All Hay Is Not Created Equal

By Karen Nicholson, Stepping Stone Farm Alpacas, Stowe, VT

You are what you eat. So are our camelids. Since our grazing season is so short and so many farms are raising their animals on either a dry-lot or a pasture that is overgrazed, we rely on hay to feed them. It is important to feed them quality hay or you can end up with thin or unhealthy animals.

In Vermont, hay comes in 1st, 2^nd, and sometimes even 3rd and 4th cuts, depending on the growing season and the weather at cutting times.

First cut hay is coarse with a lot of grasses and doesn't have a lot of legumes, such as alfalfa and clover. It may have quack grass, timothy, and brome. It may be weedy too. It dries quicker.

2nd cut hay is very rich in nutrients and has higher protein. It is greener than the 1st cut. It smells sweeter as well. You have to rake and dry this crop of hay more than the 1st cut because it is heavier and thicker. Also it is more likely to rot or catch fire if baled wet.

3rd cut hay is really, really thick and green. It is rich and has a really sweet smell to it. It has a lot of legumes and less grass, which may be harder to digest. It is more difficult to dry.

Llamas and alpacas typically eat 2nd cut hay, whereas cows, horses and goats usually do well on 1st cut hay.

The best time to evaluate hay is before you buy it. Ideally, you'd want to go out to the field before it is cut and see the plants and the stage they are in. Or you can go once it is cut and on the ground before bailing. But for most of us, summer is our busiest season and we're lucky enough to get the necessary things done and get the hay in the loft. In that case, you can spend some time over the winter evaluating your hay and deciding if your source is worth sticking with.

Here are some quick tips to evaluate your hay:

1. Pick up the bail. – A good bale of hay will sag when you lift it up by the twine. Now drop the bail from at least waist level. It should bounce. If it thuds, it's a dud. Now, cut the twine or wire. The hay should spring out. If the bail had been packed too tightly it has likely trapped moisture, leading to mold growth. 
2. Look at the color. – Now that you have a bale open, look inside and see what color it is. If the outside is bleached from the sun, that's ok. But the hay should have a bright green color inside. This is an indicator that the hay has higher proteins and vitamins. Thumbs down on yellow and brown colored hay. No nutrients translates into sick alpacas.
3. Stickiness. – When you open the bale and pull the leaves apart, do they stick together? Yuck. No good. This is an indicator of mold. Does the bale feel warmer than others? Reject this loser too, and get it out of your loft. It is composting and could ignite.
4. Take a whiff. – Sniff that hay! You know what mold smells like and you can definitely smell it in hay. Quality hay smells sweet and grassy.
5. Work those eyeballs. - Really look at the hay. If you're buying alfalfa, make sure it's leafy with soft stems. In grassy hay, look for seed heads. REJECT! Lots of seed heads are an indication that the grass was cut when it was more mature and has lost protein value and palatability.
6. 'Listen' to your animals. – If you see them refusing a bale, trust that they are doing it for good reason. There can always be a bad bale in a good batch of hay (from the edge of the field, packed too tightly before they adjusted the twine properly, etc). Get rid of it and give them another. If they refuse all the hay (which happened to me one fall), first make sure it is good hay and if the only reason they are refusing it is preference, douse it with a molasses/water mixture to make it more appealing until they adapt to the taste.
7. How was it fertilized. – Ask your hay farmer what he uses for fertilizer on the field and how often. You don't want clumps of manure falling out, making it unappetizing to your animals and possibly carrying parasite eggs with it. Nor do you want hay from a field that has had little or no fertilizer – that will grow nothing but empty food for your animals. Organic fertilizer in the form of composted manure is better than chemical fertilizers.
8. Test it. – Your feed company will often do this at no charge and give you a write up on how much you should supplement your animals with grain, based on the nutrition of your hay and the demands on the animal (pregnancy, lactation, etc). Or you can have it tested by your local university or a private company.
9. Secure good hay for the next year. – If you are satisfied that your hay is of good quality and feeding your animals well, talk to your hay farmer and make sure you can secure hay from that same field next year. If you are not satisfied, begin seeking a new source now. Or consider buying a hayfield, seeding and fertilizing as you want it, and either haying it yourself, or hiring a hay farmer to do it.

Like anything, we can only do our best within the confines of everything we are doing in our lives. Thus, most of us cannot obsess about our hay. If all that time allows for are the first four of the list above, you can get by fine, as long as you monitor your animals for condition and vibrancy and make adjustments accordingly. But if time does allow, finding and securing an excellent hay source is well worth it.

Karen Nicholson, of Stepping Stone Farm Alpacas in Stowe, VT, has a herd of nine alpacas, two French Alpine dairy goats, Indian Runner ducks, broiler chickens and several laying hens all integrated into their farm management program. Any comments or questions can be directed to: stowealpacas@gmail.com.

What's In Your Hay?

By Chris Stull, SELR BoA & Adoption Coordinator, NE PA
Reprinted from the Llama Rescue Review, September 2007

The basics for feeding any llama are hay, salt, and water, with only as much grain as needed for the animal to maintain good body condition. Hay still is the basis for a good feeding program because it usually can satisfy daily maintenance requirements of energy, protein, fiber, vitamins and minerals, however, depending on the quality, hay can vary in its nutritional content. For example, it can contain less than 8 percent or more than 22 percent protein.

Alfalfa hay may provide much more protein than some animals need, whereas, older, yellowed grass hay might not provide enough. Protein is important for bones, muscles and just about everything else, including coat condition. Too little protein will cause a dull coat. Too much won't hurt your animal but will result in higher urine output (wet smelly stalls, increased water needs). For the average llama, probably 8 to 10 percent protein in his daily diet would be plenty. Naturally, lactating, pregnant, or working llamas may have greater requirements.

Hay analysis can be done by a county agent or any university that has an agricultural department. However, this is not always practical. A rule of thumb for testing grass hay is to look at the distance from the stem to the seed head. The longer the stem, the lower the protein. If stems on timothy hay, for instance, are about six to seven inches long, you probably would have a less than 8 percent protein hay product, and you might need to supplement with a higher protein concentrate. If the stems are all nice and short, barely coming out of the blade of grass, then the protein percentage will be higher, and you probably would not need to supplement.

Watch for moldy hay. Any hay can become moldy because of harvesting or storage problems. It can cause respiratory disease and could be toxic to llamas. Usually, llamas won't eat moldy hay, and you'll see a lot of it wasted. Bales that are heavier than those around them may be moldy. Look for discolored patches of brown or white. Also, be sure to take a whiff. You can smell mold. Good hay is always clean, leafy and sweet smelling.

Sometimes hay can be difficult to find, especially after drought conditions. If this is the case, you can substitute forages such as hay cube products or bagged forage, which are pretty good as hay substitutes. Complete beet-pulp-based ratios are not really 100% adequate to replace hay, but can be used. You need to switch slowly. In both cases, expect increased wood-chewing activity. A llama naturally spends 10 to 14 hours a day eating. A diet of only hay cubes or bagged chopped forage and concentrates can be consumed in less than four hours, therefore, these llamas will look elsewhere to chew and may resort to eating toxic weeds. Grass hay tends to be higher in calcium than phosphorous, but the ratio between the two is fairly narrow.

Your feed room should have one closed container for grain, if your animal needs it, with a couple of bags of hay cubes or bagged chopped forage in case your hay is not the best quality. There should be extra loose salt with some electrolytes to replace essential compounds lost during periods of extreme heat. For animals in good condition, that's really all you need. In our last issue I discussed the different types and qualities of hay and hay substitutes. In some cases it may be necessary to supplement your llama's diet with foods other than hay to maintain a proper body mass. Adding fat in moderate amounts is one good way to keep the weight on an animal without feeding a lot of grain. However, if you start going over one cup of vegetable oil or add too much rice bran, which is popular now, you've got to be careful. Vegetable oil has no minerals but may increase the need for vitamin E. Rice bran is high in phosphorous, and you can get into a reverse calcium-to-phosphorous ratio if you feed them too much. When phosphorous intake is higher than calcium, the animal's body tries to stabilize things by leaching the calcium out of his bones. This causes intermittent lameness, and could cause skeletal disorders and fractures. As I mentioned previously, grass hay tends to be higher in calcium than phosphorous. If you add more than about a half pound of rice bran to that, you can push the phosphorous up to a level that would get into the danger zone, especially if you're feeding grain or a bran product that's not fortified with calcium.

If your llama is losing weight or is sluggish, you may need to add grain to his diet, presuming he is not ill or carrying a heavy parasite load. Oats are not a high-energy feed. Either whole or crimped, one pound of oats contains just about the same amount of energy as one pound of excellent quality hay. Corn is a perfectly good feed for most animals, but people have gotten into trouble by not understanding it. A one-pound coffee can filled with corn contains two times the amount of energy as the same amount of oats, and if you suddenly feed the corn in the same amount as you do oats, an animal can get into trouble. Corn is also prone to mold.

There are many concentrate mixes out there that contain a mixture of corn, oats and/or barley with added vitamins and minerals. Choose one from a reputable company that is designed specifically for the animal in mind. Horse feed is not recommended for llamas. Generally the copper content in horse feed is a bit too high for llamas.

The molasses coating on sweet feed breaks down as simple sugar in the bloodstream and sets off a whole chain reaction within the body—the pancreas produces sudden rushes of insulin, which can be damaging to soft tissue and organs with repeated occurrences. If you need to put weight on an animal rapidly, use a dry pelleted feed mixed with plain soaked beet pulp for added calories. The wet beet pulp adds extra fiber and moistens the dry pellets enough to cut down on the risk of choke. Naturally, this should be mixed at each feeding and not in advance as the beet pulp can sour quickly, particularly in the heat.

Llamas also need free-choice minerals specific to their needs, as well as specific to the area in which you live. Lamas need loose minerals, as they cannot lick adequate minerals from blocks. To find out about mineral deficiencies in your area, you can consult the USGS geochemical maps at: http://tin.er.usgs.gov/geochem/doc/averages/countydata.htm.