Has Anyone Sprayed Dusty Hay?

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Dilly's Piggies

Dilly's Piggies

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I'm down to the last 8kg ish of my 22kg Oxbow timothy hay, and I'm quite disappointed that the entire remaining contents are short strands with dust, no more nice long strands. Lately I've been very picky about what parts of the bale I use as some of my pigs have breathing problems relating to the dust, all snuffling and sneezing has stopped since I began being picky and only feeding the lovely long strands in the bale. So now I have to go through the hay and pick out the better parts and seed heads, it's so bitty that it's hard to just shake it like I have been doing. I want to just throw the whole lot away but my new box won't arrive until Friday, so we have a little while to wait.

In College I studied Equine, and some horses had dust allergies and had to have their hay soaked, I don't think I'd do this with the pigs hay but I'm considering lightly misting/spraying with water, just enough moisture to make the dust stick. It sounds like it would work, but I wondered if anyone else has tried this and if it was successful?

Hopefully the next batch won't be so dusty. :)
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I have not heard of that been done. Oxbow small bags are often dusty at end of back but the larger bags seem to be much better in my experience
 
Never heard of Oxbow being that dusty , but when l used to buy 2 string bales from the falm, l used
To put a Cople of leaves at a time into an outdoor pig run and blow it with an industrial air blower
It was very effective , l used to de dust a bale and store it in obiuse hessian sacks
1 two stringer would fill approx 4 sacks
 
I used to have a horse who needed his hay soaked, and it worked very well for dust reduction without spoiling the hay.
But I would be very wary of doing this for piggies for a couple of reasons.

Firstly horses who have soaked hay are usually eating it from a hay net, which is hung up in the corner of their stable. It doesn't matter if the hay is damp because they just eat it. Plus an average horse will polish off the entire hay net in a few hours (or at least mine did!).

With guinea pigs they often climb into their hay tray or rack, or will pull hay down and lay on it, and I would be worried about them doing this if the hay was damp. Plus I would also think that after a few hours in an environment that is less well ventilated than a large stable, that damp hay might start to get a bit 'musty'?
Also as guinea pigs have such sensitive digestive systems I wonder if the soaked hay might affect them differently and cause problems.

Of course all of this is just conjecture, but through I would put it out there anyway.
 
I've had a few people in pet shops recommend it to me when I mentioned that I was looking for a hay that wasn't dusty for my pig. They said that I should do it in very small batches, like a handful at a time and make sure to change it very often so it didn't have chance to go mouldy or musty.

I never got round to asking the vet about it though so never tried it.
 
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