From what country abroad is mites infested hay shipped?

[Jelly/Jam]

I live in Ottawa,Canada which is abroad. Could you let me know of the usual names of the companies where this has been a problem please.

 

[Wiebke]

I live in Ottawa,Canada which is abroad. Could you let me know of the usual names of the companies where this has been a problem please.

Hi

Hay mites are particularly associated with large scale industrially harvested hay sold by major pet store chains and internationally active pet supply companies, like Oxbow; the hay is generally produced in North America.

The way these large combines harvest the hay is churning up a lot more of the top soil and is allowing more bugs to get into the hay, according to the research of a US rescue acquaintance of mine.

This tallies with the observation on this forum that we only started seeing issues with persistent/resistant hay mites after a leading UK pet shop chain started selling imported internationally branded hay several years ago when we suddenly had a whole wave of cases for several years.
Before that we would see the occasional case of hay mites typically in autumn from owners using locally sourced cheap farm hay, which was very easily dealt with as there were no resistancy issues. We are also seeing a lot less cases now since many forum members have shifted to smaller scale UK producers using different harvesting methods and our UK pet shop chains have obviously sorted out their supply lines again.

You may want to perhaps google for local hay producers or equine outfits in your area and enquire how their hay is sourced and harvested?

PS: We kindly ask our members to please not use full upper case in their titles. It makes them much harder to read quickly when we skim through and work our way through a whole list of alerts in order of emergency each time one of us is coming on the forum. Because they are more difficult to read, they have much more of a tendency of being pushed to the bottom of the pile or being overlooked on a busy with plenty of new alerts piling in.

 

[Jelly/Jam]

Oh ok no more uppercase not a problem. I stopped using Oxbow a few months ago because they changed owners and cut the hay in too short of pieces. . I have stopped using their pellets also because of the additives to stick it together. We found a local farm in Guelph, Ontario,with great hay and the furtatoes love it. It is in long strands and lots of seed heads. I went into a pet shop and saw the Stoter hay and right then and there we bought it and have not been sorry.The squeekers have gone off the Stoter orchard hay and now they will only eat the timothy from them.
Thanks for the infoI wish you a great day

 

[Bill & Ted]

I buy hay direct from a local farmer it’s lovely and very reasonably priced, I buy it by the bale

 

[Jelly/Jam]

Awesome

 

[Jelly/Jam]

What size bales do you get?