Here at Small Pet Select we make it our business to find the very best timothy hay and deliver it fresh and direct for small pets throughout the United States.

But what goes into producing a top quality timothy hay?  Why isn’t there more of this stuff around? What exactly separates an average quality timothy hay from a good quality timothy hay…and furthermore what separates a good quality timothy hay from the very best  timothy hay?

These are some of the questions that often come up, and with that in mind we thought we’d run down a list of the top 5 factors that determine the quality of the hay for your small pet.

The Top 5 influential factors for producing the best timothy hay

Timothy Hay Quality Factor #1:  The Climate and Growing Region

Timothy Hay is a cool season perennial grass.  This means it does best in a climate with cooler winters and warm summers (in other words it isn’t going do very well in places like Arizona or Louisiana).  There is timothy hay grown in many States as well as Canada, but there is more timothy hay grown in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States then anywhere else in the country, and a lot of that has to do with the ideal climate this region provides giving farmers an opportunity to produce the very best timothy hay in the world.

Timothy Hay Quality Factor #2:  The Farmer

If you think it is easy to be a farmer, even an average farmer, you’re wrong. The best timothy hay typically comes from great farmers that are very skilled and talented at what they do and have made sound decisions throughout an ongoing basis that impact the quality of the end product.  There is obviously a ton of hard work that goes into growing crops, and most people probably have an image in mind about a farmer that is synonymous with “hard worker”.  That is all true, but in addition to this…its important to understand there is a huge amount of knowledge, planning, and strategy that all must be in place every year for even an average farmer to survive over the years. And when it comes to a crop like timothy hay which is so easily influenced by factors controlled by mother nature, it becomes even more important for the grower to be top notch if there is to be a chance at producing the highest quality timothy hay.

Timothy Hay Quality Factor #3:  Harvest Conditions

Here’s where it gets fun (wink wink).  A farm can be located in the best region for growing timothy hay, and can be managed by the very best timothy hay grower in the world.  Yet, when push comes to shove, that farmer still needs a ton of cooperation from Mother Nature if they are going to produce the best timothy hay possible.  That’s right…even if the farmer has put in thousands of hours in preparing for harvest making sure his fields are perfect and his equipment is completely ready, it can all be ruined if the wrong weather hits at the wrong time…which happens quite often.  And to have the best timothy hay, the farmer doesn’t just need average growing conditions, they need great growing conditions.  So while a great farmer tends to produce a better hay crop with the same growing conditions as an average farmer, they still will never produce the best timothy hay without the cooperation of mother nature.

Timothy Hay Quality Factor #4:  Proper Storage

Even if we’ve been blessed with exceptional harvest conditions and have a field that produced premium quality timothy hay, there still is a lot of work yet to be done before this hay reaches our small and furry friends in optimal conditions.  The hay is moved from the field and generally tarped or stored in a barn.  From there the farmer will usually sell it to a wholesaler or retailer of some kind (unless he chooses to feed to his own animals or sell it by the bale himself).  When moving hay from location to location its important the hay stay protected  from exposure to light and moisture…which are essentially the worst enemies of hay.  Exposure to light will bleach and dry the hay out making it unappetizing by the time it reaches your pet.  Meanwhile exposure to moisture will cause the hay to mold and become completely inedible.  And through all of this moving around often times great hay will in fact get damaged.

Timothy Hay Quality Factor #5:  Re-packaging and Distribution

Surprisingly, it is actually in the repackaging and distribution of the hay that a lot of the damage can be done.  Hay is a fragile product, so if you put too much stress on it when packaging or handling the leaves tend to break away from the stem and before you know it the once beautiful long stemmed hay has been pulverized into much smaller pieces (or what is also known as “chaffed”).

The majority of the hay that is sold in stores for small animals is stuffed into small clear plastic bags.  And while this process of putting the hay into plastic bags may be cost efficient, it really doesn’t lend itself to minimally handling the hay while packaging….and it certainly doesn’t do a very good job of protecting during transit to the retail shelf. Remember, these packages must be handled multiple times through the distribution channels before they even arrive on the retail shelf, and then they are handled a few more times while at the store before they arrive to the animal.  Unfortunately, a plastic bag doesn’t do a very good job of protecting the hay during this process and all to often the hay that ends up on the retail shelf doesn’t look anything like it did back when we called it “the best timothy hay ever” in the field during harvest.  This is why so many small animal owners complain about “dust” in their bags of hay.  It is actually mostly just the hay itself that has been pulverized during the packaging and distribution process.

So, now that you understand just how much it takes to produce and protect the best timothy hay, you can understand why it is so difficult to find.  For most small animal owners that purchase their hay at the pet store, it simply doesn’t exist, primarily because of the process in place in step 5.   Even if the hay started out as great quality, through the repackaging and distribution process on the way to the pet store the quality of the hay is degraded.

And that’s where we come in…

The first priority for Small Pet Select is to source the best timothy hay possible.  The very highest quality hay is hard to find consistently because it’s pretty much impossible for one farmer to produce it year after year (no matter how good that farmer is inevitably they are going to run into unfavorable weather conditions).  So in order to find great quality timothy hay consistently we must rely on a large network of hay producers and resellers, which is exactly what we do.  And because because we ship in such small quantities (relatively speaking) we can be very selective and limit ourselves to buying only the best.

The next step is just as crucial, and is the main reason why Small Pet Select is different from the store bought hay brands.  Once we’ve bought the hay, our entire process is designed to handle the hay as little as humanly possible.  We don’t use any machinery, and we don’t stuff the hay into plastic bags.  Instead we carefully and package a specially designed box that is built to the dimensions of the field bale, enabling us to just flake the hay into a box which opens and closes for easy storage.  During the packaging process we hardly touch the hay at all, just grabbing large “chunks” or “flakes” from the bale and placing them into the box.  Although this might seem counter intuitive  less is definitely more when it comes to handling timothy hay!

The specialized box is high strength corrugated material, which does a better job of protecting the hay while in transit after the customer has placed the order.  Instead of being pulverized through a plastic bag, the hay is protected all the way until it is served to the animal.  Additionally, because we are delivering the hay direct to the customer, the hay is literally being consumed within days after being packaged (instead of months or years).   This is why our trademark at Small Pet Select is “Timothy Hay Delivered FRESH”…the hay simply arrives in better condition that what it would have if it went through the traditional packaging and distribution processes.

Hopefully this has helped you understand some of what goes into producing and delviering the very best timothy hay possible.  If you are interested in trying timothy hay from Small Pet Select, we encourage you to go to our timothy hay page HERE and pick a size.  If you have any questions at all, please feel free to email us at service@smallpetselect.com and we’ll be glad to help you.

Till next time…

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