Large round bales and spray preservative?

[bjcsc]

I have been making hay for many years and still don't know what "horse hay" is, can you enlighten me?

Around here our grass hay is bermuda. When you pick up round bales, they are always in two separate areas: cow hay and horse hay. I figured the same thing as you and Mike120: Prettier hay for more money, i.e. clever marketing. So I bought some of the cow hay rolls as they were $10 cheaper. There was a big difference. The cow rolls had lots of other stuff in them, most notably briars. I ended up wasting at least a third of each of the 30 bales I bought. I raised heck with the hay guy, and he said that's why it's cow hay. They cut the hay for the horses from the best parts of their fields and then the cow hay from the rest, including the edges.

Maybe you guys are good and produce consistent quality rolls. Around here they aren't that good and the rolls that fall below the bar are sold as cow hay...

 

[Lazy J]

Don't forget the effect of the acid on the baler: It will cause corrosion on all the metal parts it comes in contact with. This is the reason you see a lot of relatively new balers up for sale whose bale case is rotted out....

Buffered organic acids do not cause corrosion, they do act as a surfactant which can act to remove the paint.

When I worked for one of the major hay preservative manufacturers we conducted corrosion studies continually to ensure the buffering process was working.

Jim