Hi. Haven't posted in a while. Sabrina is doing extremely well. Maybe 95% sound!! Thank you everyone for your help.

We've been having a horrible time finding good hay this year. Our supplier of wonderful, low s/s hay was murdered on Aug. 15, and I've spent more time than I can count on the computer and telephone trying to find a good timothy or timothy/orchard grass mix. I've called all over the country. Even got a quote of over $9800 for a semi of NY hay to be shipped in from Florida (for two horses). I said thank you very much, but no thank you. Yesterday we found some brome (with a "little" alfalfa mixed in) about 50 miles from here that we sent off for a test. He also had some Utah and some Ontario timothy, but he didn't tell us until we got there that it was last year's cutting. We took samples of those, also, just in case that's all we can find, but certainly, that's not desirable. Today we drove over 100 miles up to Kentucky to get core samples and one bale of the lovely farmer's timothy hay. When we got there, he told us it has some oats seeded into it. Great!! I know that oats tend to run high in starch, but when I asked him the percentage of oats, he had no idea how to answer. We bought one bale to test its palatabilty. We sent a sample off to Equi-Analytical on our way back to Tennessee.

My question is, am I just concerned with the s/s test results, or is there another problem with timothy that has "some" oat hay in it? I don't think the s/s will "grow", so my thought is that the test results will tell the story. Am I wrong?

Gayle and Sabrina
3/06
Fairview, TN
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ECHistory/files/Sabrina/