Hay...

[eeyore]

what sort of hay is the best to feed?

the yard owners who we half do/used to buy from get thick, yellowish, hay, but is never of a consistant quality.
though we got some elsewhere which is much finer and some of it still faintly green.
about 60% of people on my yard feed the finer kind of hay to theirs all the time, but the yard owners say it's probably this years/last years hay and they shouldn't be using it.
but then again they WOULD say that because they want us to buy from them! :rolleyes:

help?

[eventerbabe]

we had a hay delivery yesterday. the stuff is this years hay but had been baled into round bales, left to "cure" so to speak and then re-baled into square bales. it has a wonderful almost sweet smell, is quite fine and mostly pale brown, with the odd tinge of very pale green.

from what you have described, i'd go with the second hay. if its consistent quality then thats what you want. we have had similar troubles with our first hay supplier and feeding them poor hay does them no good at all.

[eeyore]

ok, that's actually what i wanted to hear :D

the yard owners that sold us the hay are SO lazy/forgetful/have no brains.

thing is we used to get 10 bales delivered to our end of the yard a month, and we just got some more (since the last ones were "ok") and they are worse.
we've left them a note (which they've received) asking for it to be taken away and here we are 2 weeks later with the same stuff. :rolleyes:
for some reason they think we want some more instead (but the stuff they have in now looks a little nicer) so we thought we'd try some of that and have it delivered this weekend...

OH LOOK ITS MONDAY! :mad: and where is my hay?? *posts another note*

sadly, we've already paid it (against my will grr e.g. my gulliable mother paid for it) so i think once we've got the better stuff i'll go through it, chuck the bad stuff away and be done with it. and vow never to buy from them again.

the farm a few villages away has tons of hay, and delivers, hopefully when he says he will haha - fingers crossed!

[Jessey]

Good hay should be sweet smelling, be light brown/pale green and if you take a handfull and squeeze it in your hand it should be soft.

Bad hay often smells musty or damp and is very brown and if you sqeeze it will often dig in your hand.

The old saying is you shouldn't feed hay until after the christmas of the year of harvest so that might be what your yard owner was on about, generally so long as the hay is dry and there is no heat at the middle of a bale it should be fine to feed even if it is this years.

Oddly Bo prefers crap hay, the tougher, browner the better for him but my other two are sensible and only like nice hay :p but it also depends on what you want the hay for, if you have a lammy/fatty who needs to be eating but not getting many nutrients/calories then older hay (often more brown) will be best as it looses nutrients as it ages but if you have a horse who needs extra weight or you use hay to maintain weight rather than topping up with hard feed the newer greener stuff will be best, in general anyway.

Hope that helps

J x

[eeyore]

does it matter what year it's from as long as it's dry, the right colour and non musty?

hmmm i just don't trust the yard anymore..

we're gona be needing plenty in the winter when ben comes in at night again, and he eats like.. SO fast and SO much!
i'd rather he was overweight than underweight so i'm giving him plenty this year.

we have to put it in a haylage net though to make it more of a challenge and slow him down! :rolleyes:

thanks for your help!