Question for people feeding teff in the PNW

[PonyRiderMom]

I am feeding teff hay due to various horse health issues.

We moved up here in the summer. The first two or three batches of teff hay I got were gorgeous – light bluish green, bales were clean, flakes easy, very little in there besides teff.

The last three batches I’ve gotten, from two different suppliers and three different sources, have been pretty bad. Mostly the problem is that it looks like all of them are at least 25% something other than teff. I don’t know what that other stuff is, but the horses don’t want to eat it.

I’m just wondering, if there’s anyone else who lives up here and feeds teff, is this just the way it is? Will there always be some good batches and some bad batches? When I was feeding coastal hay in Texas, I very rarely got even one bale that was problematic. Maybe one in 100 I’d either need to toss or I’d have to pick junk out of. Now it’s two two-ton deliveries and about 10 bales I went and picked up myself at Wilco, and they are all disappointing. I can still feed them, it’s just that a lot is getting wasted.

I’m wondering if I should look into increasing my hay storage space so I can buy more when there’s good batch. OTOH, I don’t want it getting damp and moldy before I can feed it.

I don’t know. Do I just need to lower my expectations?

[4horses]

Hmm. I would say either change hay or change hay suppliers. My neighbors grow hay and are pretty careful about spraying for weeds, fertilizing appropriately, and harvesting at the appropriate time. I buy directly from them as I know what I am getting.

Other farmers are far less careful about weeds or how they store hay. Or they allow it to get too mature and harvest it so late it is barely edible.

If you cannot get clean hay, i would start looking for something else.

[clanter]

Was just wondering how much the Teff is in PNW? Here it is about $600 a ton.

We have been feeding Teff for on to five years, the supplier we use has never had any quality problems other once when we got some bales that storm debris baled into some bales, all of those bales were promptly replaced within hours at no charge including no pickup or delivery fees

As a supplement we also feed Standlee Teff pellets

[lenapesadie]

I’m not in the PNW, SE Gulf Coast actually. That said my Teff is trucked in from Ohio and sold to me via a dealer. The dealer claims there was a fire (at a storage facility?) which wiped out a large amount of stock. Dealer claims the only remaining Teff she could get is sub par. So my horses are begrudgingly eating Timothy. Perhaps your dealers are also experiencing a similar issue?

In years past, my Teff has been of the same good quality year round

[Obsidian_Fire]

I’m in the PNW, have plenty of friends feeding Teff, have not heard of any issues with the quality. I’d be asking my supplier for a better quality product or finding a new one… and I’ve personally never seen a batch of Teff be anything less than good! Certainly not weedy or filled with who knows what.
@Clanter, Teff around here is $500+/ ton.

[Obsidian_Fire]

@Clanter, a little more sleuthing finds “local” grown Teff for 395/ton, and it looks really nice, is tested too.
My local hay guy is over 500/ton and that’s in line with most of what I see coming from E. Oregon.

[beowulf]

You got a photo of what “the other stuff” is? For us hay nerds.

[Calvincrowe]

Yes, Teff is grown in quantity here in the PNW (Willamette Valley/Central Oregon). OP- the PNW is a BIG region, can you narrow it down a bit so we could perhaps provide known suppliers of quality hay? Obsidian Fire is SE Portland-ish, and I’m in the north of PDX area so we could hopefully guide you. We occasionally get some “hay brokers” who are fake or provide poor quality hay and then “disappear”.

Hays that are sold by brokers or farmers are running between $395-$450 a ton right now (these are generally 120lb, 3 string bales), including teff.

[JB]

Teff seed is expensive, and growing good Teff is an art, which is why it’s often hard to find quality Teff, if you can find it at all.

Pictures of the not-Teff would help, and you can also ask your county ag agent for help identifying

It’s possible it’s not even the not-Teff that the horses are snubbing, it could be the Teff itself if not grown properly

[rulex]

I would also be curious to see photos of what the horses are leaving behind. I fed teff last winter and got nice stuff. This summer I got a bale along with a pony I bought to transition his diet, and it was full of some kind of weed/plant he was not interested in eating. Very different from the teff I’d fed last winter. I was able to source enough low sugar hay this winter that I didn’t have to go the teff route again.

I think like anything else, there are good suppliers and not great ones and you need to be careful what you get.

[teamfire]

Yes, I found certain hay makers make better hay. “Steven’s Hay” grown compressed teff bales are almost always gorgeous. Other compressed bales tend to be good but I have indeed found other weeds in it.

I do have a picture for those interested cause I was trying to figure out what it was, will post when I find it.

[teamfire]

These ones were extremely hard and almost stick like.

[rulex]

Yes that looks like the stuff my pony was leaving behind. Stick like and stalky. I wonder what it is. That said, I didn’t have that stuff in the bales I bought last winter from a different supplier.

[Showbizz]

Could be tarweed?

[PonyRiderMom]

OK… I guess the unasked question in my original question was, how reasonable is it to expect them to eat this stuff, like should I dump it and not give them more until they’ve eaten at least most of it? So to that end I’ll post some pictures I just took.

The thick stemmy stuff seems like some kind of reed to me. No one will touch it, and I wouldn’t expect them to. I’ve gotten that in multiple different batches of hay. As for what else I’m seeing, in this latest batch there’s these seed heads that I suspect aren’t teff, and then there’s clearly at least two kinds of grass in here. The horses are just picking through it and tossing most of it out.

So can anyone tell me what this is and whether I should try to make my horses eat more of it?

[PonyRiderMom]

Wow, how did you find someone you could trust to bring you good quality hay? It’s ironic to me that you are in the gulf coast but getting teff trucked to you. I wish I could find someone to bring me a load of coastal hay! I just realized yesterday that while I don’t have a barn to store a whole truckload, maybe I could get them to just leave the container, like they do at feed stores, and I’d use that to keep it in. I have a pad where they could leave it. I have no idea if that’s something anyone would even consider, but I’d honestly rather be feeding them coastal hay than teff hay if I could somehow get it.

[PonyRiderMom]

I’m in Kitsap County, across the Puget Sound from Seattle.

[lenapesadie]

The girl I buy from is a dealer for Ratzlaff. When she first got started, they did just drop and switch out semi trailers. But I dunno how long they’d be willing to let a trailer sit like that.

Maybe a shipping container (connix box) would be worthwhile? We have one (not for horse stuff) and it stays dry as a bone and was relatively inexpensive.

My horses won’t eat Bermuda hay reliably, so I don’t bother with it anymore even though it’s much less expensive and I can get good horse safe varieties locally.

[JB]

If they’re eating the actual Teff, and not eating the junk, and the junk is a small % of the bales, then I’d settle for that.

If they’re not eating the Teff well, there’s not a lot you can do about that other than get more hay and try to sneak some of it in

if the junk is a fairly significant portion of the hay, then I’d be working to get my money back