Hello! I found a dead (of course) and flattened mouse (I believe) in a flake of hay when putting in my horse’s stall this morning. I threw the mouse out of course, but now am wondering if I need to throw out that flake of hay?
I’d throw the whole bale out to be safe, personally.
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If I see a dead thing out I do toss out all the hay around it. For a mouse I would not toss the whole bale. Just the flakes right around it. For something larger I would do the whole bale.
I typically find frogs and snakes in my bales.
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We find all manner of dead things in the hay. Just pitch what doesn’t smell right. If you are feeding squares it is easy to throw away a flake or 2. In a round bale it is a bit harder to figure out the area that might be affected so we go off smell.
I’d toss the flake, or the 2 flakes if the mouse was on the outside of its final resting flake.
If it’s a round bale, I just grab a large section around the deadness and pull it out. I don’t go by smell, just a pretty liberal pocket around the dead thing.
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This is gross but if the mouse was dry and the hay was dry I would throw out the flakes on either side but that’s it. A mouse is small and was unlikely to create a pocket of moisture that would make hay moldy or make me worried about botulism.
Someone I knew found an entire dead baby fawn baled up in hay. Now that would make me throw out the entire bale (and burn the barn down. GAG!)
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That is so easy to do too, since they do not move.
Yuck but…
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“Final resting flake”lol
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Be generous in what you throw out. Just had a vet tell a story of botulism in hay from dead animals. The flake on each side too. Why not?
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I found parts of a deer once, and a cat or kitten 
I have found a half dried out fawn leg in a bale before with the hoof still attached. Distrubing to say the least. I sometimes still wonder how it got there…
Vultures eating it and left a piece in the field? Ugh.
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As someone whose horse is currently in recovery from botulism… please throw the bale out.
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which type of botulism, if I may ask?
Hay is not grown in a sterile vacuum. There will have been many more mice (or other little critters) baled within the flakes that’ll never get noticed unless you fluff up every flake and screen it for debris.
Sure if you find something, you could discard the immediate surrounds either adjacent flakes or peel a bit deeper on a round bale, but you would drive yourself crazy looking for everything.
Even the pelleted/cubed feeds will have had the odd non-hay ingredient.
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We had a large snake baled up and it smelled something awful when we found it. That is why I go by smell @JB !
It ruined a fair amount of that round bale where it was.
I would not burn the barn down. I would just die instead.
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Sure, though at some point, all dead things stop smelling 
Maybe! The bale had been outside for a few days and stored where critters could potentially access. I thought maybe a fox left himself a cache for winter. Who knows lol now I make sure I wear gloves at all times when handling flakes!
I found a long dead, dry, brittle, paper thin (from being baled) snake in a bale. No smell I could discern, and I discovered it only after the horses completely avoided that hay net for two days and I was emptying it (I have several nets in a run-in and they can choose which to eat from). The experience gave me some peace of mind that they won’t inadvertently eat a random, unnoticed dead animal in their hay.
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