01/08/2026
We wanted to share publicly about an issue our barn has recently faced.
I apologize, this is kind of a long post.
This fall we bought new hay from a new farmer. I had went out and saw the field, checked the hay, checked the nutrition report. All looked great. The hay was put in piles in sections of the field.
It was visually green, palatable, smelled good, didn't have much weeds in it, moisture tested safe, it just looked like some nice grass, which is what I wanted. I told him I wanted 180 bales for my horses. He said great, I have that and they will be of this quality. He loaded up trailers and brought them over.
Fast forward almost 2 months .... we start hearing some of herd coughing, most dropped weight, some just seemed kinda down in the dumps.
So we had the vet out on Saturday, December 20th, 4 days before Christmas. We found out some were having asthmatic reactions, some had pneumonia, and all needed to gain weight. The vet said it was because of the hay.
I immediately called a nutritionist and scheduled them out to test the hay cause I needed to know if my 130 bales I still had were bad, or if there was something else going on. We also went and dived into our bales and picked them apart a lot closer. We had hay that was stored inside and outside because of space, so we had to look at both. When we pulled off the net wraps, they didn't look amazing, but not so bad that it should be causing so much issue. They did not look as nice as the ones I originally looked at when purchasing though. We did have to put them out while we waited for the test results and started the search for new hay. After they gotten eaten into a little, we saw worse details. They were indeed bad. Once getting to the cores of the bales, they were molded, they looked like mulch, they were simply not good horse hay bales. So, we had to pick through the bales we had to try and find the best of the bad hay we had in the meantime. The more we picked through, the more we realized not all the hay was even remotely similar between all of the inside and outside bales, so we had to pick through only the inside bales.
We did call the farmer, he ended up admitting that some of the bales had been wrapped at different times and were from different parts of his field, which is probably why we are seeing so many differences. We got very taken advantage of with what i was shown and told vs what I received.
We resold all hay as strictly cattle hay as soon as we got tests back.
Meanwhile, its Christmas and New Year's. We contacted several farmers to see who had bales stored inside and tested. We found very slim pickings. A few who at least had them inside, either didn't want me to test them, couldn't coordinate with me, my nutritionist and a hauler, or I just didn't like what they had.
Finally, we found a farmer with inside hay, looked wonderful, but not tested. He said I could test it. So, again I had to coordinate schedules to have the nutritionist come out and take her samples.
Well, fast forward again, we decided to just buy the hay without getting test results back because of some of the boarders thoughts that were shared with us, so we decided to just get it so we could change the hay quicker. (I was ok with buying before the results came back because both the nutritionist and I agreed that based on visual assignments it looked like a very high quality alfalfa blend)
This whole situation took 18 days from vet diagnosis to new hay. There was a lot of spinning wheels, two major holidays that delayed and complicated everything, and multiple people involved- nutritionist, the hay testing company, vet, me, farmers, and haulers.
We want to apologize again to all of our clients because this was never an experience we wanted to have happen. We feel terrible and tried to act as quickly as we could. I hesitated sharing this story publicly because I know what having bad hay means to our animals and how harsh the internet can be. But, I also don't want anyone to ever think I try to hide things from our clients, current and potential future clients. We want to show we are honest and trustworthy. Last year was a horrendous year for hay, and super hard on the horses with all the smoke, and it absolutely effected us.
Going forward, we will be personally testing the hay ourselves. We will be watching all hay loaded into our our trailers and will not allow farmers to load, haul or deliver by themselves so we know what bales are being grabbed and that they are indeed what we actually wanted. We will watch closer when unwrapping bales in the pasture and checking on the bales as their being eaten to ensure the cores are good as well. The last few days we have been adjusting the horses to the new hay by throwing out small squares to them so we don't do to abrupt of a change over and cause other issues.
My husband reminded me that if this was easy, everyone would do it.
We have lost a few boarders, had several unkind things said to us, and been talked poorly about because of this situation. We have taken this entire situation hard. There has been many sleepless nights and lots of stress financially and mentally. We never intentionally bought bad hay and tried as quickly as possible to fix things. It was a learning experience for sure for us. I want to once again thank all of my clients for working with us during this time as it has been incredibly busy, crazy and stressful for us. We hope you have had a good holiday season, and let the new year of the horse bring us the best year yet!
The herd is happily enjoying the new hay currently. This entire situation will never happen again.
-Victoria
