new hay is stored
- Thread starter akane
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PulpFaction
Well-known member
Lovely! Don't you love that it only takes a dozen bales to last you til first cutting next year?! I can't imagine the feeding costs of larger livestock, LOL.
We have horses and our own hay field that we keep around 80small rectangle and 30 round off of every year but it's not very good stuff. The first cut gets taken over by goldenrod which is toxic and the person who cuts the hay takes that entire cut for his cattle as payment. Then no matter what I can't convince my mom and grandpa to plant the mix I want and while they attempt to do 100% alfalfa they don't maintain the field well enough so 50-75% of it is wild grasses and forages except the first year or so after they replant entirely in alfalfa. The horses actually do better on the weed filled hay than the pure alfalfa because my stocky quarter horses get way too chubby on high quality legume hay. A couple years back after the field was replanted and giving us high content alfalfa I traded off every last bale to someone with good grass hay because when you tightened the cinch on my reining mare her fat rolls would completely cover the billets. That's why I quit complaining about the hay field and just buy separate hay for the rabbits. It's not worth attempting these discussion with my family.
kotapony
Well-known member
Nice hay! I keep saying they should make a scented candle that smells just like that hay probably does. But maybe that's just a farmer thing. 
At the height of all the cattle we had (both dairy and beef), we figured it took a minimum of 1000 round bales to get through the winter. And those were big, solid, 1000# bales (4'x4'6" if wrapped, 4'x5' if dry). I'm so thankful for the invention of round bales. My husband tells me of the thousands and thousands of square bales they used to put in every year when he was little - somewhere in the neighborhood of 8000 if I remember correctly. We've actually learned the last few years to just make small, 4'x3' round bales out of our best hay to store in the barn. They're small enough for one person to deal with, but big enough to be moved around with the tractor to haul them in to the barn. Saves a lot of effort. Square bales aren't bad if you have help, but anymore it seems no one wants to work (and I'm admittedly afraid to hire a stranger - too many sue happy people anymore). We haven't actually done any square bales yet this year, but have a field that we plan to cut at the next opportunity. It should give us around 100 bales, which is more than enough to get my baby calves through the winter (the only thing we still feed squares to). The few rabbits I have pilfer off this supply and don't make a dent in it.
One of the ways I snagged my husband was to help put up 250 square bales on our second date... :lol:
At the height of all the cattle we had (both dairy and beef), we figured it took a minimum of 1000 round bales to get through the winter. And those were big, solid, 1000# bales (4'x4'6" if wrapped, 4'x5' if dry). I'm so thankful for the invention of round bales. My husband tells me of the thousands and thousands of square bales they used to put in every year when he was little - somewhere in the neighborhood of 8000 if I remember correctly. We've actually learned the last few years to just make small, 4'x3' round bales out of our best hay to store in the barn. They're small enough for one person to deal with, but big enough to be moved around with the tractor to haul them in to the barn. Saves a lot of effort. Square bales aren't bad if you have help, but anymore it seems no one wants to work (and I'm admittedly afraid to hire a stranger - too many sue happy people anymore). We haven't actually done any square bales yet this year, but have a field that we plan to cut at the next opportunity. It should give us around 100 bales, which is more than enough to get my baby calves through the winter (the only thing we still feed squares to). The few rabbits I have pilfer off this supply and don't make a dent in it.
One of the ways I snagged my husband was to help put up 250 square bales on our second date... :lol:
Frosted Rabbits
Well-known member
Try putting loose hay into a barn!! That darn clamp is dangerous-- and of course, the wagon has to sit in the barn the whole time the hay is getting moved into the loft.
