Research -- Haystacks

[alfreda89]

http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2007/07/30/territory/ter10.txt

Bill McIntosh uses a pitchfork to level the last few loads of hay on one of his stacks last week on the family ranch near Avon. “A loose haystack can sit here for 10 years and the quality of the hay will be the same, but you get any moisture in the baled hay and it will rot,” says McIntosh.

Not the best newspaper grammar, but worth visiting. I've also heard that there are ways of layering hay so rodents don't get into the stack. And a platform under the stack is even better.

Comments

[incandragon.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I'd heard a farmer say just the opposite. He liked rolled hay bales, because less hay touched the ground. He lost more hay to a hay "pile" because so much more was spread to the ground to rot.

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

Maybe what the soil type and annual rainfall are makes a difference?

I do remember something in a reference book about having a platform or such for the haystack, but not sure on it.

[tia-tarina.livejournal.com]

This 'Avon' sounds like a truly mythical place indeed.

I noticed a change in hay storage after a year. And some of my horses and sheep wouldn't eat it if it were that old. The cows sometimes would. Year old hay used to be sold for less money. Now that the hay market in Texas has gone nuts due to the insane weather, all bets are off.

I would have bought hay pellets (dehydrated, chopped, pressed into pellets) before I'd bought hay over two years old. Ten year old hay? I'd have burned it.

Rodents *always* got into it and in Texas, you have to worry about it spontainiously combusting, either because it might be too wet/green or because it's August and it's in a tin roofed shed. :(

Putting slatted pallets under the stack for air circulation helped some. A solid platform is next to useless. Might as well put it on the ground.

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

Putting slatted pallets under the stack for air circulation helped some.

Yes, it was a slatted platform. And I remember that they were stacking for optimal rain run-off. Perhaps they use almost all of it in a year, and the older stuff is used for bedding?

I'm about to call you, by the by...