Best online store for hay ?

[Junior_Babbeeyy]

Hi I was wondering what you guys think the best online store to buy hay from. I've herd of Oxbow & sweet meadows, binky bunny but was wondering if you've herd of others? Because I'm looking for the best quality hay! They only sell alfalfa at feed stores & the Timothy hay at petsmart, petco, & pet extreme is brown & dusty (very un-appetizing).

also what's the best kind of hay?
Sweet meadow, Timothy (1st, 2nd, 3rd cut), organic Timothy, Oat hay, orchard grass, Timothy with herbs, eastern Timothy hay.

Right now he's 7 weeks. I'm feeding him alfalfa & he's a flemish giant. I want to start mixing the alfalfa with the Timothy soon.

 

[roxyllsk]

I've gotten hay from Bunnybale.com ... their shipping is a little high but if you order a few bales at once it's better. Anyway, the hay is good quality.

I also have a bale of horse hay that I give them, same kind as my horse eats (timothy/grass mix). It's also good quality hay, and very reasonable.

Tractor supply sometimes sells compressed bales of alfalfa hay for horses. This hay is pretty good quality as well.

Tractor Supply aslo sells alfalfa mix cubes, alfalfa hay mixed with another type of hay. It comes in 50lb bag which lasts a really long time. I give alfalfa/timothy cubes to my bunnies, they love to chew and gnaw on them and they're getting good hay too.

It's okay to give your young bunny some alfalfa at this point because he is growing like crazy and could use the extra protien, but you also want to get him used to other hays.

 

[Imbrium]

are you sure all the feed stores have is alfalfa? I've never heard of them ONLY selling that and no other horse quality hays. a lot of feed stores won't necessarily have timothy (for example, around here, they pretty much only sell coastal or alfalfa), but *any* "horse quality" grass hay is acceptable for bunnies (granted, with "cereal" type hays like oat, wheat, etc. you need to pull out the seed heads, as the extra carbs are no good for bunnies).

I buy my hay from sierra valley because my picky little brats won't eat the feed store stuff... if you're buying the 20 lb boxes, it's a really good price as far as mail-order hay goes if you live in a "western" state, which you do (midwest/east coast states, it's about $8 more per 20 lbs due to higher shipping costs). http://www.sierravalleyhay.com/Orders.html

given your bunny's age, I'm inclined to recommend their orchard/alfalfa (80%/20%) blend, since the alfalfa's great for young bunnies but it'll get him eating grass hay as well. if you place an order with them, I suggest emailing them and asking if it would be possible to get a small sample each of their 1st cut timothy, 2nd cut timothy and 2nd cut orchard grass sent along with your order (assuming you get the orchard/alfalfa blend and not one of those types, in which case you'd obviously want to ask for a small sample of the three you didn't get). Bob Macey (the guy who answers emails and, I believe, who runs the place) is *really* nice and offers great customer service - when I asked if I might be able to get a small sample of each of the other hays in lieu of the 5 extra pounds that you normally get when you buy two 20 lb boxes, he said he'd give me samples for free in addition to the extra 5 lbs *and* the samples were really generous!

 

[Pigglebread]

I ordered from http://www.kmshayloft.com/hay/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1 once and was pleased, I'd order again but...

I realllly loved my last order of orchard hay from these people http://www.sierravalleyhay.com/
They are located in california for me and I pretty much get the hay over night! The smell and quality was superb

I also hear http://smallpetselect.com/timothy-hay/ is really great but I think I'll stick with sierra valley hay for now, they even sell some willow sticks

 

[SneakyDragon]

Personally, I buy timothy and orchard from the local feed store, but here are a list of online retailers you can buy hay in bulk from: http://wabbitwiki.com/wiki/Hay#Online_in_Bulk

 

[Imbrium]

I think I'll stick with sierra valley hay for now, they even sell some willow sticks

my bunnies love the willow sticks, too

 

[Pigglebread]

my bunnies love the willow sticks, too

My Claudio is definitely addicted to willow

 

[Junior_Babbeeyy]

Thanks for all the replies! Yeah a lot of the feed stores around my area only sell alfalfa. Hard to believe but it's true. I just got a hold of a feed store like 30 miles away that sells oat hay, Bermuda grass hay, & orchard. So that's a plus! What's the difference between orchard & Timothy. ?

 

[Imbrium]

orchard's a little softer, I think?

the good news is that you can store hay for a year or more as long as you keep it clean and dry, so if you really stock up when you go, you won't have to make the trip for another year

 

[Junior_Babbeeyy]

Yeah I know! We live in straight country lots of scary wild animals & the usual farm animals. It's hard to keep things fresh here lol. But I'm gunna try to figure something out because our barn is full to the door right now lol

So would you suggest orchard or oat?

 

[tonyshuman]

Orchard is also sweeter. It's fine though. It's great to be able to offer a variety, so I'd buy all the types they have. The buns and I have not been impressed with the quality of farm-bought hay here, so we use it for lining the litterboxes and Oxbow (which we can guy in 50lb boxes from the pet store) in the hay racks. They'll eat some of the farm hay, put definitely prefer the nice green Oxbow.

 

[Imbrium]

Yeah I know! We live in straight country lots of scary wild animals & the usual farm animals. It's hard to keep things fresh here lol. But I'm gunna try to figure something out because our barn is full to the door right now lol

So would you suggest orchard or oat?

DEFINITELY buy the orchard unless you luck out and actually find a cut of oat (early cut, I believe it is) that doesn't have ANY oats in it. if it has oats, then you have to pick all (or at least like 90%) of those seed heads out because the excess carbs are no good for bunnies. it gets really, REALLY annoying and tedious with how much hay bunnies eat each day. trust me, I know - until I discovered sierra valley's orchard/alfalfa blend, the ONLY hay that my bunnies would eat was stupidly expensive oxbow brand oat hay ($3 or so a pound and the feed store got it for me, so there weren't even any shipping charges) that was chock full of **** oats. I loathe oat hay with the fire of a thousand suns now, lol. if you can find oat hay without oats in it, then either one works (though if you have a bunny that tends to be a little on the chubby side, oat hay does tend to be a little higher calorie even with the oats picked out).

I keep my hay inside... I bought two half-bale bags from http://www.tackwholesale.com/bale-bags-c-11.html (opted for that instead of one full-bale bag because a) easier to move the bale around by myself if it's split in half and b) they can be stacked to take up less space). a feed store will split the bale in half and put it in your bags for free if you ask them to .

 

[minmelethuireb]

I had a hard time finding good Timothy hay locally for my rabbits. It seemed like everyone had stuff with weeds or unidentified grasses. I finally resorted to buying Oxbow hay online through Dr Foster and Smith. I get the 50-lb bale of Timothy and it ships for free. It's still pricey, but I figure it's worth it because it is REALLY good stuff. It's always green, fresh, and weed-free. I have literally not found one strand of something that wasn't Timothy hay.

Orchard grass is also good, and if you can get it fairly locally I'd go with that.

 

[Kittiebot]

I just bought a 10lb bale of alfalfa hay for my baby bun from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A7QGAH4/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

It was super fresh, and shipping was free since I have Amazon Prime, I think maybe if you spend more than $25 on Amazon you can get free super saver shipping if you don't have Prime, not sure. The bun loved the hay and it was cheaper than getting the pet store stuff and it was delivered right to my door!

 

[Junior_Babbeeyy]

Loving all the replies yeah I herd about the oat seeds & was pretty suspicious. Orchard sounds good though looks like a lot of people use it