"Horse Quality Hay"

Rabbits Online Forum

Help Support Rabbits Online Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

miyumiyu

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 26, 2014
Messages
63
Reaction score
9
Location
NULL
I've been looking around for local feed sellers in order to buy fresher quality feeding materials for my rabbits in bulk (I love Oxbow hay but it gets a tad expensive, and I've got a growing Flemish) and I see a lot of hay advertised as "horse quality". Can this be fed to rabbits? I don't really know anything about hay or farming, I grew up in a big city and I just want some nice, fresh food for my buns. :happybunny:
 
Horse quality hay is in fact the only hay that should be fed to bunnies. It is the best quality of hay, and the label is used so you know it's not cow quality hay, which is much poorer, drier and lower in nutrients. Any horse quality grass hay, preferably timothy, orchard, oat or meadow I'm told, is great for bunnies. Just be sure to check that it smells good, looks reasonably green, isn't damp and doesn't have mold spots on it.
 
Horse quality hay is in fact the only hay that should be fed to bunnies. It is the best quality of hay, and the label is used so you know it's not cow quality hay, which is much poorer, drier and lower in nutrients. Any horse quality grass hay, preferably timothy, orchard, oat or meadow I'm told, is great for bunnies. Just be sure to check that it smells good, looks reasonably green, isn't damp and doesn't have mold spots on it.


I second this.

A nice bale of green, quality hay is the best smell ever. I love it. 👌
 
It depends what part of the country you're in what's available. For us, bales of timothy and alfalfa are pretty expensive. The most common for us is coastal hay, which on the outside isn't real green, but if it's fresh it will still be green and smell sweet on the inside. Always try to pull a little fom the inside of the bale and look/smell it before buying it.
 
Thanks all. I live in North Carolina. not beach or mountains but not super rural either. I've just been looking on Craigslist because that was the only place I could think of to find hay. There's a tractor supply store I've been meaning to check out because I heard they had cheap wood pellets that I could use for litter, but since they're a chain I figured their hay wouldn't be as fresh or farm grown.
 
Actually feed store hay is likely to be good quality. I buy my timothy from a feed store. It's compressed Standlee timothy that is trucked in from Idaho I think. I like it because it's compressed so the bales are smaller and easier to store, it's usually good quality, and if there are any problems with the hay I can return it to the store.

The problem that can be encountered from buying hay from a farm, is that quality can vary tremendously, and you really have to be fairly experienced at knowing what to look for in hay. After years of buying hay for horses and rabbits, I think I'm pretty experienced, and even then I have managed to end up with some pretty crappy 'horse quality hay', because people have different definitions of what they believe horse quality hay to be. And I am actually pickier about the quality of my rabbits hay than I was about my horse hay(and I was pretty particular about my horse hay). The reason is that rabbits are much more susceptible to severe illness from bad hay, so I'm very picky about the hay my rabbits get and ensuring that it doesn't have mold. Buying from a feed store, usually they tend to primarily only stock good hay. The benefit from buying from a feed/tractor supply store, is that if the hay happens to be bad or has too many weeds in it, you can usually return it to the store and get a new bale. Usually when buying from a farmer, that may not be a possibility. I pay more getting my hay from a feed store, but it's worth it to me to not have to go through the hassle of trying to find decent hay at a farm. You can get good quality hay from a farm, if you know what to look for, and I would also recommend always opening up a bale at the farm so you can see that the inside of the bale is good before you buy any more. It also helps if you can then always buy your hay from this one source once you have found it.

Most important thing to ensure when buying hay, is to absolutely ensure that the hay has never been wet. And even then that's not fail safe as sometimes hay will be bailed when it is damp from morning dew, and this can cause some mold and the hay to go bad. I've bought hay like this before, where it is fine on the outside and then you open it up and it looks slightly off(dull colored and a bit whitish) and smells sour. It's also good to make sure the hay has minimal to zero weeds in it, as some weeds can even be harmful.

Maybe I'm too picky, but finding good hay can be one of the trickier parts of bunny ownership.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top