Horses being picky about hay?

[2DogsFarm]

[QUOTE=cheerio280;8027168]
So here is my question to all of you: If you had 5-10 “bad” bales out of 100 and couldn’t find anything obviously wrong with them, would you use the same hay supplier for your next load or look elsewhere? It’s hard to find someone to deliver the smaller loads to my area and this guy was great to work with. I think he has some first-cutting left (last load from him was second cutting)- would you try it, or no?[/QUOTE]

My suppliers always offer to take back or credit me for any “bad” bales.
Bad can mean anything from obviously moldy to horses did not eat.
10% (10 out of 100) is not a bad ratio, I’d ask about a refund/replacement/credit and use the same supplier.
And yes, I’d try his 1st cutting.

[goodhors]

Wow, I would be calling someone else if I got a consistant 10% bad bales in my hay loads. In most cases, I would not expect to have more than 5 bad bales in a LARGE load of hay, 400-500 bales on the semi truck. Often we don’t even get that many in a load. Hay guys take back bad bales, but we would be doing the running to trade for good bales. If you don’t buy close to home, the running can be expensive for fuel cost and wasting your time handling bales on, driving, bales off and replacement bales handled AGAIN once you get back home. But if you just dump 5+ bales, that is money totally wasted per bale. Maybe was OK when hay was $1 way back when, but not at $4-5 the bale.

We usually catch “bad bales” with the weight change from good to noticeably heavier bale when moving them into the barn storage or even onto the truck at seller’s farm. Heavier bales are put off to the side, we don’t take them to begin with. Exception is the treated hay in wet years, but then ALL the bales are heavy equally.

10% bad bales of FIFTY bales in a load for us, a whole pickup load of bad hay to return to seller, $250 cost to us for trash hay. Should NOT NEED to be returning that volume of hay for replacement. That is NOT an acceptable percentage level to us, we wouldn’t be shopping there next year unless NOTHING else was available. And around here there are quite a few hay sellers.

Check the bales of his first cutting. If it looks good, smells nice, it is probably good hay and I would buy a first cutting hay for our horses to eat. We prefer first cutting, they are all easy keepers, do fine on that kind of grassy hay. First cutting might have some early season weeds in it, weeds don’t return to be found in second or third cuttings of hay. Such weeds don’t bother the horses (or me) here, but can make my husband with touchy nose sneeze. The bales are NOT dusty or moldy, just have some seasonal plants that bother him.

[brody]

I think the question is are they really bad bales though right? Not moldy or dusty or heavy. Pretty hard to weed out no?

[goodhors]

[QUOTE=brody;8030865]
I think the question is are they really bad bales though right? Not moldy or dusty or heavy. Pretty hard to weed out no?[/QUOTE]

If I am not finding problems, checked bales for foreign plants they can’t eat, then the blame swings to the horse or myself, for feeding them more than they can consume.

I would decrease what is offered to horse, both inside and outside. I am not going to be encouraging him to pick and sort down the hay, leaving stems, by providing great quantity to waste. I can recognize weeds, see if he is not getting “good edible hay” by what is left. Not his fault then.

But seeing horses just waste hay for the heck of it, means I have fed too much for them to finish off. They get a much smaller serving outside the next day, can pick around to finish what got ignored the day before. Wasted hay is wasted money, can’t afford that. And certainly they might PREFER one hay over another. We feed the better hay inside, so they look at the “outside hay” off a different pile as less desireable. But once they are hungry, there is no wasting it, and ours don’t let themselves be hungry long even if the offered stuff is not quite as good as the inside hay.

[Libby2563]

[QUOTE=cheerio280;8027168]
So here is my question to all of you: If you had 5-10 “bad” bales out of 100 and couldn’t find anything obviously wrong with them, would you use the same hay supplier for your next load or look elsewhere? It’s hard to find someone to deliver the smaller loads to my area and this guy was great to work with. I think he has some first-cutting left (last load from him was second cutting)- would you try it, or no?[/QUOTE]

I think I would use the same supplier again if he was good to work with and the hay quality is generally what you want. I am just now encountering the same problem. I have 2 horses and a mini donkey, and every once in a while there’s a bale that they only eat reluctantly or won’t touch at all. One time when I rooted through the hay and smelled it I thought maybe it smelled a bit musty but nothing obvious or definite. I know my supplier will take back bad bales, but I too wonder how to draw the line on declaring them bad. Usually the bales are already open and sometimes partially eaten. It would be weird to save piles of questionable hay to give back to him, yes?

[cheerio280]

[QUOTE=goodhors;8030364]
Check the bales of his first cutting. If it looks good, smells nice, it is probably good hay and I would buy a first cutting hay for our horses to eat.[/QUOTE] The last load DID look and smell nice.

[QUOTE=brody;8030865]I think the question is are they really bad bales though right? Not moldy or dusty or heavy. Pretty hard to weed out no?[/QUOTE] Yes, exactly!

[QUOTE=goodhors;8031719]If I am not finding problems, checked bales for foreign plants they can’t eat, then the blame swings to the horse or myself, for feeding them more than they can consume.[/QUOTE] It’s not that I’m feeding too much and they’re not finishing it. I feed the same amount. Usually they eat all of it. With the “bad” bales, they eat little or none of it.

[QUOTE=Libby2563;8031978]I know my supplier will take back bad bales, but I too wonder how to draw the line on declaring them bad. Usually the bales are already open and sometimes partially eaten. It would be weird to save piles of questionable hay to give back to him, yes?[/QUOTE] :lol: My thoughts exactly.

Thanks again, all. I think I’m going to get at least one more load from the supplier. I’ll take a closer look at my storage and see if I can find anything suspicious there. If nothing else, the middle of winter is a really bad time to be looking for a new supplier. We’ll see how it goes!

[bathsheba8542]

I wouldn’t switch; this seems to be a problem many of us have. I feed orchard grass/alfalfa, straight orchard grass, and brome. Every once in awhile I open a bale that looks great, smells great, and they couldn’t be bothered. Sometimes I leave that bale for a few days and try throwing a flake again - then they eat it. Horses … right?

[csaper58]

What Abbie.S said. Some horses don’t like the hay conditioner. Sometimes it gets put on unevenly, and that can make my horse reject one bale over others in the same load.

Do you have a friend who would let you offer a handful of the bale in question to one of their horses? If the other horses decline to eat it, you can be pretty sure it is the hay.