The timothy seed head looks like a bottle brush.  The leaves are long and narrow.

Alfalfa looks sort of like clover, but with bigger leaves.  The stems also look coarser  and shorter than timothy.

They also smell different.  Good alfalfa smells sweeter than timothy.

By what they look like as hays: http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/livestocksystems/DI8490.pdf (But interestingly not easy to find to show someone away from 'real life'.....LOL)  And for sure there should be a scratch and sniff....alfalfa is heavenly imho.

-- Edited by barnfrog on Saturday 12th of November 2011 03:30:19 PM

The alfalfa vs grass hays look pretty different if you actually see them because they are totally different types of plants. We have grown a bit of alfalfa (8 acres) for several years and I had an OMG moment when I had to explain to some government guy that what we grew was not a grass hay, it wa a legume. He tried to tell me it was a grass,and that's how his department would classify it. And he claimed to be a farm boy. Yeah right. Anyway if you really want to see the difference in the hays, set a few flakes of grassy hay in one pile and a few flakes of alfalfa hay in another pile. Try to stop your horse from getting to the alfalfa hay and make him eat the grassy hay first. Good luck with that.lol. the horses know the difference from twenty feet away, they don't even look at the leaves!The nose always knows.