Grass Hay

[Toki+Pumpkin+Elmo]

I went to a new feed store today. It seems to be better than the one I used to go to.

Anyways,they said that they don’t have Timothy hay bale. They only have Grass hay bale. But isn’t Timothy grass, so what does he mean by grass hay?  This is something that I can substitute Timothy?

[Kokaneeandkahlua]

I would guess that that’s fine….Timothy is a type of grass hay, they may just not know what type it is, or it may be mixed

[Sarita]

Most likely – you could ask them what they mean by grass hay too. It could be orchard, oat, brome, etc…all of which are fine if bunny will eat it.

[osprey]

In the Bay Area, most of the baled “grass hay” is Orchard Grass.  It should be fine for your bunny.  Horse people consider hay to be either grass or alfalfa, they don’t care what kind of grass it is.

 

[Beka27]

on a related note… can someone tell this city girl the difference between hay and straw…? i always get mixed up. and buns aren’t s’posed to have straw right?

[osprey]

Heh Beka, I am a city boy myself, but my bunnies taught me some things.  Hay is harvested while the plant is still green.  It is allowed to dry in the sun and then baled to preserve the nutrients.  There are two kinds of hay – grass hay (timothy, orchard, meadow, brome, oat, bermuda) and legume hay (alfalfa, clover, peanut).  Grass hay is high in fiber and low in calories.  Legume hay is somewhat lower in fiber and much higher in calories.  Straw is the stalks of cereal producing plants like wheat, oat or barley that the grain has been removed from.  Hay is usually green, straw is usually yellow.  Hay is food, straw is mostly used as a bedding material or in landscaping to prevent erosion (or in Haloween displays).

[Beka27]

that what made me think of it initially… my son and i were at the park and there was some straw on the grass that they had seeded i assume. he asked me if we could take some for Meadow and i said no and that they don’t eat straw.

[osprey]

Bunnies will chew on straw, but it is mostly for fun, there is very little nutrition in it.  Some people use it in litterboxes too.  In your park they probably spread it out to keep birds away from the grass seed and to protect the seed from rain, or to prevent muddy runoff.  I see straw used around here a lot near construction sites, where they put out tubes made of plastic netting filled with hay as a sort of wall around excavations to prevent mud from flowing into the storm drains.  Almost any time you see “hay bales” in a decorative display or “hay rides” they are actually using straw because it is much cheaper than hay.

[kimberleyanddarren]

grass hay is probably hay with dried grass, they sell this at my local pet store to, i think it is just dried grass some have bits of dandelion and stuff in too

[Author]

Messages