Not all hay is good hay, and some hay is good for your other livestock, but not for your donkeys, or some bales in your stack are safe to feed, while others are not. How do you minimize the potential for feeding dangerous hay to your long ears? With information!
It is essential to know the type of hay you are feeding. Some hay may be hazardous to some animals in your herd, but not all of your herd. Fescue, for example, can cause abortion or stillbirths in pregnant jennies. However you can safely feed endophyte-free fescue (although you should be cautious of its higher sugar content). Additionally, some hay, for example sudan, may be safe if grown under certain climate conditions, but can cause cyanide poisoning if stressed by events such as freezing during the growing cycle. Cold season grasses including rye, orchard, and timothy can be especially high in sugars and rye in particular can be problematic for this reason, causing metabolic issues including laminitis. Others, namely legumes such as alfalfa, are not necessarily toxic to your donkeys, but are often too nutrient-dense and overfeeding them can result in founder, laminitis, and obesity.
Familiarize yourself with where your hay is sourced. You can find this information by asking your grower, broker or feed store. Once you have identified where your hay is grown you can familiarize yourself with common dangerous or toxic conditions, plants, and pests in the area, and keep an eye out when feeding your animals.. For instance: hay grown in the desert southwest may have a higher chance of containing goathead thorns (which will cause pain to your animals AND cause these noxious weeds to gain a foothold on your property), dodder, or even sometimes oleander leaves, as these are popular for landscaping in hot and arid regions. Meanwhile, pasture grown grasses such as what one may find in Colorado may occasionally have high levels of nitrates due to runoff containing animal waste such as cow manure pooling in certain areas, or could have become toxic due to growing conditions such as freezing. It’s important to note that some of these problems can occur only in some areas of the field, and therefore testing a single bale will not necessarily give you a full picture of the safety of your stack of hay.
Harvesting, handling, and storage can also affect the safety of your hay, and the following are all things to consider when sourcing your hay, as reputable growers will take precautions against their product being adversely affected, and while storing your hay so as to ensure it doesn't spoil:
-When hay is baled before it is sufficiently dried/cured, or if it is rained on after it is cut or baled, it can become moldy and unsuitable for feeding. Take care to cover your hay, either by storing it in a barn or shed with a cover, or by covering it with a plastic tarp when rain is forecasted.
-If your haystack is left for significant periods in sandy areas it may become contaminated with excessive blowing sand or dust. Ideally you choose an area with minimal sand and dust to store your hay, but if this is not an option, tarps or windbreaks made of various materials like plywood or even old, unusable hay bales (placed around your stack, not touching it), may minimize sand contamination.
-Bales on the bottom of a stack will often be contaminated with mold, as moisture on the ground becomes trapped against the bales. Many people will store their hay on pallets to avoid or minimize this.
-If the field where the hay is grown is adjacent to busy roads or highways it may have a higher instance of contamination with trash and litter. Occasional trash, like a paper cup or plastic bag, is to be expected of products grown outside, but you should take care to remove these items before feeding the hay as they can cause choking, impaction, or colic if they are consumed. If your hay routinely has a particularly high occurrence of trash, it may be time to seek another source.
-Hay from fields near forests, woods, or riparian areas may have a higher instance of animal intrusion and therefore a higher chance of said animals (most often rodents, rabbits, snakes, toads, and birds) being baled in the hay. If you find an animal carcass, or portions of a carcass, in your hay, discard the hay immediately surrounding the carcass, as it can be contaminated with any number of illnesses, such as botulism, associated with rot and decay. Take special care, and consider discarding a greater hay buffer, around snakes or toads, as they are often venomous or poisonous and that venom or poison may be on the adjacent hay.
-Green chop hay, which is hay harvested and then fed immediately with no drying, and grass clippings may seem like an easy feed source, but both of these products can cause a number of problems; the moisture can allow the hay or clippings to spoil very rapidly causing various toxicities and colic, and the ease of consumption (your donkeys can grab massive mouthfuls with little resistance) can cause them to rapidly overeat and founder or colic.
-Silage, with its high moisture content, has a higher instance of toxins such as botulinum, if it is not properly stored and fermented.
-Alfalfa, aside from typically being too nutrient rich to be a significant forage source for donkeys, may harbor blister beetles. Blister beetles are an insect containing cantharidin (a burning agent/poison) that causes blistering on human skin, or the muzzles, mouths, and intestinal tracts of livestock that consume them. They tend to seek out alfalfa blossoms as a food source. Blister beetle consumption can cause painful lesions, depression, laminitis, and colic.
Not all of the issues with various hays can be seen with the naked eye, some can only be discovered via laboratory testing, or will be noted after feeding the hay to your animals causes an adverse health event. This is why it's important to know what type of hay you’re feeding, to only purchase your hay from a reputable source, and understand the risks of certain types of hay and forage. While seeing 15 bales of hay on Craigslist for sale for $8 apiece may seem very tempting, you want to ensure you’re not putting your animals at risk to save money. Alternately, you may know certain hays come with risks, but you choose to mitigate that through rigorous laboratory testing, or by not feeding that particular hay to at-risk animals.