Hay not looking good

Bigbird1

hay we made last week looks very hot inside and even moisted, is it fooked i wonder, i knew it wasn't perfect for baling but there was rain on the way so i chanced it

charliecon

I wouldn't say its "fooked" as such but it won't be exactly top of the range feeding. Keep it outside if the weather is fairly dry until it cools a bit - at least a fortnight and then feed it OUTSIDE in the winter preferably to dry cows.
Try and keep your handling of it to a minimum as the dust of it will be terrible not to mention extremely dangerous .

Bizzum

Shocking hard to know without seeing it, but I,ve seen hay giving a bit of a heat in itself and being the finest.
It depends on just how rare it was when you baled it! Only you know that.
I'd agree with leaving it out for a while, and maybe give each bale a quarter roll over to take the bottom up off the ground.
If you have to bring it in, stack them singly on slats for a while to cure.
Not wanting to kick a man when he's down, but if it was rare with rain coming, my brain would be screaming haylage!

Swinefluproof

Not a fat lot you can do with it now but leave it outside as long as you can. Had some the same a few years ago and just put the bales under trees and fed them first on a piece of rough ground before I housed the cows. On the plus side it'll do wonders if you're drying off cows Wouldn't give it to young animals if at all possible though

reilig

The biggest problem with moulded hay is the mycotoxins that the mould produces. It can be dangerous for breeding cattle and is suspect of causing in-calf cows to abort. You'll have a lot of waste too!!

If you have made good tight bales, they really won't dry a lot more, so leaving them out won't do a lot for them except prevent the mould from spreading to other bales that you might have in the shed and if you can already feel them heating up, then you can't really save them.

You weren't the only one that was caught. I saw people last week making hay when it had only been cut for 3 days and shook out twice. The top of it looked like it was in hay, but when the bales were baled, you could see the green (ish) grass in them.

Wrapping would ghave saved the day, but its too late now.

20silkcut

Bizzum wrote: »

Shocking hard to know without seeing it, but I,ve seen hay giving a bit of a heat in itself and being the finest.
It depends on just how rare it was when you baled it! Only you know that.
I'd agree with leaving it out for a while, and maybe give each bale a quarter roll over to take the bottom up off the ground.
If you have to bring it in, stack them singly on slats for a while to cure.
Not wanting to kick a man when he's down, but if it was rare with rain coming, my brain would be screaming haylage!

what are the mysterious processes in the production of haylage?

A neighbour of mine reckons he has it down to a fine art but guards his secrets like it was the coca cola concentrate.

Bizzum

20silkcut wrote: »

what are the mysterious processes in the production of haylage?

A neighbour of mine reckons he has it down to a fine art but guards his secrets like it was the coca cola concentrate.

No great process nor secret.
We have wrapped grass that was half a day from being hay.
The tighter the bale the better, good quality plastic, and an extra wrap all help.

20silkcut

Bizzum wrote: »

20silkcut wrote: »

what are the mysterious processes in the production of haylage?

A neighbour of mine reckons he has it down to a fine art but guards his secrets like it was the coca cola concentrate.

No great process nor secret.
We have wrapped grass that was half a day from being hay.
The tighter the bale the better, good quality plastic, and an extra wrap all help.

This guy wraps small square bales. Would that be the usual thing with haylage?
Would some lads do round bales of it?

He must be doing something right he has a lot of customers.

But I suppose it's not rocket science.

Bigbird1

We were hopein to feed it to cows at dryin off,theres only ten bales in it but still, prob should of made haylage:rolleyes:,but it was dry just seemed a little green,there spaced out now in a shed, Dont want cows aborting anyway thats for sure.

what happen

Bizzum wrote: »

Shocking hard to know without seeing it, but I,ve seen hay giving a bit of a heat in itself and being the finest.
It depends on just how rare it was when you baled it! Only you know that.
I'd agree with leaving it out for a while, and maybe give each bale a quarter roll over to take the bottom up off the ground.
If you have to bring it in, stack them singly on slats for a while to cure.
Not wanting to kick a man when he's down, but if it was rare with rain coming, my brain would be screaming haylage!

i would not put hay bales on slats i know someone that done that and the bales stinked of slurry

Bizzum

what happen wrote: »

i would not put hay bales on slats i know someone that done that and the bales stinked of slurry

I assumed the tank is empty this time of the year. Ours always are, but perhaps I should have clarified it.
That being said I'm not so sure there are much fumes off unagitated slurry, and would question whether hay would become contaminated, even if the tank was full. I could be wrong though!

KatyMac

I'm going to ask an awful stupid question now. Please take pity on me!
Can you store big round bales of hay outside? I've seen them in fields when the weather wasn't great and I'm just wondering. I've never made anything other than wrapped silage and in my (very) young days small square bales that were put into a shed as quick as possible. I've only got a 3 bay hayshed which wouldnt hold alot of big bales and would love to be able to make hay sometime, but small bales are fierce hard work!!

blue5000

Yeah kateymac two ways to do it, first way is in a rick with 4 on bottom, then 3, 2, and 1 on top and cover it with a sheet of polyethene, needs to be wighed down well

Other way is to stack bales 3 high with a 'cap' of plastic on the top bale, leave a gap of about 2 feet between the stacks to let air circulate. Works well but the bales need to be very firm so that the stacks don't lean off and touch each other.

Or simply wrap them

what happen

Bizzum wrote: »

I assumed the tank is empty this time of the year. Ours always are, but perhaps I should have clarified it.
That being said I'm not so sure there are much fumes off unagitated slurry, and would question whether hay would become contaminated, even if the tank was full. I could be wrong though!

the tank was empty and all doors open it still contaminated the hay.

Bizzum

what happen wrote: »

the tank was empty and all doors open it still contaminated the hay.

Most years we make a bit of hay, including this year, and draw it in to stand on the slat, where it stays for a few weeks or longer, untill we stack it in the hayshed.
It has never become contaminated in any way.
Are we just lucky?

moy83

Bizzum wrote: »

Most years we make a bit of hay, including this year, and draw it in to stand on the slat, where it stays for a few weeks or longer, untill we stack it in the hayshed.
It has never become contaminated in any way.
Are we just lucky?

No we always end up putting a few green ones on the slats too, never saw anything wrong with them after

Bizzum

KatyMac wrote: »

Can you store big round bales of hay outside?

We stored hay outside one winter in several rows in a haggard.
If there is space between each bale for the waterv to run down off them, and they are good tight bales, they will hold up fairly well. Better than we thought anyway!

If you have a 3 bay hayshed you'll hold a serious amount of bales in it.

pat73

Bigbird1 wrote: »

hay we made last week looks very hot inside and even moisted, is it fooked i wonder, i knew it wasn't perfect for baling but there was rain on the way so i chanced it

Just wondering if u wrapped them now what way would they turn out.I have a few my self like that.prob some one on here has tried it.

Tipperarymike

I actually did wrap about fifty bales this Tuesday that I baled last Friday evening. To be honest I was even in two minds about doing it but between my father banging on about it and a neighbour egging him on that twas the way to go, I just didn't feel like disagreeing. Disagreeing is code for I would rather they were wrong than I was wrong.

I had 120 bales in the field and the last fifty or so that were baled were the ones that we wrapped. Twas dark when these got baled as the baler kept clogging earlier in the evening. Of these fifty or so, maybe 35 looked like they were heating a little bit so that was the logic for doing those. Personally I would have chanced leaving them out as someone said above and giving them every chance to dry out a bit better. I am not sure there is any right or wrong answer on this one either way though.

Muckit

Tipperarymike wrote: »

I actually did wrap about fifty bales this Tuesday that I baled last Friday evening. I am not sure there is any right or wrong answer on this one either way though.

First question I'd ask is what were ye hoping to make? Hay, Silage, dung?

It's a well known recommendation that bales of silage be wrapped within 2-3 hours of being made. Pits of silage are not recommended to be left uncovered for anymore than a day after being made. That's to make silage.

I've never wrapped hay, but some say it can be done once it's been well saved and that it's a viable storage option where a shed space is not available.

I'm sorry to say but I think what you'I be opening next winter won't be either hay or silage

Tipperarymike

I guess like a lot of things time will tell. Funny enough though I never heard of anyone hoping to make dung so I will have to say I was hoping to make one of the other options you gave me!!!

We had hoped to get hay of it and if the fecking weather had held off Saturday morning we might have had but the forecast was for a good bit of rain here Saturday but it then rained Friday night, though not a whole pile. The hay we did get out of the field seems grand still, and with very little heating in it. The ones that were heating got wrapped.

On that note though I wonder was there much hay got last week? The weather around here wasn't really up to what you would call hay weather but there seems to be any amount of hay for sale this year at a reasonable price

KatyMac

Bizzum wrote: »

We stored hay outside one winter in several rows in a haggard.
If there is space between each bale for the waterv to run down off them, and they are good tight bales, they will hold up fairly well. Better than we thought anyway!

If you have a 3 bay hayshed you'll hold a serious amount of bales in it.

Thanks for the info! I don't have a front loader, so no stacking of bales! But when I win the lotto it's first on my shopping list.
I might give it a try putting them with a space next year - when the weather is good.

Bizzum

KatyMac wrote: »

Thanks for the info! I don't have a front loader, so no stacking of bales! But when I win the lotto it's first on my shopping list.
I might give it a try putting them with a space next year - when the weather is good.

Katy, If I had a hay shed sitting idle, the last thing I'd do is store hay outside.
Draw the hay yourself down near the shed and get someone local with a loader to stack it for you.

Kovu

Bizzum wrote: »

Most years we make a bit of hay, including this year, and draw it in to stand on the slat, where it stays for a few weeks or longer, untill we stack it in the hayshed.
It has never become contaminated in any way.
Are we just lucky?

We always do the same thing, but stand them in the lying area, A bale of hay is a life saver with a late calving cow.