One member (Imbrium) mentioned Sierra Valley Hay. They ship & the hay is beautiful & smells so fresh!
Oh, I also followed Imbrium's advice & got a couple of half bale hay bags to store the hay. I have limited space & storage only in my house, no garage/carport or outer buildings to protect/store the hay.
The Sierra Valley hay really is crazy fresh - I posted a picture in my blog the other day where Gaz was snubbing her new dig pool; she was sitting in the litter box eating from their hay manger. JBun commented that my bunnies' hay looked so good, she almost wanted to eat some! I don't remember off-hand which RO member it was that mentioned Sierra Valley hay when I was on the verge of giving up my search for a grass hay that my girls actually really liked, but I owe them one hell of a thank-you card!
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Before I ramble on about bale bags, let me point out that as much as I *adore* mine and am glad I bought them, there are other viable ways to store hay (all of which are much cheaper) - if you're on a budget, you'd be better off using something else.
The biggest advantage of bale bags over other storage methods is that they make it SO much easier and more convenient to transport hay or move it around since they've got a shoulder strap and possibly handles as well. Also, they add very little bulk and are malleable enough to shove into somewhat tight spaces - if you'll need to transport hay and you have a small car, they're a good bit more convenient than the alternatives. If you're getting hay delivered to your front door, though, bale bags aren't nearly as handy as they are if you're buying a compressed bale from a feed store and then having to bring it home and haul it inside.
Alternatives:
If you order bulk hay online from Sierra Valley or KMS Hayloft, it comes in 1-2 cardboard boxes with a plastic bag lining between the box and the hay. I'm living in Houston temporarily and my half-bale bags are back in San Antonio (and still full of coastal that I never got rid of, heh - was trying to find someone to give it to so I wouldn't have to throw out perfectly good hay), so I've yet to use them for Sierra Valley hay.
Instead, I've just been keeping the hay in the boxes it comes in. I wouldn't recommend that for "outdoor" storage (garage, shed, etc.), but I've yet to have a problem with it for indoor storage. If you buy a feed store bale, you could use large unscented trash bags and big cardboard boxes to achieve the same set-up. Mind you, my bunnies live in a huge x-pen set-up because they can't be trusted to run loose (they make the cats' lives a living hell) - if you plan to store the hay in an area your bunnies have access to (unless they're high enough up to keep bunns at bay), even a very casual chewer could make quick work of a cardboard box and plastic bag to get at the tasty, fragrant hay inside... leading to a tremendous mess.
Large plastic storage boxes (Rubbermaid bins and such) can also be used to store hay. They stack, contain the mess, all that good stuff... however, you'll want to drill or punch air holes in the box (around the upper part is good enough) if you're going to leave the lid on so that there's enough air circulation.
While bale bags are tough, durable and sturdy, I could see rabbits chewing holes in a heavy-duty nylon bag much more readily than a hard plastic storage box, which is something to keep in mind if you'd be storing hay within reach of your bunn(s). My girls are ridiculously destructive (as evidenced by the decimated coroplast in their condo) and even they - the bunns who can't be trusted with *anything* - can be trusted to leave storage bins alone!
If you're fortunate enough to have bunns that don't really go for the "destructive chewing" thing then bale bags might work as long as they're in an area with enough traffic that someone would interrupt any chewing before serious damage was done. However, if you wish to be able to store hay in your bunny's pen or in a part of the house that a free-range, chew-happy bunny has access to then plastic storage tubs are definitely the safest option.
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Anyway, time to ramble about actual bale bags in case someone is interested in buying them
I got my bags
here (and it sounds like Tauntz did as well) - the site was actually recommended to me by another RO member forever ago. A full bale bag is cheaper than two half-bale bags; I went with the half-bale bags, though, because they can be stacked to take up less space and they're much easier to haul around due to the weight being split between two bags (I bought mine to get an actual bale from a feed store (not knowing yet that my girls wouldn't eat it)).
I very recently ordered a "Folding Combo Feeder Bag" to try (again, not as good a value as a full-sized bale bag as the size is similar to a half bale bag) and I love it (also love that it was available in purple). The two bags are the same price if you only order one; however, the half bale bags are $3 cheaper a piece if you order 2+.
KMS hayloft sends a 45 lb order of hay in an 18'' x 18'' x 30.5'' box;
half-bale bags are 22'' x 22'' x 18''. In other words, two half-bale bags would be *perfect* for an order from KMS hayloft. The bags are the same shape as the boxed hay so you could transfer hay directly without having to "reshape" it. Each bag is 4'' wider/longer and 3'' taller than 1/2 the KMS box, so it wouldn't be an obnoxiously tight fit (or problematic if/when the hay expanded in volume a little after removing it from the box).
Sierra Valley sends 20 lbs of hay in a 16'' x 24'' x 13'' box; if you order two 20 lb boxes (+ 5 lbs free), they use two of those boxes taped together (so that UPS will consider it a single package) rather than one larger box even if both 20 lb boxes are the same kind of hay (the 5 free lbs is added to one box if you order one type of hay; if you mix-and-match, they give 2 lbs more of one/3 lbs more of the other unless you request otherwise).
The
folding combo feeder bags are 14'' x 24.5'' x 16''... while that's a more snug fit than the half bale bags are for KMS hay, the SV stuff is easier to transfer since it's split into two smaller/easier to maneuver lots. The hay is in a big plastic bag so you can lift the entire bag out at once (reducing decompression compared to taking it out a bit at a time), shove it into the bale bag upside down and then pull the plastic bag out, leaving the hay in the bale bag. It's packed in the bag/box loosely enough that it can easily be condensed a little to get it in the bale bag (ie it's not compressed like a feed store bale).
Since I've got four kinds of hay right now, I'm actually sticking with keeping the hays in the boxes they came in and putting a bit of each type into the new combo bag so I can have easy access to all the hays at once without having to store multiple big boxes in the living room. Because of the bag's dimensions, NIC grids fit perfectly as separators between the different hays
.
