Something that we regularly see asked by small pet owners on social media is ‘Where do you buy your Hay?’ 

This is then followed by a whole list of people giving their recommended hay providers, as rabbit owners ourselves we have often checked out these recommended hay providers and it always leaves us asking the same question; Why is hay for rabbits so expensive? 

Our feeding preference has always been Timothy hay, this is because it is usually greener and crunchier than meadow hay. Most importantly it is loved by our rabbits.  

Around 12 months ago we started selling fresh 13kg bags of Timothy Hay from a farm in South Yorkshire, since then we have never looked back and neither have our plump rabbits. We sell these huge 13kg bags for £14.99 + £4.99 Postage.  

As a business we always pride ourselves on only selling items that we use ourselves. By pet owners for pet owners has always been our way of thinking, this way we know that everything that we sell is of high quality and is beneficial for animals.  

So back to the question of ‘Where do you buy your hay from?’ The recommended providers were of course the ones that we see the most advertisement from which included; Little Hay Co, Haybox, Hay-To-Be & many more. However, when we clicked on these hay providers, we found ourselves asking just one question ‘Why is Hay so expensive?’  

We thought we best do a price comparison to see how much the price of hay differs with these recommended providers, to make things fair we would only be comparing this price of Timothy Hay, and we will always select the largest quantity where the value should be the greatest. 

Prices as of 26.01.25 

Little Hay Co

10kg of Timothy Hay – £28.99 + £4.95 Postage 

This works out at £3.39 per kg.  

Hay Box

20kg of Timothy Hay Hand Packed – £54.95 + Free Postage 

This works out at £2.74 per kg 

20kg Timothy Hay Compressed Bale – £47.95 + Free Postage 

This works out at £2.39 per kg 

Hay-To-Be

7.5kg of Timothy Hay £21.95 + Free Postage 

This works out at £2.92 per kg 

We of course felt it only fair that we put our own top selling Timothy Hay in this comparison to see how it faired.  

Pets Playstore

13kg Timothy Hay compressed bag – £14.99 + £4.99 Postage 

This works out at £1.53 per kg 

 So which Timothy Hay is the best value for money from our price comparison? 

In 4th Place with the worst value for money per Kg is Little Hay Co at £3.39 per Kg 

In 3rd Place is Hay-To-Be at £2.92 per Kg 

In 2nd Place is Hay Box with their Timothy Hay compressed bale at £2.39 per Kg 

In 1st Place is our own Pets Playstore Timothy Hay at a bargain £1.53 per Kg 

 Now let’s be on honest, we always knew that we were going to win. This wasn’t our question; our question is why others are so much more expensive. No one knows better than small pet owners how much quality can differ with hay, but I can assure you that ours is not cheaper because it is of lesser quality. If you don’t believe us, check out these reviews on our eBay store; https://www.ebay.co.uk/fdbk/feedback_profile/petsplaystore 

So, what did we figure out that others haven’t? The answer to this is Horses. We teamed up with a supplier that was providing Timothy Hay to the equine industry. When we inspected this Timothy Hay, we saw that it was the same if not better-quality Timothy Hay than we had been feeding our own Rabbits. When we spoke to horse owners and told them what we had been paying for hay to feed our rabbits, they laughed and said that if they had to pay that price per Kg of Hay for their horse, they’d go bankrupt. So, what were we missing? How was it that Horse owners were able to get their hay at such a better price that small pet owners for the same product. Buying in bulk? Maybe, we can offer a better price on our 13kg bags because its 13kg worth of hay that you’re buying. However, with some companies the bulk saving no longer seems to be there and we just can’t explain it.  

Could we be wrong? To answer this, we wanted to go back and look at how much Hay horses eat. According to Google a horse should eat 2% of its body weight each day. The average horse weight of a lighter breed horse is approximately 500kg, this means that a horse should eat 10kg of hay a day. Based on these calculations if a horse owner bought their hay from Little Hay Co, they would be spending £33.94 a day on Hay for one horse. Now do you really think every horse owner is spending that on hay daily? Of course not. Just to put it into perspective though, that would be £12,388 a year on hay, now we all know horses are expensive but not that expensive. M&T Haylage are the providers of our Timothy Hay.

My conclusion to all of this, is that I believe that the small pet market is being taken advantage of when buying large quantities of hay. We believe enough is enough and there needs to be some value to purchasing bulk amounts of hay. I can understand that when buying a small quantity of something that it can be expensive, or if you are buying from a physical shop because they have additional costs, however the companies we have compared prices for are for online shopping only.  

If you would like us to compare any other companies, then please do get in touch and we will be happy to do so. And I would put it to you, and anyone who is a customer of the companies that we compared to ask the question of ‘Why is Hay so expensive?’.