Oxbow Timothy Hay

Yes it should be okay to feed them orchard grass for now. they can have all sorts of kinds of grass. Bermuda, Orchard, Timothy, Alfalfa for pregnant and babies, and bluegrass are most known. Don't worry about it at all

They can have orchard grass exlusively. They don't need Timothy hay, just some sort of grass hay (excluding alfalfa for adults). Mine are free fed on bluegrass because my husband is allergic to timothy.

Thanks so much! Sent hubby off to get some orchard grass.

Has anyone else noticed that the Oxbow timothy hay has been less than stellar lately? I'm thinking it was just a bad cutting or something.

The oxbow hay that are sold at local stores around here never looks to great. I buy from KM whenever I can. The ochard grass from oxbow always looks better to me at the stores too. I think the stores by me keep the timothy on the shelf too long though.

In the beggining of the year and actually lately, Oxbow's quality has been downhill from normal. However, it is still better than Kaytee hay.

I grow bermuda grass, orchard grass and normal grass in pots, and feed it to my guinea pig. He goes bonkers over it.

Thanks, Slap! I was hoping I wasn't just overly "picky" here. It's just that I clean more hay out of the cage than they eat these days.

I'd LOVE to get some KM hay, but am gonna wait until we're moved and settled before I order. For now, we'll stick with Oxbow's orchard grass. *grin*

I could be wrong about this, but my daughter works with horses and I seem to recall he saying that the first cutting in the spring is poorer quality than the second cutting in the fall. So it would make sense that the current crop would not be as nice as it will later in the year. I also noticed they only had smaller quantities available for a while, so maybe there was bad weather or something that effected the crop.

As far as timothy vs. orchard grass, I'm allergic to timothy, so all I've used for several years now is the orchard grass. Louise is crazy about it, as are all the fosters I've had.

I think that KM is out until mid-July. I will be ordering 45lbs of the bluegrass/orchard grass as soon as she gets some in. It is amazing stuff.

Coopdog said:

I could be wrong about this, but my daughter works with horses and I seem to recall he saying that the first cutting in the spring is poorer quality than the second cutting in the fall. So it would make sense that the current crop would not be as nice as it will later in the year. I also noticed they only had smaller quantities available for a while, so maybe there was bad weather or something that effected the crop.

As far as timothy vs. orchard grass, I'm allergic to timothy, so all I've used for several years now is the orchard grass. Louise is crazy about it, as are all the fosters I've had.

Click to expand...

This is why they devide the timothy groups into three:
1st cut
2nd cut (reccommended)
3rd cut (best)

TipiDancer said:

This is why they devide the timothy groups into three:
1st cut
2nd cut (reccommended)
3rd cut (best)

Click to expand...

I've read that the 1st cut is best for cavies because it is more stemmy and hence has a higher fibre content, so it's preferred for cavies who might have a weight problem. Is there any truth in this at all? I know that my pigs greatly prefer the less stemmy stuff but I wondered whether I should be trying to persuade them to like the first cut?

Having said that, the only place I know of in the UK that grows Timothy only managed to get one cut last year due to the weather conditions. The Oxbow Timothy I sometimes find in our local petstore isn't labelled as either 1st, 2nd or 3rd cut. There's one online source of 2nd cut Canadian Timothy but it's very expensive. As long as they are eating lots of green grass hay is the actual cut something I need to worry greatly over or not?