Yikes 
Oh my goodness
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Different areas, different markets.
If that hay was on the high size of your local market and came with horrid weeds, I totally agree with your disgust with it and sending it back!!!
Have you been able to source a replacement for that hay yet?
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Killing off clover??? I have no doubt my horse is rolling around the rainbow bridge in agony. Clover was one of his two favorite taste treats. There are about 20 varieties in this area (300 in the U.S.) and you can see the changes during the season. When I hand grazed him he dragged me to his preferred choices - usually pink or medium red, and one that had humongous leaves. If he found a 4-leaf clover I expect he gobbled it down for good luck.
Clover is good for horses. It’s protein and fiber content make it a good feed source. A timothy/clover hay mix is what grows in this area. Horses avoid eating things that don’t taste good unless they are underfed or starving. Years ago my vet said there are a few clover varieties that can irritate their lips if they eat them. My horse passed up a few varieties and never had any sort of irritation. Buttercups aren’t good for them, but they don’t touch them even though they grow along fence lines or in areas where they don’t graze…
Why would you want to kill it off to cut down on drying time? It takes 3 sunny days around here to hay a field for horse hay. Day one is cut and tett (tedd), day 2 tett again so it dries properly. Day 3 rake into rows and bale. That’s for horse hay. Anything else is considered cow hay. It can be moldy and damp but cows don’t care. Liming in the fall killed off most of the weeds without damaging the clover.
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Luckily they had other low sugar Timothy orchard grass hay and picked up the milkweed and replaced it for me.
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Well that is excellent!
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You may have consistently better weather for making hay than other parts of the country. I don’t like clover in my hay for that exact same reason…
Last summer, the week we tried to make second cutting, we had a forecast of 10 clear days. It rained every third day that 10 day period.
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My ex-bf who farms hay, among other things, tried not to have clover in his hay for the simple fact that it dries looking black and his horse customers didn’t like the look of it. No skin off my nose, my horses didn’t mind one bit, nor did I.
As far as milkweed, I have baled a little here and there and my horses don’t eat it. I always have to clean that up.
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The proper types of clover can be fine in pastures, add to a mixed foage for grazing.
The clover in hay fields has too many downsides here, to want it as part of my hay crop. We have high humidity over summer, which affects how fast cut hay crop dries. Despite predictions, weather can be very unpredictable for drying, baling, getting bales under cover to prevent getting rained on.
Clover with the big leaves takes MUCH longer to fully dry than grasses, often 2 days more, even with tedding, raking, almost constant drying breezes! Volunteer clover was taking over, almost 1/3 of the fields in clover with more spread each year. It actally produced more hay bales than the grass did. Horses did like the baled clover despite the terrible appearance, they cleaned it up. I could not have sold it, looked like baled brush, full of hard stems, dark brown (to be safely dry to bale). Appearing like 2-3yr old hay, left in an open shed to weather, despite just being baled hours ago!
Also, being volunteer clover, we were unsure of the variety/s we were cutting., could be Red or Alsike, both poor choices for feeding to horses. Who wants to deal with YEARS of photosensitivity on your equines? I have seen horses with it needing the daily attention if they were outside in daylight. A very ugly problem to deal with when it can be avoided.
Locally here, you almost never find clover hay because of the problems with getting it dry enough to bale, not molding. Leaves fall off quickly when hay is that dry, not making it to the animals, who may not enjoy eating just the hard stems.
I do have horse safe clover in my pastures, along with other forages, grasses, to have a good variety of grazing (if we get good rains) all season long. I mow pastures high, regularly, keeps things growing so we don’t need to feed hay in summer.
Not willing to have possible reduced hay production, should cut clover get wet again, with clover adding so much extra time to get baled. So the clover is gone from hay fields now. I will have fields sprayed again if clover starts moving in again
We try to get the grass hay cut, dried and baled, on the wagons, in 3 days. We seldom get a bigger window of dry weather much longer than that. High humidity, heavy dew nightly, affects drying times, shortens the day hours we can bale. The big drying windows are usually drought times. Hay is in, new grass is not growing back. Each summer is different recently. Drought was June this year, not a drop of rain. While the year before it was July and first 2 weeks of August, after almost continuous rain thru May and June. Keeps us on our toes!
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