How should you collect hay analysis? GREAT question – because it is so important to know what nutrients are being provided for (or not!) in the biggest component of your horse’s diet. While hay quality – and to some extent, nutrient content – may be estimated by looking at the type of plant in the hay and its maturity level, to get a true picture of your horse’s nutrient intake from its hay, a hay analysis is very useful.
The best way to get a sample, and hay analysis, is to get a hay core sample. This allows for the collection of hay from the inside of the hay bale and gives a good representation of what the horse will actually consume. This process uses a drill and the core sampler probe, which is a hollow extension that fits to the drill. Then the core sampler is drilled into the baled hay and the sample collects inside the hollow part of the probe. This is pulled out of the bale and emptied into a bag, and repeated on 10 different bales of hay to get a good representation, and then sent to the lab for analysis.
A hay probe can run a little more than $150, but many feed stores or agriculture labs have some you could borrow, or your equine nutritionist or feed manufacturer representative may come out and do it for you. If getting a core sample is still not feasible, it may be possible to do a “grab” sample. Simply grab handfuls of hay from several (5+, ideally 10) different bales and areas of the bales. These can be put into a baggie and then submitted to a lab. The problem with grabs, however, is that you often lose the leaves, which contain a large portion of the nutrition, and, therefore, you may underestimate the nutrient quality of your hay.