Hay Are these alfalfa leaves? Very upsetting!

[Bethanyhb]

I am very frustrated with Small Pet Select, and on the verge of not buying from them again. I found these in my hay box the other night.



Can anyone confirm whether or not these look like alfalfa? This hay is supposed to be plain orchard grass. It is actually a replacement box, because a month or two ago, I asked SPS about some suspicious greens in my supposed plain orchard grass and they said that they had accidentally sent me the fancy orchard/alfalfa mix. One of my pigs has been dealing with calcium sludge for months now, despite my being careful to avoid everything high in calcium. I even switched to KMS pellets. But it doesn't do much good if I'm unknowingly feeding them alfalfa. I know some pigs are just prone to calcium problems, but this is new for Arwen and the alfalfa is awfully coincidental. I always liked SPS before, but now I don't see how I can trust them to send me the correct product. I have forked over many hundreds of dollars to the vet at this point.

 

[bpatters]

It doesn't look like alfalfa to me. But you can certainly google up a lot of pictures of alfalfa to check.

Is there a lot of that in the box, or just a few leaves here and there?

 

[Bethanyhb]

It does look like some pictures I've seen, but it's so hard to tell. I've only seen those two leaves, although I haven't gone through the entire box. I have ordered some timothy from KMS. At the very least I need to eliminate the hay as the problem. If things clear up after a couple of weeks on new hay, that will be interesting.

 

[bpatters]

Honestly, I wouldn't worry about just a couple of leaves in the box. Hay harvesting is a totally mechanized process, and a little bit of almost anything can get included in a box of hay. If you were seeing a lot of it, that would be worth figuring out.

 

[cdmcwilliams]

Are you worried about the leaves, or that it is alfalfa leaves, meaning the hay you have is alfalfa? Try asking the company, maybe? I would be upset as well if it is alfalfa, especially if you've been dealing with some calcium issues with your pigs. I hope that you can get it figured out.