very hard grass stems in my hay

[ctinaw]

Hi all. I went to pull out a big glob of thanksgiving hay for my pigs and felt some VERY hard pieces in there. I picked through to make sure I had them all out. It was about five long pieces or so that appeared to be the stalks of the grass. They were crispy like a small twig. I took them all out. I'm assuming those are not ok for the pigs - or are they? I guess the only thing that worried me so much would be if they got poked with it because it was very hard like a stick. It was Kleenmama's bluegrass.

[Ly&Pigs]

Just toss pieces like those out. That way you avoid things like hay pokes/injuries. Even in the best of hays there will occasionally be foreign material or hard stalks of grass/twigs/etc. KM doesn't bale the hay herself, she buys it from top hay farmers.

[Wheek Weak]

The batch of bluegrass that we just got from KMs also has some hard stems (our orders are probably from the same cutting). We just pick them out and throw them away.

We used to buy local hay in square bales - it would take me a long time to pick through each handful cleaning out stems, twigs, weeds, stickers, mud clods, etc. It's nice to just have a few pieces to pick out now and then since we've been using KM's hay.