Baling Green Hay

[CCCowman]

Had a guy tell me tonight about baling green hay (like the Amish do) and wrapping it with plastic. He said if you cut it and then turn right around and bale/wrap it, it would be high protein and high sugar. Cows would eat it like grain. I'm sure you need good quality grass though.

Anybody do this or tried it??

 

[pricefarm]

A lot of people around me does it. They usually cut one day then bale the next day depending on weather. It does have to dry down some. It basically make silage out of. Makes good feed when you open the bale up it's almost like feeding them fresh green grass. You do have to have a roller designed to bale the wet hay and a bale wrapper to wrap it in plastic

 

[sstterry]

Had a guy tell me tonight about baling green hay (like the Amish do) and wrapping it with plastic. He said if you cut it and then turn right around and bale/wrap it, it would be high protein and high sugar. Cows would eat it like grain. I'm sure you need good quality grass though.

Anybody do this or tried it??

It is referred to as Haylage or round bale silage in some places. I know that there is quite a bit of it done in other areas. Have a friend in GA that swears by it and says the cows eat it like candy.
https://duplin.ces.ncsu.edu/2018/04/haylage/

 

[sstterry]

One thing to bear in mind if you are using this type of silage, the bales are about 2 to 3 times heavier than a normal bale and you definitely can't use a spear to store it. It has to remain airtight or it will spoil.

 

[chevytaHOE5674]

Do around a thousand for myself and customers every year. The only reason the feed is "better quality" than dry hay is because you can make it when the hay is at its prime not when mother nature allows. It is a lot more work as the bales are heavy, need to be hauled and wrapped asap, have to keep the plastic sealed, etc.

If mother nature allows I will take dry hay everytime.

 

[gcreekrch]

Do around a thousand for myself and customers every year. The only reason the feed is "better quality" than dry hay is because you can make it when the hay is at its prime not when mother nature allows. It is a lot more work as the bales are heavy, need to be hauled and wrapped asap, have to keep the plastic sealed, etc.

If mother nature allows I will take dry hay everytime.

I concur, plastic is cheaper than feeding black hay but it does cost extra for smaller bales. We moved from an individual wrapper to an in-line a few years ago. Speeded things up a bunch.

 

[5S Cattle]

Our local tractor house had a brand new bale wrapper sitting outside the other day. I was curious because they are not popular in our area. Asked how much it was, dang near 40k! Couldn't believe it was that much.

 

[sstterry]

I concur, plastic is cheaper than feeding black hay but it does cost extra for smaller bales. We moved from an individual wrapper to an in-line a few years ago. Speeded things up a bunch.

Pardon my ignorance, but with an-inline wrapper, how do you keep the hay airtight after you have opened the plastic on the first bale. It seems like an awful lot of wasted plastic over the course of a winter.

 

[chevytaHOE5674]

Once you start feeding out of a line of bales you have to use them quick enough so that the exposed end bale doesnt have a chance to get moldy.

For a small time guy only feeding occasionally or for somebody wanting the ability to sell bales, individually wrapped is good. For somebody who wants to wrap as much hay as cheap and fast as possible inline is the way to go.

 

[T & B farms]

We bale close to 1000 silage bales a year. Like has been said, baling them wet and wrapping them does not add feed value to them. For us it allows us to get hay put up at the right time for quality. Another positive is there is no waste with balage that is put up right. No flat spot on the bottom of rotten hay.

All our dry hay is baled 5'x68" and they will weigh 16-1800 lbs.
On silage hay, I bale them 5'x 50-55" and at 65% moisture they will usually weigh 2000-2200.

 

[gcreekrch]

I concur, plastic is cheaper than feeding black hay but it does cost extra for smaller bales. We moved from an individual wrapper to an in-line a few years ago. Speeded things up a bunch.

Pardon my ignorance, but with an-inline wrapper, how do you keep the hay airtight after you have opened the plastic on the first bale. It seems like an awful lot of wasted plastic over the course of a winter.

The end bales have some spoilage from wrapping to when fed but when you are feeding 15 to 20 of them per day spoilage is not an issue once the stack is opened.

 

[True Grit Farms]

We bale close to 1000 silage bales a year. Like has been said, baling them wet and wrapping them does not add feed value to them. For us it allows us to get hay put up at the right time for quality. Another positive is there is no waste with balage that is put up right. No flat spot on the bottom of rotten hay.

All our dry hay is baled 5'x68" and they will weigh 16-1800 lbs.
On silage hay, I bale them 5'x 50-55" and at 65% moisture they will usually weigh 2000-2200.

So you need to feed 4 rolls of the silage hay to get the same amount of dry matter as one 5x68?

 

[Hogtiming]

It is popular in our area. But I have wondered at the end of the winter so you feed more or less haylage versus dry hay?

 

[T & B farms]

We bale close to 1000 silage bales a year. Like has been said, baling them wet and wrapping them does not add feed value to them. For us it allows us to get hay put up at the right time for quality. Another positive is there is no waste with balage that is put up right. No flat spot on the bottom of rotten hay.

All our dry hay is baled 5'x68" and they will weigh 16-1800 lbs.
On silage hay, I bale them 5'x 50-55" and at 65% moisture they will usually weigh 2000-2200.

So you need to feed 4 rolls of the silage hay to get the same amount of dry matter as one 5x68?

I would say that is pretty close. I actually like that better. Most all my hay is fed by unrolling. Lots of small herds, 20-30 cows. I will unrole 1 bale of that and they will pick it clean. Then they will go off and pick for the rest of the day. I do things differently if weather is real nasty, or if the pasture is picked real short.

Edited to add;
After thinking about that some more, 4 to 1 doesn't seem right. That's what the math says, but watching the consumption it seems it's more like 2 to 1. At the places I feed in rings seems a good dry bale lasts about twice as long

 

[gcreekrch]

We bale close to 1000 silage bales a year. Like has been said, baling them wet and wrapping them does not add feed value to them. For us it allows us to get hay put up at the right time for quality. Another positive is there is no waste with balage that is put up right. No flat spot on the bottom of rotten hay.

All our dry hay is baled 5'x68" and they will weigh 16-1800 lbs.
On silage hay, I bale them 5'x 50-55" and at 65% moisture they will usually weigh 2000-2200.

So you need to feed 4 rolls of the silage hay to get the same amount of dry matter as one 5x68?

I would say that is pretty close. I actually like that better. Most all my hay is fed by unrolling. Lots of small herds, 20-30 cows. I will unrole 1 bale of that and they will pick it clean. Then they will go off and pick for the rest of the day. I do things differently if weather is real nasty, or if the pasture is picked real short.

Edited to add;
After thinking about that some more, 4 to 1 doesn't seem right. That's what the math says, but watching the consumption it seems it's more like 2 to 1. At the places I feed in rings seems a good dry bale lasts about twice as long

We try to dry ours down to between 20 and 30%. Feed pretty much 1 to 1.

There are haying season where that choice is not ours to make.

 

[T & B farms]

So you need to feed 4 rolls of the silage hay to get the same amount of dry matter as one 5x68?

I would say that is pretty close. I actually like that better. Most all my hay is fed by unrolling. Lots of small herds, 20-30 cows. I will unrole 1 bale of that and they will pick it clean. Then they will go off and pick for the rest of the day. I do things differently if weather is real nasty, or if the pasture is picked real short.

Edited to add;
After thinking about that some more, 4 to 1 doesn't seem right. That's what the math says, but watching the consumption it seems it's more like 2 to 1. At the places I feed in rings seems a good dry bale lasts about twice as long

We try to dry ours down to between 20 and 30%. Feed pretty much 1 to 1.

There are haying season where that choice is not ours to make.

I've had some get down to 40-45% and it molds and turns nasty. 65% has been the sweet spot for me.

 

[True Grit Farms]

Very interesting, I wonder if the cows somehow absorb nutrition out of the water, like a liquid feed? I've always been told it's the dry matter intake that you base a feed ration off of. But cattle that are on liquid, wet brewers grain or baleage sure look good. There might be something going on inside that plastic that we don't understand.

 

[Stickney94]

We run a small operation with full-time off the farm jobs and so we purchased a single bale wrapper to provide us another tool to put up quality hay. Time and Weather are the two factors that make our decision on whether to put the hay up dry or as baylage. If we have a window that looks dry we will put up dry hay. But, having the option to essentially cut one day, rake, bale, wrap the next can really provide some peace of mind.

The feeding ratio of 2:1 seems about accurate in my experience (1 dry bale last twice as long). The bales ARE heavy. So be careful moving them (speaking from experience).

As far as moisture when we wrap -- I've yet to figure that out. Superficial surface mold is pretty common. If the bale smells like silage I don't worry about it. If the bale smells sour I will strip the outer layers. I do know that the cows don't seem to mind either way.

We've had mold free and mold covered bales in the same batch wrapped within minutes of one another. Ideally for us, right around 50% moisture seems to provide the best results.

Last summer we did a batch that was wetter, probably 60%+, and the main issue was that upon placing in the bale feeder this winter, these wetter bales would freeze hard and be essentially a silage ice cube the cattle couldn't bite off. The baylage we did at say 40% was dry enough that the issue wasn't as severe. But that was a new one.

 

[JParrott]

We bale close to 1000 silage bales a year. Like has been said, baling them wet and wrapping them does not add feed value to them. For us it allows us to get hay put up at the right time for quality. Another positive is there is no waste with balage that is put up right. No flat spot on the bottom of rotten hay.

All our dry hay is baled 5'x68" and they will weigh 16-1800 lbs.
On silage hay, I bale them 5'x 50-55" and at 65% moisture they will usually weigh 2000-2200.

So you need to feed 4 rolls of the silage hay to get the same amount of dry matter as one 5x68?

No, dry bales will be around 20-25% moisture. I'd say this is where the 2:1 that people are seeing comes from instead of 4:1.

 

[chevytaHOE5674]

"Dry" bales better be drier than 20-25% around here more like 12-18% or else you have a bunch of moldy garbage. I've wrapped hay anywhere from 20% all the way to 70% moisture all with good results. For feeding IME it's closer to 3:1.