It’s premium quality eastern Oregon orchard—I’m sure a cattleman would love it, but not at the price I’m willing to sell it for! Cow hay here goes for 1/4 the price of this. I put it on our local FB horse page, so hopefully someone can come grab a bale to test it, and then take the whole ton. I’m offering a “taster bag” so no one ends up with my problem. I’ll also ask the dealer if anyone else is having this issue.
Have you asked the seller to take it back? Trade it for something different? I would. Hay prices are way too high for this…
I put up a hair over 4 ton for just my one, and I’m hoping it’s enough. I say that because for the first time ever, I won’t have any pasture to supplement with. None. I still have ~15 bales left from last year which I am feeding out now, and part of me is considering just buying a bit more, now, while I know I can.
I suspect this will also put a dent in bagged hay products also. Such as cubes, hay pellets, hay stretchers.
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I put up a hair over 4 ton for just my one, and I’m hoping it’s enough.
if fed equally each day that would be a hair over 22 pounds per day
it is said " The average thousand-pound horse who relies on hay for all their forage typically eats fifteen to twenty pounds of hay per day."
Yes, I know this, and that’s what I plan for. X amount of alfalfa per day, the rest grass hay. But I’ve never gone without green grass, and I have an OTTB…. 
I’ve got a buyer coming to grab a test bale. I have zero pasture left— no rain since June here in SW WA, so I’ve been feeding hay all summer. I’m hoping to grab a ton more this weekend or next so I reduce my anxiety a bit!
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This has always bothered me. We feed our cows the best hay we produce just like every other animal we have on the farm here. I know there are people raising cattle who buy crappy hay, but since " you are what you eat" I wouldn’t do it.
My cows won’t eat suspect hay anyways.
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I bought a Harbor Freight canopy and texted my feed store to give them a heads up that I want approx four tons (or more). For my four, based on my math, thankfully I don’t have the one @Obsidian_Fire has… 
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Candyappy, that’s a good point. No disrespect intended to cows. I wish everyone thought like you.
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The cow hay remark is funny! I tried to be nice to our heifer and deacon calf. Got the nice 2nd cutting grass which she would not eat! I fed her the first cut grass purchased for the easy keeping horses and she loved it! The horses loved her 2nd cut grass, so I just reversed who got what. She really liked browse and rougher hay, grasses, weeds, than the horses. Kept the electric fences clean of any growth under them all summer. Shot that long tongue out and pulled the green stuff in. Saved me a lot of weed whacking time! I miss her help.
Locally there are about 4-5 kinds of “cow” hay, of varying nutrition. Dairy, heifer, steers, dry cows. None bad, pricing varies, but cows can eat and safely digest hay with their 4 stomachs, that are not tasty or good for horses. Even some moldy looking stuff will get picked apart to check for edible parts. Cows are different, and not in a bad way!
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Oh, believe me, the cows next door would literally crush my fences to reach this hay-- they are fed the cheapest round bales of “local” hay which is whatever grows native and naturally here, chock full of weeds, blackberries and crap. When there weren’t 48 of them (they double in number yearly as they just breed freely) I’d toss the scraps the horses won’t touch like I used to when there were just a handful of skinny, worm-ridden, ravenous cows and two donkeys there. Not now! We had to redo all the fencing along our shared line (roughly 900 feet) and add wicked hot electric to keep them from pushing over what was there before and ravaging our property. Yes, AC and I are on first name basis with this sad operation we live next to. I wish they’d feed better, as people driving by assume they are ours as there’s no house on that land, so they figure we own both properties.
We had to redo all the fencing along our shared line (roughly 900 feet) and add wicked hot electric to keep them from pushing over what was there before and ravaging our property
my once upon the time neighbors horses did the same thing, I talked to the neighbors about their horses tearing down the fence so would you share the cost to repair? They said no.
I put in a new fence-line ten feet inside my property line then tore down the fence (300 feet) that I had on the property line… then when their stock stepped onto my property I called animal control … neighbor was furious saying I removed the fence it was my fault… which I had as I had paid for it 100% and it was on the property line… they had to build their own fence
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That’s how my folks dealt, successfully, with a similar situation.
I know you didn’t mean anything by it but some people raising cattle feed nothing but the worst. I see some hay going down the road that isn’t fit to even haul knowing some poor cows are going to have to make due with that in the dead of Winter.
Kind of like saying " goats eat everything". They are pickier than the horses or cows!
Grass hay here is $6 a bale. Alfalfa from the guy up the road is $8.
Two stringers. The grass bales probably 50#, the alfalfa more (some heavier than others).
Kind of like saying " goats eat everything". They are pickier than the horses or cows
The goats my grand daughters have are very well taken care of, they are fed the same Teff hay we get for the horses but once the hay falls out of their feeders hits the ground is considered contaminated by them… that hay is then raked up to be fed to the next door goats who are not fed anything by their owners. Those goats will eat anything and ask for more. (both grand daughter’s and neighbor’s goats are same breed)
So it really depends on how hungry the goats are.
I just got two tons of Teff delivered yesterday, the delivery man said they are now selling an 18 wheeler load a month as people here are switching away from timothy hay which is evidently getting very expensive here.
Teff is $25.50 for a three string 130#/140# bale, the same as last year. He said when they got their first shipment of Teff it took them one year to sell it.
My goats are never without hay so maybe if they were actually hungry they wouldn’t be so picky…
On a good note we have been cutting hay and not only is it really nice but the yields are way up from what we cut before. Maybe other areas are lucky as well. We will sell this new stuff to our customer.
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