Moldy Hay?

[dcara]

I have three 10-12 month old steers which have been working on a roll of hay for the past 3 weeks. They will probably finish it this week and so far seem fine. The roll was from a first cut of Bahaia and Johnson grass. I checked as deep as I could (about 1 foot) when I got it and didn't see any mold. We've had rain off and on for the past 2 weeks and this evening when I got home from work I noticed a white mold in most of the inner parts. Does anyone know what type of mold this is and whether I should be concernd. What kind of molds are "ok' and which aren't; and, how do you identify them?

 

[dun]

My methods are rather unscientific. If they will eat when there is other stuff to eat, it's ok. If they won't eat until there isn; anything else, it's bad.

dun

 

[Running Arrow Bill]

Being in the Dallas area, don't they have any bermudagrass or other "better" hay there? IMO anything that has johnsongrass in it is pretty much low end hay. Most quality farmers & ranchers consider johnsongrass a very noxious weed. Hope you didn't pay more than $15 or $20 a round bale for that hay.

On a more positive note, do not feed any even slightly moldy hay to horses if you have any. Also, I wouldn't feed moldy hay to pregnant cows. Just my opinion.

 

[TheBullLady]

Most molds won't hurt cows, but don't feed it to horses. With round bales and all the rain we've had this year, it's been hard to not bale hay that's going to be moldy.

 

[hillbilly]

Round bales are convenient and cheap. But if they take a month to clean one bale up you should be feeding square bales.
If you are feeding in a feeder and I suspect you are, maybe you could cover it?
I've seen an old water tank turned upside down on top of a round bale feeder.

Hillbilly

 

[dun]

Round bales are convenient and cheap. But if they take a month to clean one bale up you should be feeding square bales.
If you are feeding in a feeder and I suspect you are, maybe you could cover it?
I've seen an old water tank turned upside down on top of a round bale feeder.

Hillbilly

It's not during the feeding timeframe, it's during the storage time that it gets musty/moldy

dun

 

[dcara]

Thanks for all the replies. It was/is low end hay. I got it for a couple of reasons which I thought made sense. The reasons were:

1) Most of the 1st cut bermuda/rye hay was gone when I went looking last month and what I could find was $50 a roll (ouch). I've noticed the 2nd cuts (mostly bermuda) are starting to come in from the fields now and I have a couple of rolls on reserve from a neighbor at $30 a roll. I try to wait for the 3rd cutting bermuda to winter with.

2) I feed the expensive bermuda hay to the horses and the cheaper hay to the feeder calves for roughage. A different neighbor told me a couple of years ago that cows would eat just about anything so quality wasn't an issue. This person would roll hay his rye/johnson/bahaya in April and let it sit outside uncovered until around October before he started feeding it to the cows. The stuff looked terrible buy then but his cows still ate it.

Hay prices have gone up this year around here by about 30%. How are prices in your areas?

 

[dun]

Hay prices have gone up this year around here by about 30%. How are prices in your areas?

Can hardly give the stuff away this year. There is so much hay left from last year that the usual custom balers wouldn't even do shares this year. They wanted dollars and you kept all the hay.

dun

 

[TheBullLady]

Yes... the same for hay prices here! We've had record rain throughout the spring and summer, so plenty of hay supplies here too. THANK GOD! We've got almost our whole winter supply stashed away.