# Alfalfa Hay same as Alfalfa Pellets?



## DonnaBelle (Jul 7, 2011)

This is one thing I get confused about.  Can you give some Alfalfa hay and supplement with Alfalfa pellets also?

I am soooo aggrevated right now.  

My experience with "Alfalfa Hay" is thus:

Hay that is moldy

Hay that is stemmy

Hay that when you untie the bales turns into powder.

Besides which it is pricey, which would be tolerable if I could get "good" hay

Dad gum!!!!!

DonnaBelle


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## helmstead (Jul 7, 2011)

Been there.

My experience is...not exactly.

Here in Indiana we now grow our own hay...alfalfa/orchard/clover.  My BIL bales it, and BOY does he ever know how to cut & bale hay.  Fresh, green, sweet, lovely hay that I almost wanna eat myself!

The hay I'd get in GA, tho, yep, just like you're experiencing.

In GA, we used alfalfa pellets instead of the gross hay we could buy.  It _helped_.

However, since moving to Indiana and using GOOD alfalfa HAY...just WOW at the difference.

I do still use alfalfa pellets as a calcium supplement, but the hay is what I contribute to how well my goats look and do these days.


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## DonnaBelle (Jul 7, 2011)

Dad Gum!!

Dad Gum!!

You are soooo lucky to have a great brother in law that knows how to bail hay!!

All the alfalfa that we get around here has been trucked in from far far far away.  I repeat, this is OKlahoma where you cannot grow Alfalfa hay.  

Oh well I will try them on some good local hay later this year.  Right now they're out brousing all day long and I give them some goat developer in the evenings.  

They look very good cause there's a lot of brouse here.

DonnaBelle


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## elevan (Jul 7, 2011)

What hay can you get that's locally grown?  I'd go with a locally grown hay (it's *hopefully* more likely to be better quality than trucked in hay) and supplement with alfalfa pellets rather than spending good money on crappy hay that's been trucked in.


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## aggieterpkatie (Jul 7, 2011)

Alfalfa is had to bale well by nature. If you can't find good hay near you, then it might be worth supplementing with pellets. Near me though, pellets are lower protein than they hay is, and my animals will eat them but really prefer the hay.


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## Ariel301 (Jul 7, 2011)

You can use the pellets as a pretty high portion of their diet, but ruminants like goats need some long stemmy fibers in their diet to keep their rumens working right. So, you really can't feed them pellets as a total diet. They will need some hay or time to browse on a pasture still.


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## SDGsoap&dairy (Jul 7, 2011)

When I'm able to score really nice alfalfa hay and stock up I see an immediate difference in the goats.  I like the hay better.  BUT, if I have to choose between garbage alfalfa and pellets then I just go with the pellets.  We're on the last couple bales of some really fab alfalfa out of Ohio... green, leafy, fragrant.  They goats are looking so good!  But it's hard to find a reliable source in the South that you're not going to pay out the nose for, so sometimes we do feed just the pellets with good quality grass hay.


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## treeclimber233 (Jul 16, 2011)

Where I live I cannot find any local hay any of my animals will eat.  All I buy is trucked in.  I feed Haystretcher pellets to stretch my hay.  I am wondering how much haystretcher I can feed daily and not upset my goats digestion.


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