What hay?: Help me stop my pig trying to poke her eye out.

[BlueBird]

Hi there,

My piggy Belle loves her hay, perhaps a bit too much! Today is the third time in a matter of weeks she's got a hay poke from hay. I'm fed up with pulling grass seeds etc out of her eyes so I'm chucking the current batch of hay out hoping I've just got a bad batch.

We usually buy a big farm bail because it's cheap but really good quality but I'm going to buy a bail from petsathome in the interim.

If anyone has any tips on where to get good quality hay that doesn't give pigs hay pokes (so much) or what I can do to avoid them. Me and my poor piggy's eyes would be much appreciated.

~Love an exhausted piggy mommy.

 

[Reenie]

Meadow hay is generally softer than Timothy hay, so you could use that for bedding, and any Timothy hay could be put in a hay rack, which reduces the likelihood of her getting right in amongst it......doesn't stop one of mine though.

 

[PigglePuggle]

Burgess excel do a very soft timothy hay with dandelions and marigolds- its very short pieces too- that's what Theo's eating post op so he doesnt scratch his delicate surgically altered stripy boy bits!

 

[DM030819]

@BlueBird Sometimes the more expensive hays, like Oxbow and Alfalfa King offer hays that are more like grass. I think Oxbow does a hay called Orchard Hay that's quite soft.

I completely understand your frustration. One of my boys Podrick pokes himself a lot, he even ended up with a nose bleed once from getting a hay stalk up his nose!

 

[Eriathwen]

I try to stick to really soft meadow hay if I can, luckily where I get it now is really nice, hardly any stalk bits and no seeds, I've only had a handful of hay pokes over the years, w of which were Bramble who throws her head about so it doesn't surprise me it's always her! One of my old herd got a grass seed lodged under her eye lid but other than That, meadow hay has been good to us!

 

[BlueBird]

Hi there, thanks for the advice all. I'd like to mention that the recent hay pokes have been while we were using a hay rack. The problem seems to be her getting small pieces on her face when she's pulling it down. Then making it worse when she rubs her face to get it off. All the pieces all seem to be realitively small stuff like seed casings or small tufts. On removing one the vet did say that our hay looked more like grass than hay.

Oh @Jaycey what a poor sausage. I hope he was ok. I'm dreading Belle doing that now.

 

[DM030819]

Haha @BlueBird He's absolutely fine. Podrick is a very unique little piggy so don't worry about your piggy being as silly as him.