Cripes (in which I gag over hay prices)

For the last few months we've been buying hay from the local feed store in Garden Valley. I say "we" - actually pft has been doing it. It's just a couple of miles down the road, so he can easily nip out, fill up the hay trailer and be back home before he even notices he left.

Unfortunately, the last batch of orchard grass/alfalfa (usually a 90/10 mix) had gone bananas and the ratios were flipped. Of course, the pones thought this was most wondrous and proceeded to gobble the sweeties hay down in large quantities, adding to their already whale-like proportions.

But with Fergus being prepped for 20 Mule Team 100, eating calcium-laced alfalfa wasn't going to fly. An excellent way to develop an unhealthy dose of thumps half-way through the ride when his body tries to resupply and wonders how to do so (apparently the body gets stupid about such things if you provide large amounts of calcium from an outside source and forgets how to make its own).

So on Saturday off we went to Auburn with the truck. We weighed the empty truck, we had them half fill it with fine orchard grass (and it better be fine at $22.99 a 115 lb bale) for the working good pones (Fergus and Jackit), reweighed truck, and then had them finish the load off with "diet hay" (meadow grass at $16.99 a 115 lb bale) for the fatties. With 28 bales on the truck, this is probably the most expensive load of hay I've ever bought.

Yikes.