[MENTION=44961]PetFamilyBK[/MENTION], that does seem like a lot of dust, as well as shorter, choppy strands in general. I can see a lot of the dust settled under the top hay pieces. Thanks for showing your pictures!
As for my SPS box: I actually took some pictures of my hay as well, but didn't post them here yet. This is what my 10 lb box of SPS orchard grass hay looked like when I first opened it:
There are some shorter brown strands mixed, as well as some dust-like strands that fall whenever I scoop up some up. However, the long, greener strands seem to be packed together in clumps such as this one:
Because of these clumps, hand sorting the hay is easy and efficient for me. I'll just grab a clump, hold it above the hay box, and lightly shake any of the dusty bits out and back into the pile. This gets the tiny strands out, and although this process leads to more of them ending up back in the box, it's easy to grab and discard those dusty piles when they start accumulating. For the shorter brown strands that get stuck amongst the longer green ones, I just "comb" some of them out of the clump using my fingers (I rarely get splinters now since switching to orchard grass hay). Then, I take what remains and put it into a new bin, for easy grabbing and refilling whenever I notice the hay bag is getting empty. I have two plastic sifters I sometimes put at the bottom of the bin, which keeps the hay elevated so that gravity can help sort out additional dust.
So far, it takes about 5-10 minutes of sorting to get enough to fill a large hay bag, which is well worth it. My Texel buddy Root tends to become a walking hay feeder (and a walking fur mat) if too many short strands of hay end up on the cage floor, fur trimmed or not. He's also naturally the greasier of my two boars, and, well, let's just say that I've found hay in places I never thought I'd find hay in. Plus, his picky Silkie cagemate Demy hasn't been sticking his head directly into the hay bag as often or as deep now (which, with timothy hay, led to a mild hay poke incident), since he doesn't feel the need to incessantly nose around for the greenest strands amongst the filler brown anymore. The more hay eaten, the less (inedible) hay on the floor, the less fur mats, and the less hay poke incidents, the better, I'd think. Demy was not a big fan of the vet turning him into a temporary burrito.
I'm sure I'll get down to the dustier regions of the SPS once I grab all the clumps, but in general, I've been pleased with my SPS box. I'll keep digging through it as time passes and see how it looks then.
