You could try Orchard hay if you can source that. But honestly, most people I know feed there rabbits Oat hay here. Its all I feed my bunnies. Do you feed her rabbit pellets?  Reducing those can help pare back the weight also. 

Where do you typically shop for your rabbit supplies?

Yes timothy hay is crazily expensive here, it seems to be mostly imported. My bunny Alfred has never tried it, I cannot justify the price especially given the cost of the imported pellets he gets!

Rye hay is actually sold at Coles and woollies in one kilo ‘mini bales’. The brand is peters, and it’s called ‘pasture hay’. It doesn’t seem great quality to me, it’s dusty and the pieces are small. Alfred rates this hay pretty low. It is handy for bunny baking though.

There are 2 kilo bags of rye hay (also peters brand, labelled as pasture hay) that seem to be better quality in my experience so far. These 2 kilo bags seem to be fairly widely available at pet food shops, and are also better value per kg. Alfred still doesn’t rate this hay very highly. He seems to prefer oat hay to rye hay.

The best value oat hay that I’ve found so far is ‘earth friendly’ brand, in a 30 litre bag. Alfred likes this hay but not as much as Peters oat hay, which is probably his most favourite hay so far. Of course it is also the most expensive hay I’ve bought, but is still cheaper than any timothy hay I’ve seen.

Coming in at a close second, according to Alfred, is a bale of ‘chopped meadow hay’. It came in plastic and is a bit compressed, so is easier to manage than a regular bale. According to me this is the nicest hay yet. It smells really nice and fresh and is greener than any other hay we’ve tried. And it was the best value, at $13.50 for a huge amount.

There are a couple of horsey petfood places near me that often have unbranded bags of oat hay in amounts much less than a bale, which I imagine might good value and quality, however due to bad weather they have not had any in since I got Alfred about 5 weeks ago. Yes I have bought a lot of hay in a short amount of time : )

I agree, most people I know don’t feed Timothy hay as a regular source due to the sheer cost in Australia. Plus you don’t need to, Timothy hay is recommended as a good grass hay, but we have good grass hays here too. Oaten, wheaten (can be a bit tough for some bunnies) and meadow (good quality only, sometimes it has a lot of clover and weeds in it) are all great types of hay. I use meadow when my local fodder store gets a good batch, but otherwise I feed oaten. I buy by the bale as well so it’s much cheaper, but most fodder stores will sell bags of hay that usually work out cheaper than pet store hay anyway.