Poor-quality hay may be damp and moldy with a musty or fermented smell. Hay that appears weathered, straw-like, or brown is likely low in nutritional value. If hay has been cut late in maturity, seed heads will be apparent in grass hay and blooms will be evident in alfalfa hay.

The best way to know if your hay is going bad is to learn how to identify high-quality horse hay! Signs that your horse hay may be bad include a lack of color or dried-out appearance, a moldy smell, excessive dust, visible mold, or excessive heat towards the center of the hay bale.

Jul 24, 2023 · Understanding the hay analysis can be tricky. The results are full of abbreviations and numbers and percents, and it can leave a person unsure what "good" and "bad" numbers are. So—let's go through what these abbreviations mean, …

Hay baled with an excessively high water content usually turns dark green, brown or even black and may or may not be of high nutritional quality. When inspecting hay color, consider the hay storage condition and short-term previous weather.

Jun 19, 2020 · Here are 5 useful ways to check the quality of your hay. 1. Inspect the Color. The color of a bale of hay can tell you a lot about its quality. Hay should be a greenish color. If you see hay that more resembles the color of straw, then it may be old or have been bleached by sun.

Aug 21, 2018 · Learn the intricacies of hay types, nutritional content and quality before purchasing your next load. During the cold winter months when pastures contain scant forage, hay is the typical diet for cattle, horses, sheep and goats. Next to pasture, good quality hay is the ideal feed.

Mar 21, 2022 · When hay bales lack in uniformity and are messy to the eye, it can mean that those bales vary widely in their nutritional quality. Uniform bales will be tight, of the same color and same general texture. The quality of the hay you buy translates directly into the feed value.

Good quality hay should be bright green in color with little fading. A bleached, yellow, brown or black color may indicate aged hay, mold or poor storage conditions. Storage condition and age have a significant effect on vitamin content of hays.

USDA Agricultural Marketing Service has adopted hay quality designations for use in the nationwide Market News reporting program. These revised guidelines establish specific objective measurements of value attributes for each quality category of alfalfa and grass hay.

The greater the fiber content of a hay, the less digestible it is, and the less an animal will consume before it fills its stomach. Therefore, the best hays contain a high proportion of leaves and few seed heads or stems. Hay quality will also depend on …