Drying Hay

We bought the rest of the hay that we will need for winter on Saturday. It is very nice hay, grown without chemicals, for a good price. This is the third cutting which means that it was cut when the plants were still young and tender. A lot of farmers in this area are still making second cutting which is too ripe for good nutrition and palatability.

The only problem with this hay is that it was baled a day early. Instead of baling on Friday, my preference would have been for it to have been tedded on Friday and baled on Saturday. Because it was baled early, it is pretty moist. It needs to be dried out a little bit or it will spoil (mold) inside the bales. In a worst case scenario, wet bales could heat up enough to combust. We decided not to put it ino our hay mow beacuse there's not enough ventilation up there and the bales would sit there and cook.

The top photo shows some of the hay stacked in one of our barns with a large fan blowing on it and a door open behind the stack to circulate air. It is stacked on edge and the layers of bales have been salted. Our neighbor, who helped me stack the hay, loaned us the drum fan.

The lower photo shows more hay stacked in another barn. You can see that it, too, is stacked on edge and we left spaces between the bales to permit good air flow. This barn has doors at both ends and one in the middle so there is a good flow of air whenever there is a breeze.

We'll probably leave this hay stacked in this way for about a month or so before we restack it closer together.