The girls like Timothy hay, is that ok?

[KimbosKluckers]

My 1 year old hens like botanical Timothy hay for rabbits and Guinea pigs, it contains a range of dried flowers. I always gave it to the pig and they dive in too, now that they are separated I’d like to give them their own. Should be ok right? I gave them some this morning before I started wondering. I do it maybe once a month

 

[50-45-1]

Not real familiar with it but my question would be are they eating it or just scratching it around

 

[KimbosKluckers]

Not real familiar with it but my question would be are they eating it or just scratching it around

They definitely eat all the dried flowers and I saw a few slurp some hay like it’s a worm. Haha. Then they just scratch it around until it blows away.

 

[50-45-1]

Try some alfafha hay sometime.
Alfalfa is packed with small leaves that are packed with vitamins and nutrition.
They cant eat the stalks but love scratching through it for hours, picking up every small leaf. I'm betting the also might be finding dead bugs in the hay also.

 

[KimbosKluckers]

Try some alfafha hay sometime.
Alfalfa is packed with small leaves that are packed with vitamins and nutrition.
They cant eat the stalks but love scratching through it for hours, picking up every small leaf. I'm betting the also might be finding dead bugs in the hay also.

Oh nice, I’ll try that too. They do seem to like the leafy part. When you say they can’t eat the stalks, do I need to take those out or they just don’t eat it?

 

[Mill Chick]

I would guess it’s ok for them to eat the hay because when they are free ranging they would eat a lot of the stuff in the hay anyways

 

[Ridgerunner]

That's not what I thought of when saw timothy hay. That is a rabbit food with a lot of stuff in it in addition to timothy. I did not see anything in the mix that they specifically need, but I did not see anything that will hurt them. The marigold petals could help make their yolks darker. On that ground they are getting plenty of grit so they can grind it up in their gizzard.

As a treat, it should be a fairly minor part of their diet. You do not want to upset the balance of their nutrients.

As you saw, they will slurp the long stems down. There is a risk in that if they get too many at a time. If those long stems get twisted up in their crop they can form a wad that cannot pass on down through their digestive tract. That is called an impacted crop. Any that gets to the gizzard will get ground up but that doesn't help the crop.

This is why some of us recommend that you run grass clippings through the lawn mower an extra time, to chop the grass stems into shorter pieces. If they were foraging on that timothy where it was growing they'd break it off into smaller pieces, but it is not rooted to the ground so they eat the entire length. Rabbits will chew it up so the length is not a problem to them. The other stuff is not a problem at all, just the long stems.

So severely limit how many of those long stems they get or cut them up into 2" pieces or shorter.

Do not panic about what they have eaten. They should be fine. But if their crop has not shrink to empty by tomorrow morning and it smells sour you might want to investigate impacted crop. This is something that can happen, not something that happens each and every time.

 

[50-45-1]

Yes, I had not thought about the impacted crop problem that is mentioned above. I buy a small bundle of alfalfa each year going into winter. The long stems that they cant eat, are just raked up when I clean the coop and put out in the compost.
The Timothy you have seems to be chopped, but I would be careful with that.

 

[KimbosKluckers]

Thank you all, I’ve raked up the bigger pieces now. The longest stem was 3-4” but better safe than sorry. Next time I’ll just sift through to the finer stuff at the bottom of the bag and the flower petals. I also never thought about an impacted crop.

 

[MommyGirl]

Yes please be careful with hays. I had one of mine get impacted crop and I worked on her for 2 weeks before I finally got it passed through her. I thought I was gonna have to perform surgery on her to get it out.