Buying bale of orchard grass hay

[Sammiesmama]

I have been feeding my rabbits oxbow orchard grass but with 5 rabbits it is getting expensive. I am curious when buying a bale how do you know if it is just orchard grass and not mixed with say fescue? I found someone that had 1st cut orchard grass for $4.50 a bale but wanted to know how to make sure if its mixed or not because you can't always just take someone's word on it that it isn't mixed.

 

[whitelop]

If its mixed with another grass hay, then its not a big deal. As long as the majority of it is orchard then I wouldn't have a huge problem with it, if it were me.
Most all the grass hays have the same nutritional properties. Grass hay is just grass thats dried out, lol. Its all about the same.

You should just check to see what color it is. You're not that far from me and if its first cut then its from like July of last year and it might be a little yellowed, since theres no grass growing right now. Just make sure its green or mostly green, once it turns to yellow, it loses a lot of the nutritional things. I think you should be able to look at it and decide if its a good enough quality. You just have to use your best judgement.

Summer time is just around the corner, you'll be able to get some really fresh first cut soon enough. I can't wait for summer and that first cut! Its the best. But I understand your concern for expense, they eat a lot of hay!

 

[JBun]

If you are familiar with alfalfa hay, then it's pretty easy to be able to tell if the grass hay also has some alfalfa in it, cause the stems from alfalfa are different than the grass. If you aren't that familitar with it, then you'll just have to try and find a place that sells grass hay, that you feel is fairly honest. Sometimes they may say that it doesn't have alfalfa in there, and you may find a little, but that doens't mean that they were trying to mislead you. Sometimes you will get a little bit of other plant matter in your hay just as a normal thing. And a tiny bit of alfalfa isn't going to hurt anything.