Frustrated with Hay companies

[LittlePuffyTail]

How hard is it to find the perfect bag of hay??? My conclusion: Impossible

I’m super picky about what my buns eat cuz I know how sensitive they can be. I’m very paranoid about moldy hay. I have tried about 1/2 a dozen brands and it’s good until I get a few bags that are bad and then I try to find another brand.

Right now I’m feeding SunSeed Timothy Junior Bales and I’ve been very happy with it so far. Today’s new bag though smells not so sweet and upon handpicking the hay I noticed a few little yellow stick pieces with tiny black stuff on them. Like maybe 1 piece out of a huge handful. So I diligently picked through the hay before giving  it to them. The quality otherwise seems pretty good.

What’s the deal here? Am I being too picky? What brand is really good? I live in an area where the petstores don’t stock a whole lot of rabbit products so I’m limited to my brands. So far I’ve tried and tossed:

Kaytee Timothy, Living World Timothy, Falfa Cravins Timothy and another brand I can’t remember the name, something about Prairie and it was a compressed bag.

Any advice, I’m going nuts here!!!! It gets expensive to throw out $10.00 bags of hay!

 

[Lion_Lop_Lover]

Are you near any horse country? It’s SO much cheaper to find someone selling horse hay (square bales) and buy that for $2/bale instead of spending $10 on like, one flake of hay…when you can get 12 flakes for $2…

That’s what I do. I have 2 horses up here and my barn owner just lets me take as much hay as I want.

[LittlePuffyTail]

I actually have a horse and I use that hay sometimes if I’m in a fix but again I’m so paranoid! I find so many weird flowers and plants in the horse hay that is never in the rabbit hay and I sit and pick it all out. Could there be plants that are okay for horses but toxic to buns?

[LittlePuffyTail]

LionLop- Where in NB are you? I’m in Moncton. Cool to see another NBer here!

[MooBunnay]

I know that a lot of people are very happy with ordering Oxbow hay, it is often recommended as the best kind, but can be a bit expensive to ship. However, its less expensive than throwing out many bags of $10 hay that are not as good of quality.

I usually buy hay by the bale as well – I buy Timothy hay usually, but I used to buy oat hay. While I definitely think its a good idea t o make sure you’re buns are getting good hay, I might venture to say your being a tad too picky Hay can definitely be dangerous if it is moldy, but in my experience its very unlikely that alllll of those bags you bought had moldy hay. Could you possibly go to a rabbit rescue near you, or contact one to ask where they buy hay from? Or also, if you buy bales of hay, you can ask the person selling how one can tell if their hay has gotten moldy. When I buy baled hay there is the occasional leaf or flower in it, but I take those out as well, and my buns just looooove the hay. I have to fill up hay racks many times during the day because they eat it all, and that surprised me because the Timothy hay that I have currently is not really that green, but more brown, so we do have to remember while hay may not look that appetizing to us, the bunnies might still like it.

So, my point is, that it is a very good idea to look out for mold in hay, or any foreign objects like stones, but it is a frequent occurence that hay will not always be that perfect green color, but can still be OK.

[BinkyBunny]

RIght now, Timothy hay in general is a bit browner this season all around. (though it shouldn’t be moldy – so if you see lots of black and it’s dusty, then you are right to throw that part out) I know with our mini-bales if the mix includes Timothy, it’s more brown than last season. The other grasses though like Orchard are greener, but when I asked the person who supplies our hay about the color, she, like Moobunnay said, the bunnies notice this much less than we do. We get our fresh from farmers and they are very particular about the qaulity and will not sell it if it doesn’t meet their high standards – they will take the loss of not selling it the first place, so I know they would not bale up hay unless they felt confident it was great for bunnies, even if to the human eye, it is not as green as we are used to.

You can also take that bale back to the place you got it and just see there is a better bale. If you usually get good ones, and you just got an unusual funky one, then they should be able to replace it.

[Lion_Lop_Lover]

Hey! Cool! I’m in Fredericton

 

I’ve been feeding the horse hay for a few weeks and haven’t had anything bad happen…it’s just more coarse than the storebought stuff!

 

If you can find the ZuPreem Orchard Hay, that stuff is DAMN good for them…

[Sarita]

I agree hay is SO FRUSTRATING. I do buy mail order although there is a hay place by a horse track that the sanctuary I volunteer buys hay from and it’s pretty darn good stuff too.

There are normally 3 cuttings of hay – the 1st cutting is more long, fibrous and has lots of hay heads, the 2nd cutting is shorter, less fibrous and less heads and I’ve never gotten a 3rd cutting so I’m not certain about how that looks.

Also hay is very seasonal so I stock up from American Pet Diner (2nd cutting) when it’s sweet. My rabbits prefer it over the Oxbow. Most hay sits around someplace no matter where you purchase it from.

I agree with MooBunnay too about the hay – really our rabbits should be the one deciding if they like the hay (although we have to decide if it’s not moldy and safe).

I have also been happy with Farmer Dave’s hay as well. He puts red clover in his hay, very good stuff.

[osprey]

I go the horse bale route, usually getting orchard grass.  The last bale that I got was quite brown, and I was concerned that the buns would disapprove of it.  They actually love it, so you cannot really tell much from the color.

 

[Scarlet_Rose]

LittlePuffyTail, have you tried ordering hay from BinkyBunny? Bunny blend makes my two go absolutely nuts.

[LittlePuffyTail]

Binky Bunny doesn’t ship to Canada

[Scarlet_Rose]

Oh darn it I keep forgetting!  Sorry. What places have you ordered from? Will Vancouver Rabbit Rescue (http://www.vrra.org/urban.htm) ship? They sell hay by the flake and I can’t imagine that they woudl feed their rabbits any bad stuff.

[Deleted User]

Coney loves BinkyBunny bunny blend and Connor eats the Oxbow Brome hay, when he is actually eating hay. The Brome is very course and long. I could not even pull a handful out of the bag it was so course.

[poopy]

I get my oat hay from a horse feed store as well. I have never had a problem with anything other than hay being in the bale (ex: bugs, flowers, dirt) so my guess is they get it straight from a supplier that must be pretty clean. Maybe you can try a different supply place other than the place you are currently getting the hay for your horse.

[Gravehearted]

i used to buy oxbow hay from the petstore, but with three bunnies it got expensive quickly.  then i started buying flakes from the horse feedstore.  Then my friend Qzmobevmama turned me onto kleenmama hay, which she’d heard about through her guinea piggy friends.

At first I started with a small 5 pound box to see what my bunnies thought. Woah does it rock! it’s much greener and softer than anything else I’ve seen – but the biggest bonus is that my bunnies eat a much bigger quantity than anything else i’ve offered them.  The 3rd cut especially is tasty, but there’s very limited availability since it’s only harvested in the fall.  The owner Linda is involved in guinea pig rescue efforts and has been a delight to work with.

I buy a 25 pound box of timothy which lasts about 3 – 4 months I think, and with shipping costs less than $30. Her site doesn’t say if she ships to Canada, but I am sure she can tell you.  It’s much cheaper than the $8 large bags of oxbow that lasted less than a week.  I still mix in some other hays like oat, brome or orchard grass.  My bunnies also loooove the binky bunny hay  bunny blend too.

http://www.kmshayloft.com/hay.html

ps – her pellets are for piggies only 😉

 

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