great to know that all the hard work and long hours put in by the lads here at Silvermoor is making a difference to horses who really need it.  I hope it also gives the owners some peace of mind in difficult times that their horses are happily munching away on lovely Haylage, we know how horrid it is to have a horse or any member of the family ill.

Just goes to show that the vets and the nurses there trust our haylage to be exactly what recuperating horses of all types need to help them to get better more quickly and also help stop any headaches and worry for the wonderful vet nurses who are so dedicated in their work looking after the horses who come into their care.

Paula Thompson, Equine Head Nurse at The Royal (Dick) School of  Veterinary Studies at The University of Edinburgh said:

“We are pleased to use Silvermoor haylage. We use Silvermoor when treating a range of cases, especially horses being treated for colic.  As Silvermoor does seem to be very palatable, it can be useful in managing anorexic cases.   All in all we find Silvermoor a great product and are happy to continue to use it”.

We would love to hear your stories about Silvermoor too, just send them to Lucy@silvermoor.com  for your chance to be famous and have your horses story and a photo on our website.

xXx

Unfortunately I cannot claim this genius idea as my own, this comes to you from Samantha Wright who is the North East England and Scotland feed adviser for Baileys Horse Feeds, if you would like some more of Samantha’s Top Tips on feeding  you can contact her on 07766 508 559 or samantha@baileyshorsefeeds.co.uk and arrange a yard visit, how’s that for service?! Baileys have advisers all over the country so defiantly worth checking out their website,(if you do have a look on you will see Vicky Tulloch on there who we also support!) at www.baileyshorsefeeds.co.uk  .

We had a lovely evening at R H Millers up in Peebles this week, lovely to see so many people come out late on to talk to the reps from Baileys, Dengie,  NAF, Dodson and Horrell, Allen and Page and of course Silvermoor .

Back on Silvermoor Farm we are so busy keeping our existing and new retail outlets supplied that we have had to call in reinforcements in the form of Scott who has joined us to help bag Silvermoor Haylage and keep your horses fed all winter! Great! 

Fancy the chance to get your horse famous? All you have to do is send your Silvermoor stories to lucy@silvermoor.com with a photo and you could get onto our updated website.

xXx

Would you believe it but this new retail outlet came through Twitter as the initial point of contact! So when people say that you should not to be on Facebook and Twitter at work you can reply that you are gaining valuable followers which could lead to new sales opportunities!

With the weather turning distinctly wintery, looks like we skipped the Autumn bit this year, Silvermoor Haylage sales are picking up steadily and the lads are flat out bagging and palletising this year’s crop.  It looks lovely as its going up the machine and smells gorgeous, I know mine are really tucking into it at the moment which I think must mean that there is not much point to the grass at the moment, there is still plenty there but they always want to be in for their net of recreation.

This week we have our fingers crossed for Vicky Tulloch who is competing at Arena UK, her top horse the lovely little Solligette is not there due to an injury, but her youngsters look to be going really well, definatly ones to watch coming up through the ranks.

To find your nearest stockist please use the postcode finder on the Silvermoor website www.silvermoor.com and please do not worry we have loads of stock so there is no shortage up at Silvermoor Farm!