I went riding with a friend on Friday and mentioned during the course of the ride that I had been perusing Craig's List ads the evening before, and noticed that the local hay growers all seemed to have posted special deals to unload their outside stacks because a rip roaring storm is supposed to be heading in on Monday afternoon.

Having only one horse, and never having bought hay except from a feedstore, I was just making conversation. But my riding partner always buys in bulk. He has been greatly impacted by our present economy and, unbeknownst too me at that time, he was down to his last few bales. A few hours after our ride he called me to say he had called a hay farmer who wanted $6 a bale for rye grass bales, 100-110 pound bales. $6 a bale is as low as it gets for horse hay in California. I have a 16' flatbed trailer so my friend was suggesting we take that and load up.

So today we made a long run from our mountain hideaways down to the flat lands, where we loaded 60 bales on the trailer. We couldda got more but I was being kinda chicken, not knowing how my horse will like it, not knowing how it would haul.... It hauled just fine, and I could have brought many more bales home if I had been more confident about the hay and the process.

As I mentioned in another recent post, my older horse has been doing well on Orchard Grass. I searched the internet to see how Rye compares but found nill.

If the rye falls short, I have no problem adding other things into his diet if I need to.

What can I expect?