Chaff vs Bales

[Bellebelle]

Hey, down here, none of the baled hay is good quality. Its soo bad and dusty our Alpaca's won't even touch it, and they don't have a blade of grass in their paddock. Sometimes we find good quality hay,then the shed is stocked full and i bring a bale down for the pigs but usually its just bad quality. For some reason though, chaff is always available, its good quality, nice and green and sweet smelling. Can i just give the pigs the chaff? Then at least they'd have nicer hay to eat rather then the crummy stuff we have for the cattle and alpacas. The alpacas get pellets as alternative and the cattle have a 100 acres to run on so they are still okay.

I live way out in the country in NSW, Australia. There's only two feedstores in the area (aka within an hour drive) and they both stock the same sort of dried out hay.

Emma

[C&K]

I think it depends on what you mean by "chaff".

From what I understand, it can mean either seed castings and other parts of cereal grains that are not eaten by humans.

Or, it can mean hay that has been cut by a special machine while being harvested, so it is in really short lengths.

If it is this discraded cereal grain, then I would not feed them much of it, but if it is indeed hay, just cut differently, then it should be fine.

You need to find out, is this "chaff" from grass hay, or cereal grains.

[Bellebelle]

The chaff is just hay cut to about 3-4 cm lengths. We always have it here, it definately not cereal grains

Emma