Just by way of encouraging *informed opinion*, “certified weed free hay” has nothing to do with the health or nutrition of the animal eating it.
It’s about preventing invasive weeds in natural and pristine areas.
Horses and mules do not digest all the seeds they eat, they pass right on through the horse quite unharmed, and now, fertilized.
Many natural and pristine areas require that horses (and mules) eat weed-free hay prior to and while riding in those areas, to prevent the spread of noxious weeds.
Weed free feed is readily available and horsemen who frequent backcountry and remote areas are familiar with it.
--must be really "pristine"--
Require instead that the hay be grown/harvested within twenty miles of where it is used as feed for horses or mules. That makes any weed seed immaterial because natural forces would have spread the weeds further than twenty miles all ready.
One word:
Roundup.
Multiple studies have been done regarding the proliferation of weeds & what to blame.
Horses have become a convenient target. They don’t deserve such.
The list of what/who distributes weeds includes:
The RAILROADS. A rail car can be in So Florida today & be in Idaho in 5 days. They pass thru miles and miles of ‘Federal land’ (Which should NOT be OWNED by the FEDS in the first place), & they distribute weeds.
WIND. Surely EPA & all the Enviros cannot stop the wind-—so they hammer at what they can instead. I am only talking about normal wind patterns here.
BIRDS-—both regional & migrating. Again— The Enviros cannot stop that, so they hammer at a weaker foe.
STORMS/TORNADOES-—again, the enviros cannot stop those, so they focus on the horses.
HORSES-—are WAY down the list of culprits. Feeding ‘Weed Free” hay is quite expensive, both to the grower & to the buyer/user. If your horse is used to baled hay & suddenly has to use cubes or pellets, colic can result. Colic is still the major killer of horses each & every year, notwithstanding some sort of viral outbreak. The availibility of such feed isn’t constant, either. The drought in the SW has caused a domino effect on hay prices and availability this year. Texas horse owners are getting hay from as far away as Florida. Cattle owners sent a majority of their herds to market early & skinny because they could not get hay. I cannot sell my horses with this economy & I cannot slaughter them for other uses, either. I must keep feeding them SOMETHING!!!
The rules that Barry the Imposter’s administration put in front of the mining company is no more than a blockade to prevent any mining.
When there is no more copper for wiring in new homes, offices & government buildings, someone younger than I has to remember this complete lunacy on the part of this administration.
Shades of the pages of Atlas Shrugged & D’Anconia Copper!!!