The summer of 2011 was a bad one in the Texas hill country. We had no rain for more than 9 months, with temperatures of well over 100 degrees every day for months.
Hay had become more and more expensive and by October was becoming hard to find at all. Our "regular" hay dealer had already told us he would not be able to supply our winter hay.
We have a small Andalusian breeding farm in Driftwood, Texas where we run around 30 horses with no pasture on site. Every October we buy approximately 6 months of hay (roughly 1500 bales) to last us until the spring cutting begins. We had begun talking to various people and had verbal promises from 4 or 5 different sources. The price per bale, which had been $8 only a short time ago, was now running in the $12 to $15 range. Finally, I made a verbal agreement to buy a truckload of coastal hay out of Florida, with the understanding that I could see a sample of the hay before the deal was final.
In mid October we took horses to Fort Worth for the Andalusian National Show. Here I found an ad for Liz Blitzer and HayUSA. Frankly, it all seemed too good to be true. I contacted Liz and found that the hay WAS available, came from Oregon, was mostly Orchard grass and was priced at $24 a bale which made a truckload about $11,000.
Normally, any one of these facts would be a deal breaker for me. I am a firm believer in feeding a local product. I have kept horses for over 30 years and I have always fed coastal Bermuda and alfalfa and know nothing about Orchard grass and I never even heard of hay selling for $24 a bale!
Liz was incredibly patient with me and explained that the bales were well over 100 lbs apiece which brought the price to $12 for 60 lbs. (the weight of a conventional bale). The orchard grass has a comparable protein level to coastal and is much more digestible as it is a softer less fibrous grass. She sent me pictures of the hay (which was bright green) and put me in contact with people who were already feeding it for a reference and recommendation. We were also put in contact with the grower and the hauler, both of whom were super knowledgeable and super nice people.
At some point it came to me that these people were serious about what they were doing. It was at about that time that I got a call to come and look at the sample coastal hay I had agreed to buy. It was brown, dry, had a bitter smell and the bales probably weighed 40 lbs. The only thing worse than buying some of this hay would be buying a whole truckload of it. Meanwhile, one by one all of our verbal hay agreements were falling by the wayside.
I called Liz and said yes. We sent her a deposit and received a delivery date. Every aspect of this business deal proceeded in an orderly and reasonable fashion. There was good communication and follow thru all the way through our transaction. Liz told us exactly what would be needed to handle the larger bales, exactly how much space was needed for the larger
truck, kept us informed step by step during the delivery process and basically made the whole process as easy and surprise free as it could have been.
We could not be more thrilled with the hay. This is as close to perfect hay as I can imagine having. It is perfectly clean, bright green, smells like a spring meadow in heavy, tightly packed bales with no trace of dust or mold. It is tightly packed and breaks into perfect heavy flakes with almost no waste. The nutritional value of this hay is such that we have been able to feed most horses 1 flake at a feeding (half of what we were feeding before) and still see a clear improvement in condition.
Several of our horses who had been "nutritional mysteries" and had not been thriving no matter how much we fed suddenly filled out, developed a shiny coat and began to work with new energy.
I know this all sounds a little over the top, but this is a very straight forward description of our experience. I would not hesitate to buy this hay again. I also cannot imagine a better person to do business with than Liz
Thank You Liz. Thank You HayUSA.
Becky McGaughy
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