The Life of a Custom Mowing contractor

[Hay Dude]

Much of it will depend upon your weather conditions and soil types.
I have been around a lot of Western irrigated hay that is stored outdoors, years ago that would have been small squares now it's large squares. In those arid climates the hay will stay quite good. If stacked on bare ground the bottom tier will be moldy and bad at least halfway up, the top tier will have bad hay for 6"s or so.

However in the NorthEast with it's much wetter and higher humidity numbers year round the amount of loss will be much higher.
Poor quality hay ground or chopped up and mixed with good feed will allow cows to sustain and stay somewhat healthy.
Older brood cows can survive on poor quality hay, if they are still nursing a calve that calve will not do as good as a cow getting higher quality feed. Older brood cows can actually be over fed on high quality hay with good digestibility and high protein (early cut prior to maturity), and get to fat and have troubles calving.
Dairy animals especially producing milk cows will do quite poorly on low quality feed and it can actually taint the taste of the milk, as it can effect the flavor of beef animals.

I calculated the rough amount of feed lose on a round bale previously but here we go again just for sh*ts and grins.
Start out with a big round bale 5' x 5' which would be approximately 98.17 cu. ft..
Reduce the size by 6" all around including the ends so now we are down to a 4 x 4 bale which is about 50.27 cubic feet,
dang almost a 50% loss of feed or twice as much money for the same amount of quality feed.
Many people will say that the waste is much less, OK.
Start out with that same 5x5 round bale, lets only have 2" of waste on the ends and lets say the bottom has 4" of bad feed the top and sides only 3" so lets use 3.25" for average loose.
54" x 53.5" which ends up with 70.25 cu. ft. of good feed or about 3/4's of what we started with.

Just my feelings and opinion from handling a lot bales both small square (mostly 2 twine bales but some 2 and 3 wire bales) and round, and feeding animals for several decades.

LouNY, I’d agree with the numbers you have for waste on large rounds, more likely the bigger number for loss. I don’t farm but have in-laws who do and drive by farms almost every day. I’m also surprised how many large rounds are wasted and don’t get used at all. About a half mile from my house there must be 20 to 30 of them that are obviously never going to be used.

Looks good to me.

My Outdoor storage strategy is the bottom 2 or 3 4x4x8 edge stacked and the 4th up top is on it’s side.
The middle 2 bales are gold. The bottom will have some minor decay, but still 85% good.
The top bales are 60% good, but I never feed them. They go to mushroom usually with the bottom bales.
The middles look excellent, even after months outside.

 

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My Outdoor storage strategy is the bottom 2 or 3 4x4x8 edge stacked and the 4th up top is on it’s side.
The middle 2 bales are gold. The bottom will have some minor decay, but still 85% good.
The top bales are 60% good, but I never feed them. They go to mushroom usually with the bottom bales.
The middles look excellent, even after months outside.

"85% good" will animals avoid the bad, if they're given plenty of good?
Or do you give it to those animals that can tolerate it without substantially reducing their 'product quality'?

 

[Hay Dude]

"85% good" will animals avoid the bad, if they're given plenty of good?
Or do you give it to those animals that can tolerate it without substantially reducing their 'product quality'?

Many cattle I see love to eat the crappy stuff. I think the owners are more offended by it than the 4-leggers.

I usually don’t sell it as feed at all, but I have some guys who love to buy cheap hay. They know what they are getting, and they don’t care. Then there’s others who are so picky, you’d think they were feeding it to their precious little grandchildren.

 

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Many cattle I see love to eat the crappy stuff. I think the owners are more offended by it than the 4-leggers.

I usually don’t sell it as feed at all, but I have some guys who love to buy cheap hay. They know what they are getting, and they don’t care. Then there’s others who are so picky, you’d think they were feeding it to their precious little grandchildren.

I certainly wouldn't feed it to my cats!

 

[Hay Dude]

I certainly wouldn't feed it to my cats!

I don’t think they like hay, no matter how good or bad!

 

[Hay Dude]

Cleaning up some old bales yesterday. Note the timber chunks on the left.

The timber chunks will be cleaned up and a big part of my winter work schedule.

Below: Another small section view of just a portion of the fallen timber. I really see some opportunity here to pull hardwood logs, but I don’t know what $ value there is….

 

[sixdogs]

There are many happy times doing hay and related but one of the best is finishing a job a day or two before Christmas and heading home in the holiday spirit.

 

[Hay Dude]

“Got the Call” today.
The call that says “I’m sorry to bother you on Christmas Eve, but we’re out of hay”.

So off I go to deliver a bale to a customer’s hay hut on Christmas Eve afternoon/ Sunday.

To the near left you can see the East Penn railroad “split”. The branch I’m crossing in the next picture goes to a terminal in Nottingham, PA. Home of Herr’s Potato Chips & foods.
The branch in the middle goes to Wilmington, DE.
To the far left is the old stone piers and steel girders crossing the lowlands. It’s been out of service since the early 80’s. It went to Wawa, PA.

Crossing the branch to Nottingham.

 

[sixdogs]

Great pictures.

 

[EddieWalker]

I enjoy seeing the pictures of your backroads with the hay bale in front. I wonder what is scarier to the cars on the road, the giant bale of hay, or the hay spears?