Steve, first of all the weight of hay can vary a lot with the kind and the time it was cut. Second, it also depends on how tight those bales were pressed. There are huge variations: Last year the gentleman who baled my hay made 55 lb wire-tied square bales, this year he re-calibrated his baler since he used one of these collecting implements behind which put nine on the ground at one spot and they turned out to be 72 lb bales.
It certainly is true that the less the hay is moved, the more leaves are left intact which can make the hay heavier. I always found that pitch-forking hay onto the wagon is actually less strenuous than loading those bales, but of course takes much longer.


4 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum

I just assumed that,for the test, they would have used the same hay and an average size bale. I would think that there would be less loss of quality for a grass hay than for a leafy hay. Was just curious if anyone else had heard of any such experiment.


4 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum

Unless they a re not raking it in some fashion , that is when most leaves are lost in Alfalfa. When I lived in New Mexico, we would bale about 3 AM when the due (sp) was heaviest so we would not loose leaves. Tried some high compaction balers, but unless the hay was good and dry, we lost more to mold than leaf lost, but if left to dry properly so as not t to mold, we lost leaves. Loosing proposition either way.

Grass hay on the other hand has very little leaf lost unless it is left too long to dry.

Some folks thought that grass hay needed to be cut as soon as the seed heads turned brown. However if left alone for few more weeks a lot more grass grows. That what is lost in seed heads, by cutting later yields more hay in the long run . Of course most of our hay fields and mountain meadows only get one cutting a year unless irrigated. Lower country that has an abundance of water, usually gets planted in alfalfa, and gets maybe three cuttings a year. In New Mexico, I got 5 cuttings.

Putting hay up is definitely a question of timing, too green or too dry or rain you suffer more hay loss than loosing leaves.

A lot of farms/ranches in eastern Colorado have turned to planting forage like Sudanex or Hay grazer that are sorghum types.
Better cattle feed, but not so much horse. That can be cut mid fall and et dry for several weeks and suffer no loss since is a drier climate


4 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum

Everything being equal I have always always heard loose hay was superior to bales but I have no personal experience. Big piles shed weather well if put up right but so hard to transport.


4 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum

I have not seen any recently but in northern Colorado on some big ranches that put up hay, they had a haying system that put loose hay into a big bin that looked about 25 ft long and 10 feet wide. Maybe bigger. When filled , somehow they would open up it a ways and then pull the bin away from the hay leaving big rectangular stack of loose hay. I can't remember how they put the hay in it whether by conveyor or blowing it. I don't know if they fed them in the field where they were dropped or had some means of moving them

Since then, I think big squares or rounds have replaced them


4 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum

Vince that sounds like the Heston bread loaf stackers.I don't know what they measure, but there real old now I once saw bigger stacks but never saw what made them.


4 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum

Vince,
That is the 'monkey cage', or at least it sounds like it. We had one that had a hitch on one end, wheels on the two adjacent sides and a door with pin type latches on the opposite end. All the corners were hinged, pin in tubes. The tires kept the side walls up six inches or a foot.
We'd lock the back door, fill with a Farmhand loader on an old IHC M tractor. Fill it, 'comb' the top down toward the edges for rain shedding, open the door and move on. It was about 16'x20'. Moving stacks with the stack hauler could get adventerous..... some of the stacks were in really hilly country, sparsely populated. It seemed everyone in the county just had to use the road we were moving stacks on at just THAT particular time..... a 16' wide stack mover on a 12' wide gravel road....
fun times.

God bless

Oh, the grass in most years was over saddle height, some times horse ear high.


4 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum

That's them Mike . There wasn't any close to me,so I never got a closer look at them. Seems big squares are getting less and less with big rounds taking their place


4 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum