Tifton Hay

[Saidinjester]

So my question is about hay. I know from reading, everyone says to feed timothy hay or alfalfa, but my parents live on a hay farm and I can get as much free hay from them as I want, but they grow Tifton hay. Anyone know if this is ok? They have several rabbits in the barn that eat it, and so far, my bun seems to like it just fine. Just curious. It just seems silly to me to buy hay when I can have as much free hay as I want....

Dad in one of the barns

Thoughts :?:

:bunnyhop:

 

[akane]

Any grass hay should be fine. They are all nutritional too similar to pick one over the other based on that. Some do stay green better than others and some are more stemmy or softer than others but that's about it.

 

[ottersatin]

That Hay looks GREAT, and it looks like it would
make great nesting material too!
Too bad you are not in upstate New York,
if you were I would like to purchase some of that
Tifton Hay.
Ottersatin. ldtimer:

 

[Saidinjester]

That Hay looks GREAT, and it looks like it would
make great nesting material too!
Too bad you are not in upstate New York,
if you were I would like to purchase some of that
Tifton Hay.
Ottersatin. ldtimer:

Thanks for the input!

 

[fuzzy9]

I'm so jealous!!!! :lol: Makes me really miss our little 10 acre farmette we moved away from 4 years ago! We had a beautiful hay field that produced such nice grass hay. Can't find that anywhere around here now, it's so hit or miss just finding good hay that isn't stemmy or loaded with alfalfa! People around here just don't understand grass hay.

 

[akane]

Grass hay is near impossible in Iowa too. 90% of the stuff sold as grass hay I call weed hay and wouldn't feed to anything but cattle. We do have a guy next to us that tries to bale good grass hay for his sheep but he's been constantly having problems with the field and never gets hay he's satisfied with even after he burned everything away with strong fertilizer, left it fallow for a year and a half, and then completely replanted. We immediately had a drought that year and the planted grasses failed to out compete the weeds so the field was back to weeds again. The guy we are getting hay from now doesn't do much grass but his hay is very well maintained with no weeds, he just got it all certified organic, and he cuts it at the ideal time instead of waiting to get the most hay. Most of the farmers try for quantity over quality and cut the hay late and stemmy with less nutrition. His clover and alfalfa hay has actually been more like stiff grass such as you get with some cuts of timothy instead of the sticks that most people bale. We found it's easier to get a low protein pellet or grain mix and feed good quality legume than try to get good quality grass with a standard rabbit pellet.

 

[BoxerMom]

Maybe y'all should move to Montana, grass hay is very common, sells for about $35/ton, and it's much much more difficult to actually find alfalfa/timothy hay lol

 

[Frosted Rabbits]

http://www.tifton.uga.edu/fat/tifton44.htm

An Analysis of Tifton hay compared to coastal . Tifton is a F1 Bermuda Cross. Looks like a good bet!!!