Re: Horse Hay

Posted by Walt Davies on June 25, 2007 at 22:58:07 from (70.41.247.71):

In Reply to: Horse Hay posted by wi steve on June 25, 2007 at 10:36:39:

I live in Oregon and as you know it rains here all the time. We do our best to get hay in between storms but its not a perfect science and you darn sure can't trust the local weather people. so i go to the national weather to get the best advice but that's not perfect either.
Sometime it get rained on. Contrary to popular belief rain doesn't cause mold putting it up wet does. We turn it a few times till its dry and then bale it. We check with our probe it more accurate than feeling with your hands, it will tell the moisture and the temperature of the bale. I had one the other day in the barn that was 35% in the middle and 14 on the ends. the temp was 2 deg. lower than ambient temp. Just because they are wet doesn't mean that they will burn your barn down they have to real wet and have no air circulating around them. Barns need to be vented and all the new ones I see are not. Mine is like a sieve so the air freely flows around the hay.
the trouble I have is trying to please everyone who has a different idea of what perfect hay is. We bale to our specs and if the buyer wants that OK but if not go down the road we just don't have the time to please everyone with special request as to how they want the hay baled.
We make 50 and 60 lb bales if you want 40 or 30 then go down the road i won't make a sloppy bale just to cut the weight down. Then they complain that the bales are falling apart. I have 3 balers and 2 are set at 50 the bigger one is set at 60 lb. I say take it or leave it I have more buyers than bales right now.
And if you want all the weeds out then sort it yourself I can't spray enough stuff to get rid of them all and I won't cut around them. Even at todays higher prices by the time buy parts replace and repair things and buy $3 gas or diesel pay $10 for lousy help you are lucky to make anything in the hay business. We do it because we have cows of own and we want to cut our cost of feeding them, sometimes I think I'm doing it all wrong.
Sorry to carry on so but this is just the way it is out here in wet Oregon. We have 3 maybe 4 days right now to get some in before the next rain.

Walt

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