question about hay

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brillmini

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Hello

I was just wondering what do you think is the best hay for my two 6wk old piggies. I just bought a shops own make at the time which they do tend to nibble on but I'm not sure if I should be buying a better one?

Thanks for your help
:)
 
timothy is good, and i mix it in with alfalfa hay which is meant to be great for young guinea pigs because it has extra calcium which they need. Not sure what age you should stop giving them though
 
brillmini said:
I was just wondering what do you think is the best hay for my two 6wk old piggies.
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I was under the understanding that young pigs under 6 months should be eating Alf-Alfa hay, and 6 months and older pigs should be on Timothy?

I feed Timothy and Coastal hay...but, my girls are a year or so old.
 
I got timothy hay in the end they seem to love it as it's got dandelion and marigold in to hope it's ok as they are only young.
 
Its fine, all piggies can eat solids from day one and hay is the most important part of there diet, so long as they have it on offer unlimited all the time it doesnt matter too much which hay it is, just not too high in calcium (like the alfalfa).

I give my herd (and others) a good mixture. They mainly have the excel timothy hay and forage but i also buy a 4kg bag of Oxbow hay they absolutly love. They also get mixes of timothy hay by woodlands, the camomile and birch bark by excel and they also have ready grass and alfalfa from time to time, but both of these are high in calcium, so i try to feed in moderation these two.

They love a good variety.

x.
 
Mine get bog standard hay from a farm, getting some bales from this years cut this weekend and frequently drive past the field they came from so can't really get much closer to knowing the source lol

They get some of the excel herbage from time to time but quite frankly it's way too much of a rip off to feed all the time. When shops charge you £5-£6 for what is barely a section of hay, when you can buy a bale - around 8 - 10 sections - for the same price, I am too money concious to pay the price for some packaging and a nice label
 
Doeylicious said:
Mine get bog standard hay from a farm, getting some bales from this years cut this weekend and frequently drive past the field they came from so can't really get much closer to knowing the source lol

They get some of the excel herbage from time to time but quite frankly it's way too much of a rip off to feed all the time. When shops charge you £5-£6 for what is barely a section of hay, when you can buy a bale - around 8 - 10 sections - for the same price, I am too money concious to pay the price for some packaging and a nice label
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Animed do Excel Herbage for £3.83 a bag and free postage. I don't use farm hay anymore because the dust hasn't been extracted. I did in the 80s, also used to get binbags of shavings from the timber merchants - aaargh! Glad we know a lot more now and can get better stuff! :)
 
I should also mention that now that my piggies have a hayloft they're not spreading hay everywhere and then pooing and weeing all over it which does save a lot of money because there's less wastage ( I have herbage/timothy and meadow hay in the loft ). They also like hay cakes so I put the meadow haycakes downstairs on the fleece for when they can't be bothered going "upstairs", these usually take a while for them to get through and keeps them busy as they all employ different techniques for extracting the strands from the cake, not to mention the other uses they put them to: pillows, seats..... :)
 
AndreaJane said:
Animed do Excel Herbage for £3.83 a bag and free postage. I don't use farm hay anymore because the dust hasn't been extracted. I did in the 80s, also used to get binbags of shavings from the timber merchants - aaargh! Glad we know a lot more now and can get better stuff! :)
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If my horse eats it, my pigs can eat it, simple as, sorry! As I say I know the source and if the bales are dusty we send them back as the horses won't eat them.

Decent hay is easy to come by if you know what you are looking for, people just seem to think because it has a nice wrapper it is clearly much better when all they need to do is sniff the bale to see the quality/estimate when the cut was. I have had fancy pants bagged hay that was far dustier and mouldy as it had been stored in a plastic bag for x months - hay should in fact NOT be stored in plastic at all as it should be able to breath.

I know plenty thanks, but I also know I am on a budget and with 15 pigs those piddly bags of Excel Herbage don't even last a week. A bale of hay lasts three and is currently only £2 more. Mine have it as part of their bedding too as they are outdoor and need something to keep them warm.
 
Sorry, wasn't criticising. Just commenting on how things change, my Mom always wishes she knew about chondroitin etc when we had our first great danes but it wasn't even available then ( not in dog food form anyway ). I don't know anywhere locally that I could get Timothy hay, it's all meadow hay. Don't know where I'd store it either as our outbuildings are all sandstone and get quite damp in the winter.
 
Mine is just meadow as I was told by my vet Timothy is a bit rich for all the time.

Dampness in outbuildings is a problem though, I keep mine in a garden storage unit inside a hay bag (large canvas bag thing designed for, unsurprisingly, keeping hay in ;) ) you have to also be careful there are no micies or raties to make a home out of the hay, as their urine is most definitely not piggy safe!
 
Yes, we do have a resident vole population in our sheds - I think they'd find it a bit too hard to resist! :)
 
We feed farm hay too - at £5 a bale you can't beat the value. It's not the freshest stuff this time round, but last time we bought a bale they'd just cut their field, so the next one will be much better. I'll be doing an order from hayforpets for a bale of the timothy and rye but that will be treat hay that'll be spread on top of the meadow. Like Doey I have a lot of mouths to feed (19); so the excel stuff is far too pricey to be viable. If my dad's in a good mood he might buy them a bag, but now they get mountains of meadow hay and it's cheap so they can munch as much as they want! They don't care that it's not posh stuff, they just want to munch it!

For people with smaller numbers of pigs, the excel ones are nice; but don't necessarily be fooled by the branded stuff... None branded stuff can be just as, if not more, tasty as the expensive stuff! However, if you want to give them the posh stuff but find it gets pricey, go for a mix of meadow and timothy!
 
ghostbusterbunny said:
We feed farm hay too - None branded stuff can be just as, if not more, tasty as the expensive stuff!
CandyFloss said:
Mine really like Oxbow Timothy Hay
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As I have mentioned before, I am surrounded by hay fields here, and there are hay patches on my own land, so all I have to do is go out and cut some. I don't have the energy all the time, though, so I saw a small-animal package of timothy hay in the local farm supply store, a package that bragged on the cover that it came in "blocks that can be separated, animals love it, yum!" I bought it and took it home and opened it and was SO disappointed at the poor quality and the dustiness; it was like having a pile of dry sticks that poured out of the bag. that I took it back to the store. The store clerk said that "people buy it all the time"; I said that well then, maybe I just got a bad bag, but I'm certainly not going to feed it to my guinea pig, and I got my money back. I checked out some Web sites that have piggie supplies, and saw the Oxbow hay types, and if it is like their listings, it should be a product that I want to keep on hand.

Doeylicious said:
OOh voles, cute, you will have to get some photos I do like a vole, they are so rare these days.
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Voles! I am surrounded by voles. This is why there are so many raptors around my house, a plentiful supply of voles. I haven't found any this year yet, but every year before, every couple of days in the summer I would find a vole or two that the cats brought in. Sometimes they would still be alive, and I would try to save them, but I think the shock of the entire situation is what did them in eventually. Their fur IS quite beautiful and soft. They are so wild, though, that if one had survived I would eventually have released it rather than keeping it as a pet.
 
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