If you want grass hay bales proper, it can be had. The racehorse people want it and are willing to pay dearly for it. If your supplier doesn’t carry, then try calling the feed store that covers Santa Anita (since IIRC you are in southern CA?) and I’m sure they have some, though at $20+ a bale for sure.
My grass hay is grown across the street so is pretty affordable. Feed stores in my area usually buy grass hay from Oregon, so there’s the shipping cost, but at least fuel prices are low now.
The problem with the food processor is that it will probably handle only a cup at a time or so, so even doing two quarts on a daily basis would be very tedious until the day the motor blew.
One less thing to pack. :lol: Obviously, I am NOT a dedicated cook.
I´ll try to find another manager to pester–the guy I talk to is always afraid he´ll order too much product.
I did buy one of the compressed Timothy bales–the horse I wanted it for will not touch it. I can get Farmers Warehouse alfalfa pellets; didn´t know they made grass pellets. I use the Kings Carboraider line for my metabolic girls; I´ll visit the website to see what else they might have.
I´ve never seen Lucerne Farms stuff anywhere here, at any store. I´ll check Bar Ale, too.
Thanks for all the information!! I don´t like feeding alfalfa pellets to horses that get alfalfa hay, and they pout if they don´t get just as much as the horse in the next stall.
The true fact is that timothy is just not as tasty as the other hays around here. Orchard grass seems a bit more desirable. I’ve watched horses turn their noses up at $25/bale fresh race horse timothy several times…
Grass hay has nothing on the taste of alfalfa. If you can get some chopped grass hay with molasses on it, then you have a good chance of it being eaten by your horse. The horses in our barn are on grass hay. Give them a serving of chopped alfalfa, and they immediately go for that first.
[QUOTE=Texarkana;8538576]
Just some ideas you may be able to request at your TSC:
My local TSCs sell Standlee compressed bales of timothy hay. It’s pricey, but not much pricier than buying Standlee brand cubes or pellets. They also occasionally stock chopped forage (both Lucerne Farms and Dumor brand) that’s an alfalfa/timothy blend.
The Standlee timothy/alfalfa cubes soak A LOT faster than the FSI alfalfa/bermuda cubes. The FSI brand cubes are so incredibly hard… they do indeed take forever to soak. Yet the Standlee timothy/alfalfa cubes are soft enough you can flake them apart with your hands.[/QUOTE]
The standlees I get here on the Midwest are hard as rocks and take a good couple of hours to soften
The quality of grass hay can be terrible in Nor Cal. I’ve had horses drop weight like you wouldn’t believe randomly. I’d take the OPs word for it that its not available.
I wouldn’t however try grinding cubes in a food processor!
Humour
I acknowledged that without hot water 15 minutes might not be sufficient.
I am well aware that there are brands which are too tightly cubed. I have the luxury of usually avoiding those brands. When I don’t, hot water still makes them mush in 15 minutes where cold water might take days.
[QUOTE=roseymare;8539117]
The standlees I get here on the Midwest are hard as rocks and take a good couple of hours to soften[/QUOTE]
I agree they are hard as rocks, but if you use enough hot water, you can get them soaked in 5 minutes (yes the cubes!)
[QUOTE=Hunterkid;8539215]
I agree they are hard as rocks, but if you use enough hot water, you can get them soaked in 5 minutes (yes the cubes!)[/QUOTE]
That’s what we do every morning. Hot water, good to go in just a few minutes.
Me too. And if you’re really in a hurry, just dump on a kettle of boiling water. Pretty much instantaneous.
[QUOTE=Hermein;8538225]
They sell timothy/alfalfa cubes. I´ve asked for plain timothy. They´re ¨working on it.¨
Just like most chain stores, some of them are great, others are not so great.[/QUOTE]
I think you can order from the TSC website and have it delivered free to the local store.
My local feed stores in AZ always carried Bermuda pellets. If you can get those,I suspect they are lower NSC than Timothy,but don’t know for a fact.
[QUOTE=roseymare;8539117]
The standlees I get here on the Midwest are hard as rocks and take a good couple of hours to soften[/QUOTE]
Interesting. Are they alfalfa/timothy mix? Because the Standlee straight alfalfa cubes have a different texture than the mixed ones I buy. I intentionally buy the alfalfa/tim for the fact that the soak the most quickly out of everything available. Hope that doesn’t change!
If you really want to break down hay cubes, get a wood chipper. Some people at my barn use a small electric one for that purpose and it works great. The more impatient ones use a bigger mulcher and it will pulverize a bag of cubes in a few minutes. 
Nope straight alfalfa, I misread your post. Oops. Its alfalfa or nothing here. Probably because hay in all bale forms is still relatively cheap as lots of people still grow it.
Hot water does work better but it still takes these longer than 15 minutes. And my water heater is on maximum. You can make coffee with it. We don’t have kids and it is gas so we leave it on high because I do like a scalding hot bath. LOL.
Has anyone tried a blender?
As to wood choppers ,I bet Harbor Freight has small ones.
Oh my mare won’t eat soupy ones so soaking 8 hrs works best for me.
http://www.amazon.com/LawnMaster-FD1501-Electric-Chipper-Shredder/dp/B004352KE2/ref=zg_bs_3753621_1
OP my sister has a 30+ year old mare who has little to no teeth left so she gets cubes soaked and broken up by hand twice a day. My sister briefly mentioned trying a food processor but we decided it wouldn’t work. She wants to be able to grind hay, rather than cubes, and is going to try the leaf shredding in the link above. Not sure if it would work for cubes or not.
I feel your pain on the availability of feed. Some of the feeds people recommend, I’m like where on earth do you find that?! I’m in Wyoming, still waiting for our first TSC to open. I have another store similar to TSC, but all I can get is Purina and Nutrina. Which is fine; I feed Nutrina with no qualms. But the struggle is real.
An old friend of mine had an ancient toothless Arab that he fed by running his homegrown hay through a leaf shredder. Kept him going for years.
[QUOTE=sascha;8539193]
I am well aware that there are brands which are too tightly cubed. I have the luxury of usually avoiding those brands. When I don’t, hot water still makes them mush in 15 minutes where cold water might take days.[/QUOTE]
These cubes wouldn’t break down in hot water, either. Even boiling. And avoiding them wasn’t an option for that particular horse. Options were: break them down with a hammer prior to soaking or run them through some sort of mill. My friend did the former, then the later.
That may not be the norm, but it DOES happen.
The standlee cubes I get from TSC I soak overnight and even then there are some middle bits that are still rock hard. I have to fish through the mush every morning pulling them out so my toothless coming 36yr old doesn’t choke on one.
Hot water helps heaps, but not always entirely.
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