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[RC] Tasty Hay or Not, what makes the difference? - Connie Owens

I have a perplexing hay situation going on and need info from those in
the know on Ridecamp!

I am a barn manager of a private boarding barn and take care of about 10
horses or so at any given time. I am a huge believer in feeding as much
hay as possible and our main hay is coastal bermuda grass hay. Our hay
supplier right now has some pretty nice hay, and the horses clean it up
and seem pretty happy with it. Recently, the hay man is having truck and
job dilemmas and can only bring me a few days worth at a time. I run out
of hay before he gets back to me and had been buying it from the feed
store ($$, good hay though). So, a friend of the barn owner says he has
some good hay for sale. We've gotton hay from him in the past and
sometimes what he thinks is good hay is not what we think is good hay!
In the meantime, we get 50 bales from the friend to tide us over until
regular hay man can bring us our big load (which is already paid for).

He brings the hay and for all practical purposes it looks to be good
hay. Not as nice as the regular hay guys, but pretty decent. It's very
clean, good leaf, soft not too fine stem, bright green to light green in
color, no dust, no moldy smell or old musty smell (in fact, doesn't have
much of a smell at all), bales are 60-70 lbs. I'm thinking the horses
will eat this up!

THEY WILL HARDLY EAT IT AT ALL!!!

I can't believe they won't eat this hay! What would be in this hay that
would make them not eat it? It seems to make a good bed though. I even
had a friend of mine buy some hay from him and her horses won't eat it
either (this was before I saw that the horses wouldn't eat it).

The grower even had this hay tested for protein (9%) and ADF of 30 to 40
I think he said.

Any ideas, I would like to pass on to the grower as we might have him
come take the hay back.

Thanks!

Connie
Ft. Worth, Texas


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