URGENT - milkweed

Question
I know that fresh milkweed is poisonous to bunnies if they eat it, but how about dried milkweed after it gets fuzzy?
I purchased something for my bunnies made of timothy hay & there was something in it that looks like dried fuzzy milkweed.

Answer
Dear Ann,

Sorry for the delay.  I was travelling, but now have my internet back.

Milkweed contains alkaloids that are active whether dry or fresh, but it is very doubtful that your bunnies would eat them, as they smell terrible.  Rabbits are quite good at eating around a distasteful weed, as we've discovered the Morning After Salad to find a nasty-looking weed that had been hiding in the cilantro!  Alarming!  But now this has happened quite a bit (despite our searching in the herbs beforehand) and no one has ever mistakenly even nibbled the weed or gotten sick.

If you can possibly find the milkweed in the hay, just remove it.  But I really doubt the bunnies will touch it or be harmed.  They have good noses.  And to set your mind even more at ease:  rabbits can detoxify many things that would be nasty to us; it's possible (I don't know about milkweed in particular) that even if bun got a bit, he wouldn't get as sick as a non-herbivore.

Hope this helps.

Dana