The pride of the barn — and exactly what is in it.
Every yard has the horses it brings out front. These three French forages are ours: sun-dried, double-compressed, low in dust, and sent to an independent laboratory before a single bale leaves us. Premium is not every bale in the barn — it is these three, and here they are in full: the batch, the numbers, the horse each one is for.
Tested, not described
An independent accredited feed laboratory measures every batch before it is sold. Batch and report number on this page.
Sugar you can plan around
Sugar and starch published per batch, so a laminitis-prone or EMS horse is a decision, not a gamble.
Low in dust
Pressing and handling shake the respirable dust loose — kinder airways, no soaking, no steaming.
The same bale, every time
A hindgut needs three weeks to adapt to new forage. Consistency between batches is the whole point.
The three labelled hays
All three are French, sun-dried, double-compressed into firm ≈ 24 kg blocks and certified per batch. What separates them is protein, sugar and the horse in front of you.
Premium label
Small Bales Meadow Hay
Our best-seller, and not by accident. A natural mix of grasses and herbs from French meadows, cut and sun-dried at the stage where fibre and nutrition line up, then pressed a second time into dense, uniform blocks. Low in sugar, low in dust, and reassuringly the same bale month after month.
It is the hay we recommend first for sensitive stomachs, metabolic horses and sport horses alike — because the numbers hold up for all three, and because you are never guessing what this season’s cut is going to be.
- Naturally sun-dried in France
- Double-compressed, cleaner & longer-lasting
- Low in dust, respiratory-friendly
- Firm ≈ 24 kg bales, palletised
- Lab-tested, every batch
- Volume pricing from a full pallet
Premium label
Small Bales Longchamp®
The same French meadows, the same pressing, the same certificate discipline — with a naturally higher protein content. It is the hay for the horse whose topline never quite fills out on grass hay alone, and for mares and youngsters that need more from their forage than maintenance.
Feed it as the whole ration for a horse in hard work, or as a topper of roughly 2 kg a day next to our meadow hay. Fed that way one bale lasts about twelve days, and the protein gap closes without adding a scoop of starch to the bucket.
- Naturally higher protein
- Whole ration or 2 kg/day topper
- Double-compressed, low dust
- Condition & topline without grain
- Firm ≈ 24 kg bales, palletised
- Lab-tested, every batch
Premium label
Small Bales Luzerne / Alfalfa
Lucerne is not a grass and does not behave like one. It carries roughly twice the protein of meadow hay and a great deal of calcium, while staying low in sugar — which is why it can put condition and muscle on a horse that must not have starch, and why a handful before work helps buffer the stomach.
It is a topper, not a whole ration: around 2 kg a day alongside your grass hay. One bale lasts about twelve days at that rate, so plan the minimum order as a season’s supply rather than a monthly top-up.
- Protein- & calcium-rich lucerne
- Naturally low in sugar
- Helps buffer the stomach
- Fed as a ≈ 2 kg/day topper
- Double-compressed, low dust
- Lab-tested, every batch
The three certificates, next to each other
Every other supplier sells you hay. We send you the lab report first — batch number, report number and sampling date included, so you can hold us to it.
What the columns mean. Crude protein builds and maintains muscle and topline. Sugar & starch (NSC) is the number that matters for laminitis, EMS, PPID and ulcer-prone horses — under 10% is the usual target, under 6% is the safe end. NDF and ADF describe the fibre: higher ADF means a more mature, less digestible cut. DE is digestible energy per kilo of dry matter, derived from the fibre fractions using the NRC (2007) equation.
What double-compression actually does
It is the least glamorous part of the process and the one your horse notices most. After the hay is baled in the field, it is pressed a second time under high pressure into dense, uniform blocks of around 24 kg.
Air leaves, quality stays
Squeezing the air out slows the oxidation that fades colour, dulls smell and quietly costs nutrition in storage — and it removes the moisture pockets where mould starts.
Fine dust falls out
The pressing and handling shakes loose the respirable particles that irritate airways. That is why the same hay comes back from the lab as very low dust, without soaking or steaming.
Firm, even, stackable
Uniform blocks stack tightly, store in half the space of a loose bale, and break into flakes with very little floor waste — we budget about 5% waste on these, against 15% on a round bale.
And that is why it travels
Dense, uniform blocks can be palletised and shrink-wrapped, so a full load arrives tidy and undamaged. More premium hay per truck is also why French quality lands here at a sane price per kilo.
Which hay for which horse
The honest version: most horses in Portugal and Spain do best on our French meadow hay, and the rest of this table is about the exceptions.
Not sure? The feeding calculator works it out from your horse’s weight, condition, work and turnout — and tells you how many bales a month that is.
The everyday range
Not every horse needs a certificate on the bale. These are our locally grown and big-bale forages: honest, inspected, well-priced feed for healthy horses, groups and larger yards. Same delivery, same people, no premium label.
Prices per bale, incl. VAT; delivery quoted separately. Values for these forages are typical ranges rather than per-batch certificates.
Which bale format fits your yard
The hay inside a big bale is the same hay as in the small bale. What changes is handling, storage and waste — and those decide the real cost per feeding kilo.
| Format | Weight | Dimensions | Handling | Typical waste | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small bale, extra-pressedFrance · premium label | ≈ 24 kg | 50×40×30 cm | By hand, palletised | ~5% | One to ten horses, any storage space |
| Small bale, traditionalPortugal | ≈ 17–18 kg | 85×45×35 cm | By hand | ~7% | Everyday feeding, smaller yards |
| Round balePortugal | ≈ 200 kg | Ø120 × 120 cm | Tractor or loader | ~15% | Field turnout, groups, ad-lib feeding |
| Big baleFrance & Portugal | 250–500 kg | up to 90×120×230 cm | Telehandler required | ~10% | Larger yards, best cost per kilo |
Waste percentages are the planning figures our feeding calculator uses — the hay that ends up trodden into the bedding or left in the field rather than eaten.
The cheapest bale is rarely the cheapest month
A bale price tells you almost nothing until you divide it by the kilos inside. Below is the same horse — 500 kg, in light work, eating 10 kg of hay a day — fed on each of our grass forages for a month. Prices include VAT; delivery is quoted separately.
Feeding a topper, not a full ration
Longchamp® and Luzerne / Alfalfa are usually fed alongside grass hay, at around 2 kg a day — roughly €46 a month, and one bale lasts about twelve days. Do note what the minimum order buys: 18 bales at 2 kg a day is around seven months of feeding, so it is a full pallet of storage, not a monthly top-up.
And the argument nobody makes for us
Cheap hay is cheap because it carries less protein and energy per kilo. That gap does not disappear — it moves to the hard-feed bill, where a kilo costs several times what a kilo of hay costs. When our calculator runs a local hay against Prime Hay for the same horse, the local ration usually needs three to four times as much concentrate to close the shortfall, and lands higher in total. Run it for your own horse before you take our word for it.
How the hay reaches your stable
We deliver across mainland Portugal and Spain from two depots: Loulé in the Algarve and Almeirim in the Ribatejo. There are two service levels, and it is worth knowing which one you are booking.
Prime Hay delivery
Our own truck and our own team. The bales are unloaded and placed exactly where you want them — in the barn, in the hay store, stacked the way you stack them.
- Placed where you want it, not at the gate
- Our own team, on our own schedule
- The service we are known for
Standard pallet delivery
A carrier brings a palletised load to your address. Less precise by nature: the pallet goes to the nearest point the lorry can safely reach and unload.
- Available across mainland PT & ES
- Shrink-wrapped, palletised, weather-protected
- Access matters — tell us about the last 100 metres
Delivery is quoted separately from the bale price and calculated at checkout, based on your address and the size of the load. A full truck is quoted as one delivered price including transport.
Our promise on quality
Hay is a natural product, and from the outside of a dense bale you cannot always see that something is wrong. That is not your problem to carry. Found something? Set the bale aside, do not feed it, send us clear photos of the problem and of the bale by WhatsApp or e-mail — ideally within 24 hours of delivery, but later is fine if you only found it on opening. We look at every case individually and either replace the bale or credit it against your next order. No forms.
When hay alone does not close the gap
Forage first — but some horses need a little more. We stock the full Pavo and Cavalor ranges alongside our own hay, so the whole ration comes from one place and one delivery.
Horse feed
Pavo and Cavalor mueslis, pellets, mashes and fibre feeds — every one with published starch and sugar percentages, so you can feed on numbers rather than on the picture on the bag.
Supplements & care
Targeted top-ups for joints, hooves, gastric comfort, electrolytes and coat — plus the everyday care products a yard runs through. Chosen for evidence, not for packaging.
Straw & shavings
Double-compressed French straw, Portuguese wheat straw and low-dust wood shavings — the same low-dust thinking applied to what your horse stands and sleeps in.
The questions we get every week
What does the premium label actually mean?
Is your hay safe for a laminitic or EMS horse?
Why is French hay better than local hay?
How much hay does my horse need per month?
Do I have to buy a full pallet?
How should I store it?
Do you deliver to Spain?
What if a bale is not right?
Start with the forage. Everything else follows.
Order by the bale, by the pallet or by the truck — or let the calculator work out exactly what your horse needs first. Both take about two minutes.