Tips on buying good hay

If you don’t grow your own hay, you buy it to feed your livestock. And you want to make sure you’re getting what you’re paying for.

Dan Undersander is an Extension forage specialist at the University of Wisconsin. He says before you buy, it’s very important to analyze hay samples to be sure the energy and protein content will match your animals’ nutrition needs. For example, hay that that meets the nutritional needs for a pleasure horse would not meet those of a lactating dairy cow.

You also need to use your eyes and nose to judge hay quality.

"We should be looking for mold in the hay because that obviously is detrimental to animals," says Undersander. "Smell is a key thing in terms of assessing mold. The other thing that we sometimes consider when looking at hay is the brittleness of the hay. If the stems are very firm, then the cattle are less likely to eat that."

Undersander says it’s always better to buy hay by the pound rather than the bale. If you feed by the bale, you could be feeding livestock more or less than what they need.

"Cattle eat by the pound, so the best assurance of what we’re buying is to buy our forage by weight. And the other consideration too, is the moisture content so that we can buy protein and energy and nutrients, and not be buying water, and/or allowing for mold in our stored feedstuffs," he says.

Weeds often have poor feed value, and some are toxic to livestock. High quality hay comes from healthy forage stands with few or no weeds.