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Wet Hay

K

Kyle in KY

Member
Well Mother Nature threw a monkey wrench into my plans this past week. No rain in the forecast all week, So I cut almost twenty acres last Saturday, raked Monday and planned to bale Tuesday but Mother Nature decided to bless us with pop up showers Tuesday and has rained ever since.
My question, would you bale it once dried and use it for compost or bedding or would you bushhog the windrows to scatter the grass so it doesnt kill the grass below the windrow?
Looking for input as to what youd do?
 


It all depends on your local hay market. I have baled it and sold for mulch but the mulch market dropped off with modern erosion controls. Here in the NE no one has made their first crop hay yet so here your rained on hay would bring good money. If I decided that it wasn't worth baling I have tedded it out and left it. BEWARE! expect answers accusing you of producing mold because many people don't think that it is possible to dry rained on hay.
 
Im sure, Ill take it with a grain of salt. Ive teddered some of it to dry it out. Im more worried about getting it up before it smothers the grass below.
 
Ive raked the outside perimeter to the edge and just left it. Burned some windrows when dry, the bush hog does spread it out but there will still be wads.
 
Yeah, I remember very well how that works. Best thing I ever did was to sell everything that I had hay related.
 
The rest of the week is supposed to be nice, it should dry ok but I dont want to feed it to the cows. As another mentioned, it may be best to bale to get it off the ground and dump in a fence row. I wasnt sure about the bush hog idea but glad I asked. Thanks for the input everyone
 
Around here hay gets Rained on regularly. How much damage is done depends on severel factors. Most importantly is was the hay raked or tedded. If it was cut and left like that it can have a couple inches of rain on it and still be ok. It also makes a difference how dry it was when rained on. If it was near dry there I'll be more damage than of it was just cut. The most important thing is to leave it til it will for sure dry to bale. If you Ted it or rake it and it gets more rain on it it will be toast.
 
If it were me, I'd try to get it dry, and bale it, even though hay quality is likely gone. If it was swathed, get out there with a rake after the sun's been out for awhile, and get it rolled over. If it was mowed (not in windrows already), let dry as much as its going to dry (likely stay wet underneath), then rake. Anyways, just do what it takes to bale it as dry as possible.

If you are a livestock guy, you could try to feed some this winter. See if livestock will eat it at all, or have any feed value at all. But it'll be a crap shoot. They might eat some, and they might not. But one things for sure, it's probably lost about all of its value to be marketed (sold) as hay.

Before I just sat it in a fence row to rot (if livestock won't eat it), I'd fill ditches and wash outs with it. If I didn't have any places that needed filled, I'd talk around to the local area people. I got a neighbor getting 2 big round straw bales that are a couple years old to put in a wash out that he has. He gonna give me a little bit for em, to cover the cost of rolling them up. Better than nothing.
 

I cut hay one year and it rained on it for a week, finally got it dried and rolled up so we could dump that black junk in a ditch
Turned cows in that fall and they cleaned that ditch out even with plenty of green grass to eat
Roll it up and set it to the side, set some out when you start feeding hay and see if they will eat it
 

Back when I did only square bales I've had ready to bale windrows rained on, tedded them out, let it dry, raked again and baled a couple days later.

I mowed one field, tedded it, it rained a week, tedded again, raked and baled it when dry.

Cows ate it all.

I round bale and wrap now. Far less weather related stress.
 
The cows would eat it fine. But if you don t want to feed it, why bother baling it at all. Ted it and leave it as fertilizer. Unless you rake it into wind rows, its not going to smother anything. Even if it was raked, all you would have is really green stripes in your filed next spring.
 
Why not feed it? We had to do that usualay every year on some. Very seldom did we have to chop any back on the ground.
 
My personal opinion formed the first time my cows did that was that the rained on hay, I baled and set off in the
corner of a field to be thrown in a ditch to prevent soil erosion quite a while later, was that the hay ferments and gains
a sugar/whiskey content and the cows eat it because it's sweet and they get drunk........never was verified but makes
conversation. They have since done it every time I had that problem.
 
If you do bale it for questionable feed, don't bale it wet. It'll cause molding. And be susceptible to catching fire if some is dry and some is wet.

If you've ever heard of hay catching on fire on its own without a match or a lightening strike, it's because it was baled to wet or to green.
I baled some alfalfa one time that was a touch green. It was either bale it, or it was going to get rained on with lots more rain in the forecast. So I chose to bale it. Those bales got hot. Probably lucky they didn't catch on fire. I un-rolled one to feed a month or two later. If you tried to lay your hand on the hay when it was freshly un-rolled, the hay was so hot you couldn't hold your hand on it. Not quite as hot as trying to hold your hand on an exhaust pipe, but almost. Made a believer out of me. I didn't have any catch on fire, but seen first hand how it's possible. I avoid any moisture going into a bale after that.
 
I just feed it. Feed better hat in the cold of winter or mix it in with better hay so the cattle maintain condition in the cold then feed it in the late fall and early spring. They will eat it more than likely and if they don't they will make bedding out of it. I've seen cows leave good looking green hay for some pretty poor stuff to eat so pretty green hay is not always what it is cracked up to be.
 
(quoted from post at 09:58:21 07/22/23) If you do bale it for questionable feed, don't bale it wet. It'll cause molding. And be susceptible to catching fire if some is dry and some is wet.

If you've ever heard of hay catching on fire on its own without a match or a lightening strike, it's because it was baled to wet or to green.
I baled some alfalfa one time that was a touch green. It was either bale it, or it was going to get rained on with lots more rain in the forecast. So I chose to bale it. Those bales got hot. Probably lucky they didn't catch on fire. I un-rolled one to feed a month or two later. If you tried to lay your hand on the hay when it was freshly un-rolled, the hay was so hot you couldn't hold your hand on it. Not quite as hot as trying to hold your hand on an exhaust pipe, but almost. Made a believer out of me. I didn't have any catch on fire, but seen first hand how it's possible. I avoid any moisture going into a bale after that.
Click to expand...


Kyle's question was "would you bale it once dried?"
 
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