will round question

[wildcat]

I baled some big round bale brome hay today. I know brome can get musty if it's not completly dry. I'm pretty sure it was dry enough, but the windrows were pretty heavy and I would have liked to give it another day, but there was rain in the forecast, and thunderheads in the west so I went ahead and baled. I want to stack these bales three high in a shed. My question is would it be any benifit to leave the bales outside for a while before putting them in the shed, just in case it was a little on the damp side?

 

[dun]

Depends on how much you like the shed and the hay. I always leave bales out for at least a week to go through a sweat before putyting them inside or stacking them.

 

[wildcat]

Thanks Dun, I was just wondering, is leaving the hay out because you are concerned about a fire, or well, i guess i'm not really sure what you mean by going through a "sweat" if the hay was put up at the proper mpisture.

 

[dun]

Fire AND spoilage. No matter how dry the hay is it will warm for a couple of days following baling. Trying to get our grass hay to 12-14% moisture before baling is almost an exercise in fulity. The stuff we put up that was around 14% went up to about 96 degrees a day or 2 after baling. The stuff we put up wetter then I would have liked (been rained on for 3 days and more rain coming) went up to around 150 before it started cooling off.
As in all things, that's just my personal method.

 

[Angus Cowman]

I agree with Dun all my hay will stay in the field a minnimum of three days before I put it in the barn because of the sweat process
I usually put it in the barn on the 4th day alfalfa stays out 5 days

 

[grannysoo]

Fire AND spoilage. No matter how dry the hay is it will warm for a couple of days following baling. Trying to get our grass hay to 12-14% moisture before baling is almost an exercise in fulity.

Dun is right on track with this. I have baled some (when in a pinch) that I knew was too wet. You could go out at night and watch it steaming, and that stuff was HOT!. If confined and under pressure (stacked), that hay had a lot of potential to burn.

But... after it cooked off and cooled down, the cows loved it!

 

[novaman]

Always let the bales sit for awhile. Even if you're sure it is dry. I've seen many bales burn up as a result of being too wet. The cows do like the feed if it does get hot, but the feed value is crap because the heat ruins the protein.

 

[mtncows]

Better to loose a little hay from weather than all the hay and the barn as well

 

[wildcat]

Are we all talking round bales here? Most of the hay put in sheds around here is square bales, mostly large, and those guys get it in the shed as quick as possible, to avoid the bales getting rained on.

 

[c farmer]

The cows do like the feed if it does get hot, but the feed value is crap because the heat ruins the protein.

If the heat ruins the protein than how come haylage and silage even wrapped round bales have higher protein than when the crop is dried, all silage goes through a heat cycle.

 

[1982vett]

Are we all talking round bales here? Most of the hay put in sheds around here is square bales, mostly large, and those guys get it in the shed as quick as possible, to avoid the bales getting rained on.

Yep, we are talking rounds, and yes the squares are sponges.

 

[kenny thomas]

Again I am different in that I do not want even the dew to fall on them before they are in the barn. When we square baled everything we did not leave them out. Rolled almost 300 so far this year and all have been in the barn before night. If you are baling at a higher moisture you will have to leave them out a few days.

 

[Jalopy]

[*]
If the heat ruins the protein than how come haylage and silage even wrapped round bales have higher protein than when the crop is dried, all silage goes through a heat cycle.

User avatar
c farmer

I think the difference is that all the wet products you listed above are fermented by anaerobic bacteria while the normal "dry " baled hay is heated by fermenting of aerobic bacteria.

 

[Angus Cowman]

Always let the bales sit for awhile. Even if you're sure it is dry. I've seen many bales burn up as a result of being too wet. The cows do like the feed if it does get hot, but the feed value is crap because the heat ruins the protein.

What Dun and I are referring to isn't hay that is to wet to bale, with our humidity and the type of hay we have around here if you bale hay at at 12% moisture it will still go thru a heating process just because of being compress it might not be much like Dun said his went to 96f but you but them directly in the barn where no air can get to them and then you have all these bales sitting together building heat and then poof their goes your barn and hay

 

[grannysoo]

Always let the bales sit for awhile. Even if you're sure it is dry. I've seen many bales burn up as a result of being too wet. The cows do like the feed if it does get hot, but the feed value is crap because the heat ruins the protein.

What Dun and I are referring to isn't hay that is to wet to bale, with our humidity and the type of hay we have around here if you bale hay at at 12% moisture it will still go thru a heating process just because of being compress it might not be much like Dun said his went to 96f but you but them directly in the barn where no air can get to them and then you have all these bales sitting together building heat and then poof their goes your barn and hay

Hay can be plenty dry to bale and is still going to go thru the heat process. And speaking of humidity, most of the time ours runs around 95+ %.

 

[bigbull338]

as said leave the hay out a few days an let it go though the sweat in the field.an then put it in the barn.because wet or green hay will start a barn fire sooner or later.

 

[novaman]

The cows do like the feed if it does get hot, but the feed value is crap because the heat ruins the protein.

If the heat ruins the protein than how come haylage and silage even wrapped round bales have higher protein than when the crop is dried, all silage goes through a heat cycle.

I can't answer because I don't have a clue what the difference is. I just know that when proteins reach a certain temperature it is denatured (loses its shape & function). This is the reason an egg turns white when fried. The proteins are broken up and the "white" turns from colorless to white. When a bale heats to some temperature (my guess is its higher in wet hay than what silage typically gets?) the protein goes to pot. Had it happen once with some alfalfa that was baled too green. Opened them up and tried to get it fed before any damage was done. Cows took a dip and so did the protein value of the milk along with the milk urea nitrogen (MUN).

 

[wildcat]

I can see leaving the hay out for a few days, but if it was really baled too wet it seems to me it would take more than a few days to be safe in the shed.

 

[irked]

if it was really baled too wet it seems to me it would take more than a few days to be safe in the shed.

i think you're correct. one year i checked some hay that i had baled just to get out of the field. it had been rained on for days in the windrows and never dried out. i needed it out of the way so i just baled it up and planned on filling up some washes and ditches with it. it was so wet and baled so tight that it had water seeping out of it in the baler. i moved it into a swampy area so that nothing else would burn in case it caught on fire and stacked the bales about 10' apart. i was curious about the heating process, so i checked it twice a day to see how long it took to start cooling off. i made a simple probe out of two pieces of tubing welded into a t-shape that was long enough to go into the center of the bales. i sharpened an old broken 5/8 bolt and welded into one end to make a point. (a person could easily drill a hole in it to run a temp sensor down in it but i was only interested in hot to the touch or cool to the touch.) the bales that generated the most heat, with the probe too hot to even touch after a few minutes in the bale, did so until the 6th and 7th days before they started cooling back down.

i realize that the equipment was quite rudimentary and the method not very scientific, but it showed me what i needed to know: that the 2 or 3 days that i had always thought was enough to leave wet or questionable hay out...really wasn't long enough.

 

[mnmtranching]

If the hay is dry when baled, why not get it in the shed as soon as possible? That's the idea of shedding hay. One rain will lower the quality of your hay. If you bale it up to wet, leave it in the field and why take up valuable shed storage with musty hay. Save the shed for the good stuff.