Round bales reek!

Boy do I wish I could get square bales of hay for a 2.60 but here lately I have been paying 3.50 to 4.00 bucks for square bales of hay. Plus right now for some reason it is getting hard to find hay for sale around here. I buy mine from local feed stores and 2 of them now can't even get hay. I sure wish my guy didn't got sick last year and he had gotten to put hay up I would been able to buy hay from here for 1.50 but he got sick so no hay from him. I'm keeping fingers cross that this year he can get hay put up so I can purchase from him for this next season.

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Love all animals don't abuse them. I hope if caught abusing & animal I want to be first in line to kick your butt. I despise mean people & liars.

Been feeding round bales for 14 years now.

We baled square the first 2 years here, and it is so hard to get teens to do manual labor anymore, we just could not find the help. I love the squares for feeding and for max hay use, but was hard work to bale those squares! The last straw was when I came down from the hayloft one spring to find a helper teen smoking in the barn (all oak construction, hay all over the place). Sooooo...

For the past 14 years, I have contracted on "halves" to have the hay round baled on my place. Guy who bales it gets half, I get half. No money changes hands. I generally get control over the baling time and curing process. Very easy to find guys wanting to do this. There have been years where rain has prevented adequate drying and some mold was present. There have been a lot of perfect drying years, too. The goats (and in the past, cows too) have eaten it all.

I like this because I do not have to own equipment, and best of all, I do not bring nasty junk onto my pastures this way. I do not introduce fire ants or thistle or other weeds (no, it took my hay-importing neighbor farmers to introduce all those to our area!).

I sell half of my half (about a quarter of overall crop), and it is forward-priced and sold each year. My spring and fall 2007 crop sale portions are already sold. This also protects my customer from steep price hikes like we have seen with drought here.
I use this money to make improvements to the hay lots.

I'm lucky to live in a high-production area, where off 13 hay acres we get an average 110 5x5 round bales per season (spring and fall cuttings). My 25-26 keeper bales will easily winter the goat herd and I often can carry over hay (so I sell more the next year).

I have modified the opening to the hay loft in my 60-year-old oak barn to make it wide enough to store round bales up above, and use my front end loader to push them in there. I also store outside.

If you store outside, store the bales in a line butted tightly up against each other, and do not store them under trees. The trees actually shed more water longer onto the bales, in bigger drops that penetrate farther. Don't set one row of bales right up against the other, allow room for air to pass around the bale. Store hay on high ground, and if possible store it on a gravel pad. Covering it with a tarp is a good idea, but don't do that for a few weeks after it is first cut, so it can finish curing. Otherwise, you are just trapping moisture in the bale. If you follow these rules, when in fall you move the end bale to feed, you will see a nice green, cured hay on the next butted bale to be fed.

My goats are a commercial meat herd. If I had to buy hay, I'd just plain go out of the goat biz because I would farm at a consistent net loss. Especially lately, when round bales here are going at $60-$110 each (normal non-drought round bale prices are $20-$25). Squares here mostly trend to the excellent range (horse hay), which is not necessary at all for goats. Squares here are $5-$6 per 60 pound square. You pencil those out, they are more costly TDN wise than corn, and way more costly than cottonseed. I can't get that cost back at selling time.

The "best" hay that gets eaten fastest by my goats is the stuff from the weedy borders of the hay lots. I know producers who must buy off-farm who actively look for awful, weedy round hay bales that the horse and cattle crowds turn their noses up at. They buy at a discount, knowing that as long as they have inspected and found the bales were put up right, the goats will be as well served -- and more economically -- by this "poor" hay than by a bale of pure alfalfa.

We've had real good luck feeding free-choice round bale hay with a ration of whole cottonseed fed once per day. I put out enough for my herd to clean up in 10 minutes. Cottonseed locally is $125 a ton and 27% protein, whereas at $5/bale, squares would be $167 a ton for the hay alone with no other supplement. If it was alfalfa ($6-$8 a square here), you'd be getting 16% protein. I buy the cottonseed in bulk, and store it in barrels with lids.

I have to think along these lines, as I am farming for profit (when I can make one).

Just some my experiences over the years. C-ya.

Jim,
thank you for the insightful post. DH is in the process of getting his applicator's license, so we are hoping to be able to spray weeds and get some hay off our fields this year. You've given us a lot of good information to think about.
mary

Spray weeds? Heck, if they aren't too woody, cut and bale them!

If you cut your field for hay or just mow it twice a year, every year, for 5 years or so, you will eliminate the weeds without spray and select for grasses by management practice.

Exhibit A: This haylot was almost all weeds when I started with it as rented land 16 years ago. We have mown it for hay twice a year, and also used to winter pasture cows on it. There were 3 years (2000-2003) in which nothing was done, after my landlord died. I since have bought the land, and resumed cutting. These shots were taken 2 years ago, in March, just after we bought the land.





At one point after a few years of management back in the '90s, we baled 1,100 60-pound bales off this one 10-acre lot. There was about 8 inches of space between bales coming off the baler. That's baling. It now regularly returns an average 28 5x5 round bales twice a year, 56 yearly total, and it is not yet all the way back from the 3-year layoff.

Being lazy and miserly (a slapshot combination), I'd rather mow my way to grass. Especially if I have hungry goats, who will eat that weedy hay like it is molasses!

Here's another good trick that works in most areas of the South on cool weather pasture grasses, where there is usually mild weather around the end of December. Go out with the bush hog and mow the whole thing down to 4" high around Christmastime. It will boil up out of the ground in spring! Something about mowing it back in the colder period really makes it want to jump in spring. The same people who say I'm nuts to be mowing in the colder months will come by in spring and ask me how much fertilizer I dumped on the field. Heh...NONE.

Heheheh...here I go with more rambling again. I've tried a lot of things in 16 years, kept the ones that worked. Never be afraid to try something new, just don't put all your eggs in one basket.

Yeah, if its weeds that goats will eat, just bale them and leave those nasty sprays off your good field. As long as its not something like ragweed, my goats pick the weeds out of the hay first. This year the bales were full of plantain....they prefer it over the alfalfa!

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Emily Dixon
Ozark Jewels
Nubians & Lamanchas
www.ozarkjewels.net

"Remember, no man is a failure, who has friends" -Clarence

What beautiful fields! I at first hoped to get our weeds under control by mowing, but I'm becoming impatient. lol. We have a lot of undesirable weeds. Some that grow head high and are very woody, and lots and lots of ragweed. It's really the ragweed that turned my mind to spraying. I raise dairy goats, and it took me awhile to realize that was what was making their milk bitter since we moved here. Also, I have sons who are allergic to the stuff. SecondEldest, who is otherwise a really good worker, would get so's he could hardly breath after helping his dad outside. I'm hoping to get the ragweed under control before he returns from his mission the end of this year.
mary

Ah!! Ragweed is a problem and you know, my goats and cows WON'T eat ragweed in hay. I simply have to throw it out.

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Emily Dixon
Ozark Jewels
Nubians & Lamanchas
www.ozarkjewels.net

"Remember, no man is a failure, who has friends" -Clarence

Unfortunately, my goats seem to like ragweed. You should've seen the way they looked at me last summer when I went out and mowed all the ragweed in their field. (What are we supposed to eat NOW?!)
mary

Jillis,
You obvously got ahold of some very badly wrapped bales, this will often occur when round bales are done individually. if you can find a farmer that does his round bales in a long row all wrapped together you will be doing yourself & your goats a big favor. it will save you a ton of money over the feeding season & your goats will prosper off this haylage. Yes wrapped bales are actually haylage the same as they used to store in the big silo's.
The process of wrapping hay is done to pickle the hay & if done properly, it will take a regular grass hay & turn it into a feed of 18 to 24% protien feed, depending of course of the grasses used in the fields.
Wrapping bales singly is not consistant in the wrap & therefore creating white mold. While not bad for cows it may not be good for goats, im not quite sure about a goat. but even with some white mold on it it is still a very good source of protein.
When farmers wrap bales the proceedure consists of vacumn packing the hay while it is just limp from cutting, usually baled within 24 hrs of cutting & therefore still quite wet with natural moisture from the grass as well as moisture trapped under the hay while laying on the ground.
now this proceedure goes agianst all things considered with people who do hay, most if not all hay makers try there darnest to make dry hay.
when you pack wet hay inside a vacumn it removes all the air & compresses the hay very tightly. this causes the moisture to begin to "rot" the grass, which causes it to release & condense all the natural sugars in the grass. if done properly, meaning if the vacumn is tight & doesnt leak air it will in a matter a few short mths turn the hay into a pickled grass with a very high sugar content. if it is not done properly you will get alot of white mold, but still have a considerably higher sugar content in the bale.
the smell you described of fermenting apples was not quite what i would look for in a good bale, but a smell of fermention is right on the money. the bales i get are so inticing with the smell that im tempted to eat it myself it is so good. We feed it to our cows, hogs, & goats & all of our animals are thriving & growing through with winter with very little grain added to there diets.
I will say that on occasion we get a bale that has white mold in it & the goats dont seem to mind it at all, we feed 2 bales at a time & on more then 1 occasion 1 of the 2 bales had some white mold in it & the goats never made any distiction between which bale they would eat out of.
I will also add that when i go into the field with a fresh bale on the spear it doesn't matter where the animals are they all come running in a hurry to get to the new bale, not because they are hungry because they are never left without enough to eat , but because they love the way it tastes so much. Iv'e even seen the cattle leave the grain trough to come eat the new hay in the field, & i consider that doing something when you can get a cow to leave fresh ground corn for a bale of hay.
I would challange you to put one of those round bales in your feeding area along side a few bales of your regular hay & see which gets eaten 1st & gets eaten the most (meaning the least waste), im quite sure that once you introduce this new hay to your goats you will see there is no need to buy dry hay any longer.
Rick

These bales are what we call "silage bales" in Wisconsin. THey are baled a bit damp so they do ferment. So what you basically have is silage (damp, fermented hay, usually in a silo) in the form of a round bale. Only dairy farmers feed those around here. And properly done, they shouldn't mold either. I'd say they were baled very wet.

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ADGA Nigerian Dwarf and MDGA Mini Mancha goats for show, home use and pets www.dbarjacres.webs.com Located in North central Wisconsin

Gosh I love my dad!! I bought square bales from him last summer for $1.50 a bale. We had to pick it up out of the field, but hey, what a deal! I usually can find hay for around $2 or $2.50 otherwise. One reason I have not gone to feeding more alfalfa pellets. They are over $9 for 50 lbs. I can buy hay way cheaper.

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I can't believe I deleted it!

How do you inspect a 5x5 bale? Bought 2 bales from the retired Ag agent last month. One bale came from an very unimproved field with lots of blackberry. This has meant picking out the older thornier and tougher canes-ouch! But it seems that this weedier hay needed to be dried more before being round baled-the mold is worse in the areas where the weeds are concentrated. But from the outside this bale looked fine and when I pulled out a handful from the centre smellt fine too. But the mold has spoilt almost half of the 5x5 bale which I paid $20 for. So how do you tell what is good hay in a round bale? With a square at least you can split one open. Liese, Piedmont region, NC

I guess the easiest way is to get to know the person who bales it so you know where it comes from , and are able to trust what they tell you about it. And talk to as many others as you can who buy hay to get their input.

I was born and raised in the Piedmont, around Burlington. What part are you?

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ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Hi Bearfoot, We are NWish of Burlington in Caswell Co up near Danville, VA. Just moved here in May so learning about who has want, etc is an on going process.

For Everyone: is there a way to saw (?) a round bale in half? Liese, Piedmont region, NC

My friend used to do it with a modified chain for his chainsaw...

I don't know how he modified it.

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Radically conservatively un-biased liberal.

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Liese, if you paid $20 and half was spoiled, you still got a great deal where I live. 5x5s here are high! It's $60-110 a bale here this year. Drought!

I feed my rounds a bale at a time to the goats in the pasture, so whatever is in them they have to deal with. I too have some blackberry on the back of the place that gets in bales. They have always chewed up even the toughest thorny stems. Same with multifloral rose. Goats have tough mouths!

BTW, all, I missed the meaning of "marshmellow" yesterday on first read. Agree with what others have said, that's haylage and is fine to feed. All silage smells sweet-sourish. In my area, haylage is not baled at all anymore, since we have lost 95% of our dairies. Used to be a big dairy county, but no more. The few remaining diaries use pit silos to ferment corn silage.

Well, I guess that's true - the equivalent of what 6 bales at $10? It's just hard to see the waste and of course wondering if someone will begin circling around! Will ask at the chain saw place about "the modification". Thanks, Liese. Piedmont region, NC