Crappy Bag of Oxbow Hay?

[Gabby88]

Have any of you bought bags of Oxbow timothy hay only to realize it's a bunch of crap!?

I've bought Oxbow before, and it's been great. I ordered some online a few weeks ago, and the bag was completely filled with powdery tiny little crap pieces of hay. There's virtually no pieces that are even longer than 2 inches. And most of it is just dust. Pretty disappointing. I wonder how often that happens.

I needed to get some for my guinea pigs and figured I'd get a huge bags so I'll have some when the chinchillas come home, but how I need to waste money buying some more. It's making my guinea pigs sneeze, too. *sigh*

 

[LovinHedgies]

I buy Oxbow hay from a local petstore so I sort through the bags looking through the best one I've never seen a bag, in timothy hay, like that though. The small bag of alfalfa I bought recently was quite disapointing, it had big pieces on top and then halfway through it was all powder/small scraps

 

[EMSChins]

I would call and let them know. Many times they will send a new bag free of charge with no S&H and will tell you to just keep the bag they sent - it is worth a try especially since you have a photo of it.

 

[Gabby88]

That'd be amazing, EMS! Thanks for letting me know!

I've spent soooooo much money already that I just really don't want to buy more hay when I JUST bought some. So that would make my day!

But I will probably still have to buy some anyway since I'll be picking up my chins in exactly 1 week and I doubt they'd replace it by then. I thought I ordered it with plenty of time to spare, but little did I know I'd just have to buy more anyway.

And I'll probably have to go to the pet store to get it since I don't want to risk not having any by Monday by having it shipped.

 

[Pikaia]

I had the same problem too, Gabby! I bought a bag of Oxbow and it was more than half small pieces and dust. I guess you come across a "less than quality" bag once in a while...

Oxbow does have a facebook page that they post actively on, so you might try sending them a message on there!

 

[Gabby88]

Thanks, Pikaia!

I just sent them an email. Hopefully they will send me some new hay or maybe a coupon or something. It's pretty unusable, even though I've been needing to feed it to my guinea pigs since I can't get to the store to buy some more until tonight. I would feel terrible if they got a URI or something. So far they're only sneezing a little, but I don't want the problem to escalate.

 

[Siany]

I would try and get my money back, what a dissapointing bag of hay. I have never seen it look like that before apart from the bottom of the bag...

 

[Gabby88]

Yeah, I hope they either replace it or give me at least a partial refund. The entire bag looked like the bottom of other bags. It's a 40 oz bag, too. My poor piggies have had to eat crap hay the last few days. So I've been spoiling them with extra veggies. lol

 

[EMSChins]

Let them know that you had ordered it early to have on hand and what they sent was "crap" and now you are afraid that a new bag won't be there in time. They should offer to overnight it...it wouldn't hurt to let them know that you are an active member of a forum where their products are highly recommended and that the forum is very active with hay purchasers....just an idea!

 

[Stackie]

I've found that with many of their smaller bags of hay, more often than not all that dust and such is at the bottom. Sometimes more than others.

 

[addictedtochins]

Try looking at Kleenmama's Hayloft
http://www.kmshayloft.com/index.html

 

[StevieP]

I'm not sure how good they are at getting back to emails, so you could give them a call too. They are really nice on the phone. It might be addressed faster via phone.

I got a 50 pound box recently and the top 1/4 was all like that. I am not impressed. They say that everything under 5 pounds is hand sorted and packaged, and everything above 5 pounds may contain who knows what. So the 2.5 pound bag you got should NOT have been like that.

 

[Brittany]

Have any of you bought bags of Oxbow timothy hay only to realize it's a bunch of crap!?

Been there, done that, too many times... Now I go ahead and open each bag until I find one that I want. I've never had anyone at the pet store give me trouble. I prefer buying fresh hay from Kleen Mama's or QMC, but Lady's picky and eat's oxbow the best :hair: So of course Mommy goes to the petstore once a month and opens bag after bag until I find the right one.

 

[Chin_Parent]

I've had some issues lately with hay too. I recently bought a bag of Oxbow timothy hay and it was really hard and had tons of long, pointy pieces in it that were hard to get out. It was much firmer than the kaytee hay that I've been using and frankly, a pain to deal with. Chinchy mostly lets it fall to the bottom of his cage, so I've stopped using it for now. I see Oxbow as a quality company (I use their feed and other products) but is this what oxbow timothy hay is supposed to be like? I realize I don't know what good quality hay looks like, only what my chinchilla will eat.

 

[3CsMommy]

I got a less than excellent bag recently too. The top 3"-4" was all stalks and then the rest was fines like you've got. My guys will eat pretty much anything, but I was still annoyed. Luckily I'd ordered a box of hay from a rabbit rescue upstate and got it a couple days into the bad bag. Maybe last year's hay crop wasn't that great where they source their stuff?

 

[ticklechin]

I use APD for my grass hays, never had any good luck with Oxbow, even when it looked OK the chins thought it sucked.

 

[Gabby88]

It's interesting that you all seem to be having problems, too. I'll definitely be looking into ordering different hay other than Oxbow.

I did get an email back already. She said she would forward my email to their technical services department. Hopefully they'll do something for me. It's not like I'm broke or anything, but I still don't like wasting money on things that aren't the quality I was expecting.

 

[mishellyshel]

im sure you will get many different answers. every time i have tried anything besides oxbow my chins have snuffed their noses.

i would love to try the american pet diner hay but the shipping for the amounts i typcially buy cost more than the product. i just put a 25lb box of timmy hay and some smaller amounts of a couple others and the shipping was 52 dollars!

i order the larger amounts of oxbow from fosters & smith and there is free shipping and it drop ships directly from oxbow. usually the top half of the box is great and then the bottom is not as great. i also find that the smaller bags "typically" have longer nicer stems because they are handsorted. i called Oxbow and spoke with someone who gave me a lot of information. Right now their orchard grass is one of their finer crops.

last week i ran out of hay and had to go to pet store to get a bag and i always look at the bags but even when i got it home it wasnt to the standard that i would expect. and my chins obviously feel the same way because they waste more.

i just wish i could fine one consistant source that my chins love that doesnt cost a ridiculous amount. but i guess that is a lot of ask when A. we are dealing with chins and B. we are dealing with a product that depends on the environment to grow.

 

[Andrea]

I get mine from Foster&Smith due to free shipping and I've never had a problem. Usually I order 9lbs of timmy and then several bags of the other hay. I hope they refund you or give you a replacement product.

 

[Gabby88]

Thanks for all of the great information, everyone! They actually just called me and are going to send me a free bag of orchard grass. They say their orchard grass is fantastic right now. She was really sweet and helpful, too.

So I won't let one bad bag of hay sour me on Oxbow. Their customer service seems to be great.