This message is from: Gail Russell <g...@zeliga.com>
The message below is cross posted from the ECHorsekeeping list. This hay would be good for an insulin resistant Fjord. The woman who wrote it is trying to develop a good market for this hay so the growers will grow it. Gail Russell Everyone: I live in Baker City, OR and own an IR, recovered, post-founder Arab gelding. Locating safe hay for my horse in this high, cattle ranching region is always a challenge. I found a hay broker in the Boise, ID area who has gotten two of her suppliers to grow Teff hay. There will be two cuttings from each of the two fields. One cutting from one whole field is already sold. There should be between 50 and 100 tons available. I purchased 15 bales from her from one of the growers last February (2009 crop) and tested them at Equi-Analytical and the "as sampled" results are as follows: WSC 6.9% ESC 3.7% Starch 1.5% This hay was usually my horse's second choice of what to eat if he was allowed to choose (first choice was alfalfa which he cannot have, sometimes second was some over mature, stemmy timothy, always last choice was the "organically grown" grass hay). The Teff is "pretty", soft, green and my horse is eating it almost free choice (850 lbs and about 22 lbs of hay/day plus a small amt of beet pulp and maintaining a BCS of just under 5 at light work. It comes out of a small mesh hay bag easily. He looks really good and is being pretty naughty so he is doing well on it. Out of the 15 bales there was only one area that had some mold in it about 9" square. The original grower had it tested (he's trying to do things right for horse owners) and he got a protein of 11.4% and "sugars" of 7.5%. I don't know where he got it tested and never saw the original results. I am going to test one of these hay crops with the recommended Equi-analytical profile from the main list (I think it's #603 -Trainer) and will provide it to the seller so it is available to anyone who wants to buy this hay. If you want to try Teff this may be a good chance for anyone to do so without the added cost of the analysis to balance their minerals. I am trying to get a load shipped west from Boise down I-84 to my region and perhaps beyond towards the coast and Portland if we can get it organized. In addition, the broker and growers are willing to truck anywhere in the west if buyers in the region can cover shipping costs on top of the cost of the hay. I paid $7.50/bale and picked it up myself last February. The broker said the bales weighed about 80 lbs and that's what I got when I weighed a couple I bought. That comes to approx. $187.50/T. It is expensive, but I am NOT soaking hay and have a real happy, busy horse. This years crop will probably cost about the same. Please contact me off list if you're interested. Lynn and True, Baker City, OR Feb. '07 Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw Classified Ads: http://tinyurl.com/5b5g2f