I bought the barn hay but some questions…

[Moonlight_Wolf]

Ok so I bought the hay and it looks good! But it has some flowers in it, weeds. I know clover is ok but is trefoil, vetch and Queenannes lace ok? The hay even had nutrition test done on it.
Moisture <12%
Crude Protien >9%
Crude Fiber <30%
Crude Fat w/ oil >2.5%

Calcium>0.5%

Don’t pay attention to the fat content because they added oil to the product they tested, (they made a special compressed hay and added oil to it. I might get it for the bunnies as a treat sometime.) but the same hay i bought was used for the product so everything else should be accurate.

The hay is nice and green and smells nice, but do you think a couple of weeds in it are ok?

[Toki+Pumpkin+Elmo]

I have no clue. If it’s locally grown and packaged, I would ask the store next time. They might have an idea what stuff is in there.
I sometimes buy a bag of grass hay for the buns from a local feed store as a treat for the buns. I haven’t had any problems yet.

[BinkyBunny]

I don’t find many weeds in the hay we get, and the “oil” thing is odd to me. I have never heard of that but then again, we also only use smaller packages and minibales and most of the time extra “stuff” is filtered out during packaging, where I know with the larger bales, it is normal to have some extras, but how much is normal I don’t know. I know we had a discussion before about all the things found in larger bales and so maybe some other members who get larger packages of hay will be able to share their experiences.

[Beka27]

Can you pick out some of the more obvious things as you feed the buns? I’m guessing it’s all okay b/c they wouldn’t be able to sell it as horse quality otherwise, but maybe you should call and double-check… I don’t buy big bales of hay, but I just recently started buying the big box of Oxbow hay. It’s the same quality as what’s in the small bags, just in a big box.

[RabbitPam]

That’s the kind of stuff that can be found in horse hay – it’s not unusual.

I usually go by “when in doubt, don’t” for a lot of things. I’d just shake or pick out the non-hay bits and serve it.
The rest may be OK for a bunny, but for now I’d wait until a more experienced member weighs in.

[Moonlight_Wolf]

Well I looked up the stuff, and I found that Vetch, and trefoil were safe, but I found things that said queen annes lace was safe and things that said queen annes lace was poisinous, so I will just pick out all that (it is a good thing that one is easy to see.) But I gave the bunnys some hay and they were cautious at first but now they love it!! I am very glad that I bought this huge thing of hay, it was only five dollars!

Binky Bunny- The oil was put in this mini compressed bale that they were selling, not the huge bale that I bought. The compressed bale loooked more like a hay cube, one that you can find in the pet store, so I decided to buy the normal bale. But I might buy a mini bale as a treat for the bunnies.

There wern’t that many other things in the hay, and the person did mention that there would be clover, vetch and trefoil in it. The person I talked to was not the Farmer, so she did not know much, so to tell you the truth I don’t know what kind of hay the bale I bought is! I know is is grass hay, she said it is a mix of things, like some brome grass, some orchard grass and some timmy, but the buns like it and it is grass hay so, i don’t really care, she said it looked like brome grass was probably in it because there were all of these wirey pieces of hay in it. Also it was the third cut that I bought, I could have bought first cut but third cut was more green and looked more appetizing. I wanted second cut, but they said that all the second cut got rained on.

It was stored in a very nice looking barn and all of it looked well kept and there was no mold on any of the bales. I am overall pleased with the purchase, I am pretty sure it is not mostly timmy or orchard, because it smelled a bit different, but it did smell good, and it was nice and green. I am storing it in the basement in the small cage that I use to litter train bunnies, so it has air circulating it.

[kralspace]

I’m glad you found a cheap source of clean hay, I get a bale every 4-5 months for only $8.

I try to keep my Oxbow hay in the manger for eating and pile up the coastal in the litter boxes as much for play as nibbling. I fluff it up and they’ll spend a lot of time hiding in it and rearranging it to their liking. Pringles is especially funny about sitting and rooting through it to find the perfect looonnnggg stem that she slowly eats like a spaghetti noodle.

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