A Gripe on Hay Costs...

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Jenk

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, Illinois, USA
Only oneOxbow distributor by me sells 25- and 50-lb. bales of Oxbow timothy hay. The place was overpriced to begin with (charging $70 without tax) for 50 lbs. of it.

I'mpleased with two recent orders of 1st-cut timothy hay from Sweet Meadow and intend to buy from them, as it's less expensive, even with shipping. But now and then, we wait too long to order more and need to buy Oxbow locally....

So, today, my husband went to buy a 50-lb. bale of Oxbow and learned that the distributor's price has now increased to $100 (without tax). Can you believe it?!? :pssd: He wound up leaving with a 9-lb. bag instead, since it'll be enough to get us through until Sweet Meadow's hay arrives.

Jenk
 
Coastal hay is available here in Texas for $7/bale. I'm curious as to why the timothy would be so much more expensive?
That's a LOT of cash to spend on one bale of hay.
 
Wow! That is INSANE! For HAY?? That is totally and completely unreasonable. I would definitely start contacting local stables to see where they buy their hay from. You may be able to find even higher quality hay for a lot cheaper (although at that price, could it get any more expensive?) Especially with people who own expensive show jumping horses, you can be assured what ever hay they are feeding their horses, is more than quality enough to be fed to bunnies. I don't see horse people paying that much for hay, so there has to be other options.

I'm completely shocked at how much they are trying to rip people off. It's dried grass for goodness sakes, not gold!
 
Lucille wrote:
Coastal hay is available here in Texas for $7/bale. I'm curious as to why the timothy would be so much more expensive?

I cannot/will not do the feeder-hay-bale thing again. The first and only time that we bought an $8 bale, we wound up with a nasty case of mites from it, which plagued us humans and the animals for far too long (even with treatment). We finally "bombed" the house multiple times to ensure that no insect/parasite remained alive in the house.

I'm not going there again. I'd rather spend about $68 (with shipping) for 50-60 lbs.' worth of Sweet Meadow. In the long run, the cost of fighting mites is so much more than the dang hay!
 
Even I find that ridiculous. A bale of regular hay here is $20, I don't know the difference between timothy and regular hay, however a bale of lucerne hay here costs $25.

Now here's a little backstory, Australia is in one of our worst years of drought, it's been going on for 7 years, many farmers are faced with their properties being perpetual dustbowls. If our price of hay is cheaper than yours the retailer you are buying from are ripping you off.
 
Holy moly!! $100 just for a bale of hay? That's crazy!

I buy timothy/orchard grass for about $8 to $10 a bale. And about the same price for the alalfa for the sheep. $100 is wayyy too much!

Emily
 
I call the 1-800 number and still order the hay over the phone and have it sent from the oxbow company. They keep trying to steer me to Foster and Smith or another company but I am a regular customer and order a lot of other stuff, critical care, pellets etc. and I have told them that it is more expensive to order from other places.
Jen I don't have the receipt with me but I can tell you right now that oxbow has not increaed prices shipping from their plant in Nebraska. Why don't you cal the number and ask them for a quote.

Icannot believe that they are ripping people off with those prices.

http://www.oxbowanimalhealth.com/?page=library-stasis

The 800 number is under contacts

Maureen
 
In NYS we were paying $3.00 for alfalfa-timothy mix for our horses - I watch for the fur mites and keep injectable ivermectin on hand to treat if we have a problem... so far, so good.

Hay is $5.00 US a bale here now - my supplier is shipping hay to Florida, too.

$100 a bale sounds steep - what do they do to it to insure there are no mites in it?

Denise
 
Yeah. But hay is hay, it would seem like it would all get mites. I wonder how they treat it? If they spray their barn with $5 worth of spray, it would be worth it to me to do that and not spend $60 (I'm not going to do that) on a bale.

The feed store I go to has a guy who is really into customer service, next time I go I'll ask him about it, or if any of y'all talk to Oxbow it would be helpful if you asked how they keep mites out of their bales.
 
I pay $45 for a 25lb box of American Pet Diner hay. (Which makes it $90 per 50lbs.:grumpy:)

I have thought about switching to Kleenmama's to save money, but I buy the APD from my rescue group, so the rescue makes a bit of money from each box sold.
 
Mites? From hay? I had horses for twenty plus years and was around lot's and lot's of bales of hay and never got mites from it (me, the horses, the cats, the dogs) Used to even pull up a bale of hay to sit on and have lunch while I spent the day at the barn cleaning and caring for the horses.

Spent hours (over the years) in the hay loft putting hay or straw up from the field.

I'm curious as to how someone canbe surethey ortheir buns got mites from a bale of hay?

I'm not sure if it's the same with rabbits but guinea pigs can break out with a case of mites if they are ill or stressed. The good thing is ivermectin takes care of it easily (guinea pig mites do not infect people)

I agree that hay being sold for small animals (in pet stores) is a big rip off. When I had alesser amount of guinea pigs and rabbits I would order the large box of hay from Oxbow and with shipping charges I think I paid $50.00 which in my opinion is still waaay too much for hay.Now I purchase bales of horse hayfrom a local farm supply store for $6.00 a bale. Haven't had any issues with it other than it's harder to store the larger quantity.

What we won't do for our animals :rollseyes:)
 
Lucille wrote:
Here's some info on straw itch mites, could those be found in hay?
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/ent/notes/Urban/mites.htm

Yes, they can; that's the mite type that we suspect caused ourwoes. Straw itch mites are so tiny, even vets have trouble finding them. Translation: We spent a bit of money just trying to detect the mites, to no avail. :(

I've been told that certain places get bad bouts of straw itch mites (and that Oklahoma had them horribly a few years back). Currently, IL is having a bad time with bed bugs. Ugh...
 

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