Fussy Hay Switchers

[LittlePuffyTail]

Do you ever get a bag of hay, same brand you always buy, but it’s a little bit different (different crop, different texture, more brown pieces, etc) and your bunnies give you the stink eye? I hate that! I just bought some Oxbow and it has a lot of brown in it and I’m pretty sure they are plotting my destruction as we speak. They are not impressed by the brown pieces in the bag but it’s nice and soft, which they seem to prefer, so I thought they would like it. Fussy little buggers..Bindi dug all the hay out of his hay bin and scattered it all over his cage.

 

[MimzMum]

This is the other thing I don’t like about hay (besides how it makes me sneeze) in that the inconsistency of it’s quality can be so completely random sometimes. I spent one year going through bag after bag every week of Kaytee Timothy and Orchard Grass just trying to find one that wasn’t so brown they would rather pee on it than eat it. I don’t even get their stuff anymore because it’s so full of hard pieces I could build a cabin with it.

Don’t even get me started on how much of bagged hay is mostly crumbs and dust….what’s the bunny supposed to do with that…snort it?? 0_o And it fills almost half the bag!!

[jerseygirl]

I just bought a bale of new season oaten hay thinking they’d go mad for it….Not so! They prefer the older hay. The new stuff is a bit greener. I’m thinking though that the yellower oat hay is sweeter as it matured more?…..
It’s still in the boot of the car – not sure what I’ll do with it yet. Keep trying it for them or give it to a horse owner. Fussy buns!!

[MimzMum]

How odd, Jerz, my buns prefer the green (young) oat. Although none of them like the seedheads. Getting something like that stuck in their craw would be like shoving a potato chip into the space between your teeth and gums…yuck!
Mimz was doing good with the rye until recently…now he’s lost interest. Fussy isn’t a strong enough word, methinks.

[LittlePuffyTail]

I feel the exact same way Mimzmum. It’s very annoying how the same company puts out different quality of hay. The hay that my horse eats is always consistent so why can’t the bagged stuff be? What brand do you usually use?

And I won’t get YOU started on the hay dust in the bags because that will get ME started and I hate that! Sometimes I end up throwing out 1/3 of the bag because it’s just crumbs. I waste so much freaking $ on hay because of this and the quality factor… my buns are fussy but I’m fussy about what I feed them too. My kingdom for a consistent brand of hay!!!!

[jerseygirl]

Were you able to look into that hay company mellowzmum posted about. There was another I read that some of the Canadian rescues use but I can’t recall the name at the moment. Edit: Oxford Meadows Hay – though it seems to be UK company…

Do you know, if these fusspots were living in the wild, they would have varying quality of food. I slept in big time today and fed the morning pellets 3 hrs late – BUT the hay was mostly gone. If not given a choice, they’ll eat it. I find they only eat the new hay I put on top and leave the other. It’s just as good but they ignore it. But as today demonstrated, they’ll eat it if slave has not come to give pellets or new hay to the feeder.
We have so been trained!

[MimzMum]

YES YES YES!!! The ‘eating the cream off the top’ syndrome! Mimzy does this and it drives me crazy! I throw away most of the hay I put in his pen, simply because I want him to have enough, but once he gets down to almost ground level he starts snubbing it and then pooping in it. Pip sleeps in her castoff hay.
It’s just such a mess to clean up. And the one thing that makes it worse is the static in the air all winter (it’s really bad right now) that causes it to fly off and stick to everything…including me. >.<

For the last few months I’ve been using the hay that Sarita guided me to, it comes from Washington state. But the only other hay I really like is the stuff BB.com sells. The bunnies are VERY attached to the young oat. But occasionally I’ve had to get Kaytee or Oxbow from my pet store and vet to fill in and give variety…and hopefully it reminds them that mommy pays big bucks for the good stuff and they need to eat it, not pee in it.

[LittlePuffyTail]

Just found out BunnyBales.com doesn’t ship to Canada. That really irks me….

[jerseygirl]

Poo!
With the Oxford co. Ontario Rabbit Education Org. & also Rabbit Rescue.ca (also Ontario?) reportedly use it. Maybe you could email them to see how they get it. The link they give to the company site seems to get you nowhere.

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