Colonists don't eat hay...
This comment is appropriate for your name.
But yes, the OP seems to be mistaking Hay for Human-Food, which it is not. Do you eat grass? I do not.
If you are trying to keep animals on Sea-Ice, then Hay could be helpful there, but you can feed them Rice (or better yet, Simple Meals made from Rice) in any case.
Also, Hay has a 60% fertility sensitivity, so it only receives a fraction of the growth bonus that Rice does in Hydroponics.
Technically...... humans totally eat grass.
Have you eaten anything made from wheat, barley, oats, rye, maize or rice recently? All cereal-crops are grass that has been selected to produce large seeds. If you let your lawn-grass go to seed, you can technically take the seeds and eat them, though it would be a pain in the ass to do so.
Also technically, all 'hay' is is the stalk of the cereal-grass. Humans can't eat it, so we feed it to animals as fodder.
Rimworld crops make no fucking sense. Hay is used as animal-fodder, yet we can't grow any grain other than maize or rice. You make beer by fermenting hops, although hops are literally nothing more than a flavorant and a preservative in reality. Crops also behave entirely opposite what they do in reality.
.... This is why I play with Vegetable Garden.
