hay preservative

Tonight I was getting everything ready for square baling tomorrow early afternoon and I raked everything this afternoon so I ran the square baler back and forth on the headlands to "open" the field and make sure the baler was tuned in just right. it has just enough moisture in it that its nice and green and retains all the leaves but I know those bales are going to sweat a little tomorrow and can't be stacked in the barn for a day or two. When I was younger the guys I baled for would spread salt on bales like that. My question is would hay preservative properly mixed and put in a pump up sprayer and spray the bales down as they are stacked do about the same as the old time salt trick? I have no experience with the hay preservative, and understand that it is supposed to be put on with an applicator on the baler to get it uniformly thru the bale...but my mind comes up with out of the box thinking like this from time to time and I like to bounce it off others. See what you guys think.

You would not get near enough coverage for it to work just by spraying it on the out sides of the bales.

IF you hay is tough GET IT OUT OF THE barn!!! It can heat up to a week after baling. Neighbor lost a barn ten days after fresh hay was put in the barn.

Thats nothing to fool with, proprionic acid, is applied as you mentioned before its a bale.

I've dealt with wet bales, way too many times, lay out a tarp, open them up and spread them out, feed it immediately, but DO not fool with suspect wet bales for any reason. I've heard and seen all kinds of crap over the years, one a long time farmer, telling me the dry ones in the stack will soak up the moisture, and sure enough I've found those hard, dense, and dusty bales come out of his mow, as I used to buy directly out of his barn, load the wagon myself, hard to believe his never went up given what I pulled out of the stack. The same guy, (and I liked him, he was a good guy but..) brought me 200 just baled, thankfully I handled each one, separated, opened and spread them out, we would have lost our barn without any doubt, he was very apologetic, but that meant nothing, wet bales do not care about apologies. The darned things were heating up already. I had a long time neighbor farmer/dairyman, that I helped in his last years, and one year he had some great 2nd cut, I wanted several hundred bales of it, so we put the NH 315 on the 3150 JD and made up the order, one field was bone dry, days of perfect weather, but another for some darned reason, just did not dry down, we had the time, it should have been flipped in the windrow or tedded one more time prior too, some thick green hay grasses. I handled all of what I baled, stacked the wagon as it was baled, not enough wagons, then loaded his truck, then unloaded it, and I found hot ones, one the wagon, coming off the truck, dealt with those accordingly. Its russian roulette as far as I am concerned, one thing I hate and will make sure NEVER goes in any barn is wet bales. I have seen one devastating fire from it, in '74 as a kid, horrible situation with livestock, horses etc.

The salt did nothing except absorb some surface moisture if the bales were that damp. Can you estimate the moisture content of the bales you just made? Maybe they are within tolerance, 20% moisture in a square bale will store but 15% is better, maybe weigh a couple and compare to some of the other bales or stand them on end in the sun and wind for a couple of days, I have baled hay at 25% or higher many times over the years to beat rain but baled it looser so it would air dry on the wagon under an open shed before storage.

I would invest in a good moisture tester.

JDseller is right on the money. Spraying on the bales will do more for your mind then the hay.
A lot of barns have burned in our area in the last 50 years. We used salt with some success, but our neighbor used salt and a large barn burned down. He rebuilt and that burned down. The only thing I would say different is it might take three or four weeks before your are safe with your hay in the barn

In mow hay drier is a better choice. We made small squares for many years, some quite high in moisture. I put them on the drier, and would leave the fan run for 4-6 weeks. We could put in as many as 5,000 bales of hay, and you could feel the air blowing out through the top of the hay mow. Never got a bad bale off the drier. It now sits ,unused , and unwanted in my dairy barn, as we do large round wet wrapped bales, and chopped haylage. Bruce

years ago I used to help the neighbor put up loose hay, they used salt and a drier,..never heard of it with bales...

No need to worry....no barn is going to burn down here...we are talking 30 bales, and I have them stacked loose on a hay rack sitting under a carport that I use for equipment storage, so they are getting plenty of air flow. The windrows are going to get flipped again today about 11-11:30 and start baling about 1ish. Some of you bring up very good points and that was what I was after. Bruce never heard of a hay dryer...sounds like a large base with big powerful fans that you stack the hay on and it blows air up and thru the stacked hay. yes a moisture tester is in my future...maybe not soon but eventually. I don't know actual numbers but I would say of the 30 bales 25 of them were 18-22% moisture and the other 5 could have been around the 25% mark...now I am going to say today it will be under 15% moisture...we shall see...I am guessing at least 360 bales today...equipment Massey 180/massey#12/ & ez-trail bale basket...first time I have got to use the basket...part of the reason I wanted to make hay last night...to tune in the baler tension wise for sending bales up the chute...you could not have wiped the smile off my face last night watching those bales drop in the basket...square baling by myself and not running back and forth from rack to tractor every 5-7 bales!!

I don"t think that would work, but putting a system on your baler is cheaper than you think. Mine is locally made and amounts mostly to a 15 gallon atv sprayer plumbed to a spray nozzle over the pickup and a switch to control it on the tractor. I also have a baler mounted moisture meter so I can watch the meter and if I get in a tough area I can apply some prop ionic acid. I rarely use it though, I just never thought the results were that great. The treated hay would not mold, but seemed to loose the sweet smell of good hay.
Josh

As was said, a baler installed tank and pump is pretty cost effective, especially if you live in a climate where dry hay is always a premium. I use sulpher based liquid on mine, but a Neice is the head of a college equine program in Iowa and EVERY bale she buys for the school is acid treated.
25% moisture is too high. If I find any of those I cut them open and feed them right away.

I have a moisture tester that is how I know what percentage the hay was when baled but it still has to dry out enough to store. As I said, salt does nothing to dry or preserve hay, that is an old wives tale, if lactic acid or some other preservative is not applied at baling then actual drying by natural or forced air is the only alternative to ensure safe storage.

When we still dairy farmed (central ohio)where it is almost impossible to get hay dry, we used alot of proprionic acid applied layer by layer in the mow. We never had anything but good hay come out of the mow with the use of proprionic acid. That was with small squares.

Muduc, it is obvious from your original post that you know what you are doing because you know that it is not quite dry, and you have not put it in the barn. I have had a few times when I set some aside on the wood floor for a few days to monitor them. That is wise for you to do that. I agree that the preservative won't work because there is no penetration. The farmer that I worked for as a kid was pretty sharp. One time we spread some salt on some second cut that he didn't quite trust. I did find with the ones that I set out with space between them that they dried down after a few days and didn't heat up or develop significant mold.

I hate to think about how many thousands of bales I have set up on their ends or made teepees out of because they got rained on or were a little wet when baled. We would usually let them dry like that for a few days after a rainstorm and then haul them to the barn.

I do remember my Dad spreading rock salt on bale layers in the barn a few times when he was worried about them being too moist. The cows loved those bales and they did not mold. And the barn is still standing 50 years later.

Another year we ended up stacking a bunch of hay outside when we got way more than what our barn would hold. We carefully put damper bales out in that stack, and then used the outside hay first. Good luck!