The grass is no longer growing in the pasture, so the goats and Gus the horse are eating mostly hay now. We buy our hay in rectangular bales, one at a time, from a feed store not far away. We buy it one bale at a time because that's all that will fit in the trunk of our car.But there's another reason too. One time in the past, and this week, we've bought a bale of hay that Gus will not eat. Both times it's taken us a while to realize why he's being so cranky. He kicks the fence, stares longingly into the other pasture, and just generally is a pill.Here's a batch of bad hay. When we put this hay in the bucket, Gus put his head in and threw as much of the hay as he could on to the ground, then stalked away.
Okay, we're pretty slow, but we finally got the message. We had picked up another bale today, so my husband put some out for him to see if he liked it.Here's a contented horse eating hay. This is what he's supposed to look like. (And of course, the obligatory small white cat watching him eat. Because farm animals are her life.)
Here's a contented goat eating the new hay, with, of course, a small white cat sitting in the hay watching him eat.
It's nice to have the 'why is Gus so cranky' mystery solved. Now we just wonder what was wrong with the other hay? We've talked about having 15-20 bales delivered so that we don't have to pick it up every few days, but what if we get an entire bad batch? A fellow we know told us a horrible story about renting some land to use for hay to feed his cattle. They baled it up into the large round bales, and the cattle wouldn't eat it. Any of it. That is a bad day.Here's a gratuitous picture of Arlene, just because she's such a pretty girl. I love how her ear is curling through the fence. I'm just glad it isn't her head. She got her head stuck in the fence the other day, and my husband had to cut the fence to get her out.
Hey, I said she was pretty...not smart.
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Hmmm, we never had this problem. We have it dropped by the ton. *sigh*
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