akane":2hszlggs said:
Even if feeding pellets if you feed timothy it's going to bring the protein way down to below 16% possibly even with an 18% pellet. If you are showing or raising for meat that is bad even if your stock that isn't currently breeding so we can't just say alfalfa pellet = grass hay, other feed = alfalfa hay. The use of the rabbits comes in to play too.
It's good hay, but it's also rather hard to keep from molding long before I can use it. That's a product of being in a humid environment, I suppose. It just doesn't keep well her
More likely you are buying bad hay or storing it poorly. Your relative humidity on the map is 68-80 while ours is 72-78 so little difference and hay keeps for a year easy. Odds are it's not properly dry when put up or has too little air flow. For small amounts of hay giant cardboard boxes are wonderful and for stacks layers of cardboard can help but properly cured hay in a building with some air flow it's unnecessary even if you're in florida.
No, it's the humidity in the area that I live in. Any kind of farm building around here is made with steel siding, and as such, it sweats as the humidity and moisture from cycling rainfalls runs directly onto hay bales. Putting cardboard boxes on it may slow it somewhat, but it won't do so signficantly well enough to make that much of a difference.
As I've said before in a previous exchange we've had on a similar conversation, it was also a problem at a horse farm which I worked on. The farmer I worked for at the time simply gave up on trying to buy and store it, as it molded before it would get used up, and that was with a rather large number of quarter horses which were being fed the stuff every single day and despite that he had state of the art facilities for his operation. We are talking trying to store it in the same barn which he packs full of bermuda grass hay and feeds from with little to no problem year round.
I also know that it's traditionally hard for me to use a bale of any hay before it goes bad, but the problem is significantly more difficult with alfalfa around here, and even harder to get rid of after it does so. The moment a mold spore shows up in the hay, I'm forced to discard it, and just come around here and try to find a farmer or other landowner who is kosher with the idea of you dumping anything on their property. Throw it in a dumpster, and you wind up in jail over that stunt.
__________ Tue Apr 17, 2012 10:40 pm __________
drowe005":2hszlggs said:
Do you have any Southern States near you Satinsrule? I was buying the same timothy and alfalfa from walmart but found out Southern States sells 50 pound bales of alfalfa for 12.99 and timothy for 14.99. Its crazy, $10 at walmart for 3 lbs., or 3 more dollars at S.S. for 47 more pounds. If you dont have a S.S. by you, I'd check with other local feed stores
Thanks for the 2 of yours opinions so far
I'm left to assume that "Southern States" is the name of some sort of farm supply chain or co-op, and if that's the case, no we don't have them here. The only farm supply chains we have here are Tractor Supply, Caldwell's (Purina chain), and a regional outfit called Atwood's.
I have come incredibly close to getting a small bale of alfalfa hay at Atwood's on a number of occasions, but I keep coming back to what I keep trying to tell Akane. I simply will not use it fast enough before it starts to mold and will be faced with trying to get rid of it afterward. That's a major obstacle for me.