What Is Alfalfa?

Alfalfa (Medicago sativa), also known as lucerne has been cultivated as fodder for horses for over 2000 years! It originated from Iran before spreading across the world as Persians, Greeks and Romans expanded their empires, bringing their horses and their feed with them.

Alfalfa is a legume – the same plant family as peas, beans and clover. Alfalfa has a deep root system that enables it to access water and minerals deep in the soil. In some cases, alfalfa roots can reach 4 or 5 metres, in comparison grass and cereals have roots of about 2-2.5m. These deep roots help alfalfa fix nitrogen from the environment and put it back into the soil as well as incorporating it into the plant tissue itself as amino acids. When we feed alfalfa to horses they are getting all the benefits of that natural nutrition!

At Dengie we grow our own alfalfa!

We grow as many of our own ingredients as possible and work with the very best suppliers, supporting UK farmers for those ingredients we cannot grow ourselves.

The name “Dengie” originates from the area of Essex where our Head Office is based, the Dengie Peninsular, and the alfalfa is grown within a twenty-mile radius. This enables us to bring the crop in from the fields as efficiently as possible maximising the nutrition in the feed and keeping our “feed miles” down. It also means we know where our feed ingredients come from so you can be sure of their safety and quality. The alfalfa harvest is a very long season running from May to October which allows us to get 3-4 cuts from each field, however it means we are very dependent on the weather and need extended dry spells to harvest. The Dengie peninsular is formed by the River Crouch to the south, the River Blackwater to the north, both of which are tidal, and the North Sea to the east. The area is known for its rich clay soils and mild weather with the lowest rainfall in the UK, making it the ideal location for growing and harvesting alfalfa.

The benefits of growing alfalfa

Founded in 1968 as a farmer’s cooperative, Dengie is still run today with the same ethos of supporting the local farming community. Alfalfa is not just beneficial to horses; it also has many benefits for farmers and the soil structure.

With its deep roots alfalfa has a symbiotic relationship with soil-dwelling bacteria. The bacteria take nitrogen from the air in the soil and feed this nitrogen to the legumes; in exchange the plant provides carbohydrates to the bacteria.

Just as in our digestive systems, a healthy population of bacteria in the soil helps it to remain healthy and productive. The bacteria are an important part of the nutrient recycling process taking organic matter and decomposing it into its structural parts. We see the benefits of growing alfalfa in our yield data. Records show that over the last 40 years, the only areas on our second production site in Lincolnshire that have shown improved yields of cereals are where the alfalfa is grown in rotation. We attribute this to the benefits alfalfa has on the bacteria and levels of nutrients in the soil.

Additional environmental benefits of alfalfa include the fact that as a perennial it stays in the ground for 3 to 4 years and so there is no-tilling of the soil for that time which helps to keep carbon locked up. It also provides winter ground cover for birds and insects.

Alfalfa is a bushy plant and when established it helps to smother some weeds. As important is our harvest cycle – because we start cutting in April and May we take weeds out before they can seed and become further established. As weeds like blackgrass become resistant to herbicides, this physical management of the crops becomes ever more important.

Benefits of alfalfa for wildlife

As well as providing excellent winter ground cover for birds and insects, alfalfa produces abundant floral nectar for pollinators.

Around the world, alfalfa is recognised as being a great habitat for an enormous diversity of insect species. Scientists have observed over 1000 species of insects living or feeding in alfalfa fields. The insect communities found in alfalfa fields bring benefits to wildlife and surrounding crops; an abundance of insects attracts birds and bats, which will eat pests in nearby fields of other crops.

Alfalfa produces abundant floral nectar which is excellent forage for domesticated honeybees, as well as native bees and other pollinators. The pollinators that are attracted and supported by the alfalfa flowers will also provide pollination services to neighbouring crops. Nectar contains sugar, amino acids, and volatile compounds that attract and reward pollinators together with toxins that deter unwanted visitors. The chemical composition of nectar varies between plant species, with sucrose, glucose and fructose constituting between 8% and 80% of its dry weight.

Precision drying alfalfa – pioneering technology

Dengie pioneered the use of precision drying techniques in the UK to conserve the nutritional quality of fibre for horses. This drying process – unlike traditional sun-drying techniques used to make hay and straw – allows crops to be harvested much earlier, making them more digestible and higher in energy and natural nutrients. This means Dengie feeds are consistently clean with very low levels of dust and mould, making them ideal for horses with respiratory problems or the performance horse.

The chopped alfalfa is brought in from the field and enters the driers within 24 hours of being cut, thereby locking in the natural nutrients. The driers are basically like huge tumble driers, with hot air being blown through the crop as the drier gently rotates. In other countries such as the USA and Australia, alfalfa is “sun cured” where it is cut and left to dry naturally in a process similar to making grass hay in the UK.

Alfalfa Hay vs Chopped Alfalfa

Alfalfa can come in different formats: alfalfa hay, chopped alfalfa also known as chaff and alfalfa pellets.

At Dengie, we chop alfalfa into smaller pieces of between 20 and 30mm to make it easier for the horse to chew. Click here to read more about the benefits of adding chopped alfalfa to your horse’s bucket feed. In other parts of the world, alfalfa is often fed as hay which is much longer in length and fed in much larger quantities; up to 10-12kgs for a 500kg horse. Alfalfa hay is allowed to grow to maturity and then sun-dried to conserve it; this does not create such a clean product as the precision drying technique that we use to dry our alfalfa at Dengie. In some parts of the world, they also ensile alfalfa which is not easy as it does not have a lot of sugar and starch naturally so there is not a lot of substate to ferment, therefore inoculants will need to be used to help it ferment. This has a lower dry matter content so you need to feed more of it to ensure sufficient fibre is provided in the horse’s ration.

A natural product = natural variation

As alfalfa is a natural material the finished product in the bag can vary in appearance but this is no different to the variations in colour, size and shape of the fruit and vegetables that we eat. Colour variation in the finished product is something that most people will notice at some stage and whilst some bags can appear bright green others may appear brown. The main factor influencing the colour of alfalfa is the weather with wet and warm conditions producing green, leafy plants while dry and hot weather tends to result in browner material. Although we mix batches of alfalfa to try to create a consistent finished product, this can be difficult in years when extreme weather is experienced as most of the alfalfa crop will be the same.

Alfalfa can also vary in texture which relates to the proportion of leaf and stem it contains. At Dengie, we include all the plant material that we harvest; the stems of the alfalfa plant are very fibrous whereas the leaf is very nutritious. The weather determines how quickly the plant is growing and if the conditions are right, it can mature very quickly making it stalkier and more fibrous. In contrast, leafy alfalfa can look very bitty and dusty in the bag – as the leaf is the most nutritious part it is vital that it is included in the feed. Therefore, the addition of coatings, such as oils and molasses help to ensure it is evenly distributed through the bag.