Wrapping Dry Hay

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WFfarm

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Fed some nice timothy hay we baled the end of June. We diameter wrapped almost all our round bales this year, as we do not have space inside to store them. we have very little spoilage. Just darkened on the ends and a little rot on the very bottom. Still almost green just under the surface. We figure it cost us about $1.50-$1.70 in materials and we save about 3-4 square bales worth of spoilage.

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Wrapping pays unless your hay is really cheap.
Hay sheds are similar. They pay off for alfalfa mix here, but not for grassy hay.
Don't like dealing with the plastic thou.
 
When they make / we can afford, an inline wrapper that can handle 70" bales without diffculty, we would be wrapping every bale we make.
 
Wrapping pays unless your hay is really cheap.
Hay sheds are similar. They pay off for alfalfa mix here, but not for grassy hay.
Don't like dealing with the plastic thou.
We only put about 2-3 layers of plastic. Not as thick as what they use for bailage. some of the bailage bales we have bought had almost 1/4" thick of plastic. We just stuff in a contractor garbage bag and but out with the weekly garbage pickup.

Our Alfalfa/timothy hay is really nice, the cows will about run you over to get to it. We try to give them a variety of different bales throughout the winter. We save our second cutting alfalfa/grass hay square bales for after they start calving.
 
When they make / we can afford, an inline wrapper that can handle 70" bales without diffculty, we would be wrapping every bale we make.
Our bales are 6ft diameter x 5ft wide. I can't say wrapping is easy. It takes two people and its best to do them the day you bale when they are good and round.20200619_182147.jpg
 
Our bales are 6ft diameter x 5ft wide. I can't say wrapping is easy. It takes two people and its best to do them the day you bale when they are good and round.View attachment 1863
We had a McHale single bale wrapper for several years. It the bale did not have a flat spot one could wrap a six foot bale. Our inline is capable of wrapping 66 inch bales. In both cases it is simpler and hassle free to make 60 inch bales and not have to fix screwups. We have hauled and wrapped over our rough ground in excess of 200 bales in a day. KISS method applies here to many things.
 

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