NE Ohio/NW PA Hay Resources

[QuackXP]

I live in the town of Youngstown, OH (about halfway in-between Cleveland and Pittsburgh on the OH/PA turnpike) and I’m looking to buy a whole or half bale of hay for my two little guys. Being a "city boy" all my life and farms don’t seem to be listed in the yellow pages I’m having a bit of trouble finding a starting point. With only two piggy’s should I only be looking a half a bale or less because they may not be able to eat it quick enough before it goes bad? I will be able to pick up the hay myself. Any resources would be helpful.

Also any reviews on the various bale bags out there would be nice.

 

[QuackXP]

Bump. Anyone?

 

[Percy's Mom]

If stored properly, that is in a dry place with lots of ventilation, hay can last for 6 months to a year or more. If you have room for a bale, go for it! It will probably be cheaper in the long run. If you can find good quality grass hay locally, that's perfectly fine. Personally, I buy my hay and pellets from Kleenmama at (broken link removed). Her quality and customer service are superb, and if you add the price of shipping to the price she lists for the product and divide by the pounds, you'll find that her products typically come to less than $1.50-2.00 per pound.

I can't help you out on the bale bags, but I know that there are several horse enthusiasts on the forum, so maybe one of them will come along and answer those questions for you. I keep my hay in a very large open Rubbermaid container that slides under my cage table.

 

[Ly&Pigs]

A place to start looking for hay locally would be feed stores, horse farms/stables. You can also look in your local papers to see if there are ads for hay for sale. Just look for good quality grass hay that is green (not brown) and good smelling.

 

[mamaslittlepigg]

I live in SW Ohio (Cincinnati) and I just purchased hay and pellets from Oxbow (broken link removed). I think I ended up getting 50lbs of 2 types of hay and a bag of pellets and even though the shipping was expensive it only came to about $2.00 a pound which is much cheaper than store bought (15oz bag for $5.00). It is supposed to arrive tomorrow and I ordered it on Friday, so it comes quick too!

 

[Erin8607]

I purchase my hay from a farm in Doyelstown, Ohio. Might be a drive for you, but might be worth it to save on shipping costs from the big companies.

The hay from this farm is compariable to oxbow during the summer, a little more brown in the winter but the pigs still love it.

The farm is called Bass Lakes, they are open weekends and holidays for fishing.

 

[Wheek Weak]

We live in Ohio also. We used to buy our hay from local horse farms, but (for some reason) the hay, no matter which farm we went to, lost it's quality. We would have chalked it up to the drought this spring, but the problem began occuring within the past couple of years.

We would have to spend a ridiculously long amount of time sorting through each handful to pick out the weeds, stems, stickers, mud clumps, etc., while the price per bale kept going up. We were getting more and more worried about harming the babies by missing something in the hay that would hurt them in some way.

We finally just gave up on the local hay and started ordering from Kleenmama's, even though the UPS shipping cost is outrageous.

Do you have any Amish farms near you, by any chance? If not, check around for horse farms. Horse farms are notorious for being picky about their hay, but most of them grow mostly alfalfa/grass mix. And, as I stated, our horse farms became very lax on the quality.

If you do find a farm that sells hay, just make sure to dig your fingers down into the bale to check for mold, dust, and moisture. Also, smell down into the bale to make sure it doesn't have a moldy, or dirty smell. It should have the sweet, good pasture smell of hay.