# Straw and Hay Bedding



## MrNoodles (Dec 26, 2009)

Hi all, I am new to this forum but am doing some research so would be most gratefull for some feedback. I am a farmer and have built a machine to bag hay and straw, having seen some products in local stores and thought "I can produce a better product than that". 
So a few questions:
What sort of weights/sizes are favoured?
What chop length do pets/owners prefer, all I see around is very short chopped hay and one pet shop owner has asked for un-chopped hay (seems more natural to me)
Obviously dust extracted is a must along with a good dry sweet smelling product with a nice colour to it in the case of hay.
Barley straw, again what would be your ideal product specification?
Also do many of you purchase said products online or would you rather go to your local petshop.
Many thanks for any feedback
best regards C


----------



## Kammie (Apr 4, 2009)

I buy my hay by the bale from a local farm as its much fresher than shop stuff. The longer the strands the better as the chopped stuff always seems very messy and dusty. The bale hay I get is just standard meadow hay I use for bedding, for feeding though I always go for Timothy, which I buy from [email protected] so I can see the quality before buying it. At the moment the Timothy hay is very yellow but I prefer the greener stuff in summer so tend to stock up towards the end of summer so I have some nice green hay to last a while till the good summer stuff comes back.


----------



## emzybabe (Jun 30, 2009)

Timothy hay has a higher fibre content so it is a much better feed for most small furies. I can rarely get my hands on good Timothy hay.

Barley straw is meant to be softer than oat etc straw so I use this. 

I buy big bales and split them into bags and sometimes let my neighbours buy some off me. However when I didnt have the space to store this much I had to buy the best quality stuff I could find mainly from independent pet shops.

The hay experts sell directly online, I think they are starting to get a fair following. aswell as some other feed specialists. I would think that your local area would be the best place to ask for consumer info. Maybe speak with ur local pet shops. 

When I havent been able to buy bales I normally went for the bin bag sized hay and straw as it worked out cheaper than the smaller bags. 

products like dried herbs are also becoming popular.


----------



## MrNoodles (Dec 26, 2009)

Thanks for your replies, The reason I ask here is having spoken to quite a few pet shop owners locally, they seem to want different things!! Some don`t sell Barley, some do but have had a request to produce unchopped hay, so this seems to be the thing to aim for. 
Re bag size we do 2kg bags of hay and 1.5kg Barley so it maybe worth looking into producing larger bale sizes, just have to make another machine for them! I guess for pet shops, storage is an issue, how many 5kg/10kg bags can you store? But for an owner with lots of rabbits etc one large bag would last longer and be cheaper in the long run.
Timothy hay for feeding, I guess there is an additional cost element for buying such good quality hay? I can source/bale top quality hay myself and intend to produce a product that is the best available for an affordable price.

If you don`t mind I would like (once the new year is over) to send out 5 free bags of Hay & Barley (one of each) to anyone so that they may try it and give me some feedback and thoughts on the product/packaging etc (off the forum) I would prefer people who have knowledge of hay/straw etc.. ie what constitutes a good quality hay. So if any of you wish to take my offer up just pm me details. I will let you know when all 10 bales are taken.
best regards C


----------

