Getting Hay

It's that time of the year... time to re-fill our hay loft with precious hay. For anybody who has no farm animals, it seems easy enough... cut grass, bale, transport, stack and store.
Well, there is definitely more to it than meets the eye - especially a lot of sweat!

This year, we decided to buy the hay from a local farmer, pick it up in the field with our truck and flat bed trailer and also get it into the loft and stack it ourselves.

First of all, not all hay is the same. there is timothy hay, brome hay, both types are grass hay; then there is alfalfa hay, hay full of clover, hay with too much weed... The list could probably go on and on, it is regionally very different what kind of grasses and legumes grow best.
Most horse owners will buy only one or two kinds of hay and refuse to use other types for their horses. The protein content can be very different and have great effects on the horses health and temperament. An "easy keeper" is a horse that will thrive on a low protein diet and should receive grass hay only with just a little bit if any supplemental grain or pellets.

For the farmer, the most difficult part is to judge when to cut the grass. Cut grass needs to dry, the faster the better, and should not be rained on at all. It needs to be turned, and eventually, baled with a baler. Some bigger operations load up the hay bales as soon as they are baled, transport them and store them somewhere safe and dry, but i have seen hay bales sitting in the fields waiting to be picked up everywhere this year. Once the hay is baled, it should definitly not get rained on at all anymore, as this will most often lead to moldy hay inside the bale, which can make the hay unpalatable at best and dangerous to eat for the intended animals in the worst cases.

Another danger of wet or not suffieciently dried hay is that it can lead to "spontanteous combustion" while being stored! Slightly wet hay will decompose, and decomposing produces heat. Under the right conditions, when stacked rather tightly in a hay loft that is hot from the outside temperatures, this can lead to combustion which can burn the whole barn down!

But back to our hay. We were hauling and stacking, hauling and stacking, then unloading and tossing, and shifting and finally stacking again all Thursday long. It is so much hard work!

We came upon a hay elevator earlier this year - it's really just a very basic conveyor belt, about 7-10 ft long, that one positions with one end on the ground and the other in the doorway or opening to the loft. Then, one can put the hay bales on it and it carries them up into the loft. Ours is electric, so all we need to run it is an outlet. IT SURE BEATS THROWING THE BALES INTO THE LOFT!!!
Just for the records, a bale of hay is usually about 2x2x3 ft large and weighs anywhere from 60-80 lbs. I could definitely tell that i had been lifting some weight after just stacking about 80 bales onto our trailer, and we still had to unload and get another trailer full!

Unfortunately, i hurt my calf jumping off the completely loaded first trailer and had so much problem with my leg in the end, that two of our friends came over and helped Matt get the hay into the loft. Of course it started pouring, too, as we were getting done - we had about another 10 or 15 bales to go when it started raining dogs and cats. Typical Colorado thunderstorm.. we shoved some of the bales into the barn really quick, and used the bales that did stay outside first over the next few days, so no damage done. Thanks to Andrea and Jessica for all their help!

Unfortunately for the farmer, we were the first to pick up hay from his field, and he had at least as much more still sitting there as we picked up. I asked him what he was going to do with the bales that got rained on, and he said he would have to sell it for cheap. Too bad, it is some fine hay!