What type of hay does your chinchilla like most?

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Carleigh

Carleigh

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Joined
Feb 27, 2011
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115
Location
SC
Okay I know there are tons of hay topics, but here is my contribution.

For the longest time I gave my chinchilla, E, Kaytee timothy hay, but he was never a huge fan of it. Really, it was the only thing available to me. After my second chinchilla came along, I discovered alfalfa hay, and Mr Picky E did take to it a lot better. The brand was Sun Naturals or something like that. Now, Petsmart doesn't carry that brand and now sells Oxbow. Yeah, a nicer brand, but now there are like 6 kinds of hay and I really don't know the difference aside from know that OAT HAY looks like it's for horses. I decided to try orchard grass, and while the other chinchillas are taking to it, he is still digging out 95% of it and then only taking a few bites. I guess I could continue to try hays until I find something he likes, but at least now I know that what little amount of hay he is eating is a huge step up from Kaytee.
 
Timothy hay is what most chinchillas are fed. Oxbow makes some nice Timothy hay. The Botanical by Oxbow is a mix of Timothy and healthy herbs, my girls love it. All of the Oxbow brand hays are safe for chinchillas including the Oat Hay. My girls get a mix of Timothy, Botanical, and Meadow Grass currently. They devour all of the hays. Alfalfa is a lot fattier than the other hays and should be fed sparingly. Alfalfa is already in most high quality chinchilla pellets and so they do not really need the loose hay as well.
 
I switched from Kaytee to Oxbow hay and noticed my girl ate a lot more hay then before. Timothy is her main hay which she gets unlimited of every day, and once every week or two I'll give her a few handfulls of botanical hay as a treat. All of the hays Oxbow makes is fine for chins!

I've heard that alfalfa hay should be given sparingly, plus it's already in a lot of good feeds.
 
i buy the oxbow varieties.
i buy 2 little bags one timothy and one of the other variety's. (haven't tried alfalfa yet though) and i mix them together for variety. the mix is mostly timothy hay though. so its like 1 part other hay to 2 parts timothy.

my chins love it. though their favorite hay is the orchard grass. it smells so sweet so i think it must taste kinda sweet too. i love the smell of it though.
 
I knew alfalfa isn't the hay of choice since it is also in the pellets, but I didn't know it is a fatty hay. However, I feel that any type of hay is better than no hay at all. I do like how Oxbow "rates" the sweetness and hardness of the hays, so I got orchard grass since it is the same hardness (or softness, rather, in this case) but a little sweeter. I was hoping that would tell me what E liked about alfalfa hay! But the botanical grass sounds nice, so I will be giving that a try. Once I tried the Kaytee timothy hay with marigolds, and all he did was eat the flowers and pee on the hay!
 
Hmmm.. I should double check. Perhaps it's higher in protein. I may have botched that. At any rate it alfalfa is typically fed as a treat, and to under weight, pregnant and very young chins. According to Oxbow it can be free fed to chinchillas under a year and then should be offered sparingly afterwards. I think chins have different preferences in hay, though my girls pretty much devour all hay in sight. They are even now eating their Timothy hay cubes which is good since I ordered 5lbs of them!
 
Alfalfa is fine to feed as a hay in conjuction with a grass hay, many of us have done it for years and years. If alfalfa was so bad then why is it used in pellets-many ranches and large hobby breeders don't feed hay and just pellets, hense a alfalfa only diet.
 
My boys and girls only eat APD first cut Timmy, mountain grass and orchard grass if it's fresh enough, oxbow's hay has been on and off for me, so I usually stay on APD, it's a lot more consistent.
 
My girl is pretty picky and will only eat the Oxbow Timothy hay. A lot of it still gets used for cage decoration, though!
 
I give my guys Oxbow Timothy, They seem to eat the kaytee cubes more though, They seemed to eat the kaytee timothy before I switched, and I tried a new one as well, but they are hardly touching it, if at all. I'm going to stick with oxbow. They seem to not care for the loose hay for some reason now, it may just be the brand, can't remember what it is at the moment. I tried it after another memeber mentioned their chins loved it. I guess they are just really picky lol.
 
My chins absolutely love timothy hay. They turned their noses up at Bermuda hay and weren't too impressed by the orchard grass hay. I use 2nd cut timothy hay that comes from Nevada since our more local hay isn't very good.

I use hay cubes in the chin cages, as well. The chins like the mixed hay cubes - they really like the alfalfa/oat hay cubes and the timothy/alfalfa cubes. They get the loose timothy hay at night but still seem to enjoy the hay cubes, which they shred up and eat. Some of my chins, like yours Carleigh, seem to enjoy the alfalfa the most. But, I don't have loose alfalfa hay here, just the hay cubes.

Really all that hay that you are looking at is probably for horses, you're just seeing it in smaller packages. Timothy hay is a favorite for horses...people seem to like the second cutting for their horses around here.
 
Oxbow Timothy most of the time with some other varities mixed in. Once in a while I'll run out and buy some cheap big box store hay and they throw it back out of the cage. More ends up on the floor of their room then in the cage....rotten chins!
 
My girls get timmothy and orchard grass from oxbow, as well as oat hay once every so often.
I ran low on Timmy and orchard grass last week and opted to give the girls meadow hay for about 3 days straight.thst resulted in one of my girls having some very bad diareha. I caught it quickly and gave her some Activated charcoal to get any nasties out of her and life line for the rest of the day and into the next.
I'm still not sure if it was just that she was sensitive to the sudden change or if the hay was moldy or contained some thing bad. At any rate I don't thing I will be feeding the oxbow organic meadow hay any more.

My main concern with over doing it with alfalfa in both pellets and hay would be the high protein level, recently one of my chins was 'leaking pee' after doing a full urinalysis on her her sister and cage mate for comparison we found protein levels to be a bit high. In rabbits a level of about .4 (I Belive?)shows the approximate start of kidney problems and failure.
We determined that her slight increase was likely due to a fall that likely caused a bit of bruising around the kidneys and it should clear up shortly.
Higher protein levels long term can cause organ damage in these guys based on what I have learnt on the subject over the years I would say not to feed alfalfa pellets &hay &cubes &supplements all together...might be a bit over doing it. But I would say every so often loose or cubed alfalfa is not going to mess with a chin (or at least I have not seen difinative proof to the contrary)
 
I use Oxbow Western Timothy as the main hay, but my ladies go bonkers when I mix in a small bag of Botanical hay. I think they love the smells.
 
I buy hay from Kleenmama and my chins love it. Just bought 40lbs of the 3rd cut timmy-their fave :)
 
My boys started on oxbow. I tried switching to Kaytee because it was cheaper. They snubbed it! I switched them back to Oxbow :p
 
The veterinarian my chinchilla goes to down here in San Diego sells HUGE boxes of hay for chinchillas. It's a mixture of timothy and alfalfa. Though he does favor the alfalfa, I put more timothy in his cage because his pellets are alfalfa based, and based on all the breeder's useful knowledge on these forums, it's either alfalfa pellet, timothy hay, or timothy pellet, alfalfa hay. :)
 
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