Jeanne - Simme Valley
Well-known member
TexasBred":nfd7xo5h said:hayray":nfd7xo5h said:Your moisture and humidity must be pretty low. In our climate it is a huge loss not to cover bales. You only need to loose a couple inches on the perimeter to get a 30% loss.
We have a world of humidity and where Nova lives it's even higher and in normal years gets more rain than we do. Bales do not rot on top. Maybe we bail it tigher or it's the type grass we grow, but it cn rain for a week and bales won't be wet a half inch deep on top and then it dries out...but you can expect to lose 4-6 inches off the bottom anytime you sit it on the ground.
I live in a climate that you are lucky if you get 3 days in a row of sunshine. We don't have very much of our hay put up dry because we don't get 3 days of sunshine :lol: But, what hay we do have put up is lined up flat end to flat end, pushed as tightly as possible, and we don't have spoilage on the top & sides either, only the bottom, which will be a couple of inches. I do think the tightness of the bale is the MOST important factor we are dealing with. The moisture simply does not penetrate a tight bale. I see pics of some peoples bales and they wouldn't last a week around here. They would be rotten to the core.
Funny, this post came up. I've been looking at my feeding sites and how well the cattle clean up all the hay. Really and truly, I'm talking minimum waste at most feeders. Now, I have a few round feeders that are falling apart, and THAT's where I have waste. But, I make my cattle clean up before I load up their feeders. I've been meaning to take some pics & post on here.