We started feeding weaned calves, our coming 3 year old cows and open cows last week.
The bales have had about 12" of rain on them in the last few months but there is basically zero damage.
I am MUCH more concerned about the moisture of the hay in the windrow when baling than the moisture that comes down after it's wrapped up.
And of course it depends on your baler. Our NH 7090's make a nice tight bale.
Potential spontaneous combustion?
BE STRONG IN THE LORD, AND IN HIS MIGHTY POWER. ~ Ephesians 6:10
Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. --Winston Churchill
Rug, a stack fire would be the worse case scenario.
Generally speaking you run into mold and or 'stack burnt' hay.
Stack burnt hay is when the hay cooks itself inside the bale(no fire, just high moisture/high heat curing). Alfalfa will turn a brown color, or if it's really bad, black.
The cows actually love to eat hay that is a little 'burnt'(it has an almost sweet, tobacco smell) but loses feed value and gives the cows the chits.
But the term "deer blind" is a little ambiguous. Deer were being pushed hard so we were driving to figure out where they were so we could get ahead of them. Something caught our eye and we had to go back to look. Farm yard on the north side of the road. To the south a small shed of some sort with no doors or window glass. Then we saw it, a yearling lifted it's head and peeked at us through a window.
The key elements in human thinking are not numbers but labels of fuzzy sets. -- L. Zadeh
Old goat up the road from the cabin used to fetch his round bales in and stack 'em as high as his loader reached - Four, three, two then one row on top, IIRC? Then he tarped them with huge plastic tarps, tied down with old tires as "anchor weights". Well, one year his grandsons did the tarping. Month later when I was up, there he was on top of the pile, rasslin' loose tarps back into place. I think he was 79 or 80 at the time?
Stopped and helped him get everything back where he wanted it, held the extension ladder.for him to get back down again. Cussing the entire time about how [bleep] worthless kids were and if you wanted it done right, do it yourself. Miserable ol' cuss, like that ever since I knew him from kid on up. One of the other farmers came by as we were about done. Later stopped at the cabin to needle me about sucking up to ol' grumpass.
The old devil is gone now. His oldest son and grand kids now just bring the bales in and let 'em sit near the beef barn. No more super stacks on that place. As of this past September, half the bales were still scattered out in the field. Most of the folks around there round bale once, then turn the cattle into the fields to graze, w/electric fences up...
If three or more people think you're a dimwit, chances are at least one of them is right.
"All that the South has ever desired was that the Union, as established by our forefathers, should be preserved, and that the government, as originally organized, should be administered in purity and truth." – Robert E. Lee
As far as round bales scattered around a field, multitude of reasons from not enough time to no storage to too lazy. FWIW, round bales left out in the elements here in KY lose up to 3" to 4" of outer layer due to rot from rain and snow. 3" to 4" on a 48" roll may not seem like a lot. But, I'm told it amounts to 25% to 30% of the hay volume in a soft center roll. Stacking them in a pyramid pile outside just exacerbates the rot.
Many folks in our area are building the hoop frame fabric barns/shelters for storing hay rolls out of the weather. Son In Law has put up two of them. He says the only thing better are the silage wrap bales.
They make good dove hunting blinds around here. Put my stool in the shade of one quite a few times.
"Allways speak the truth and you will never have to remember what you said before..." Sam Houston Texans, "We say Grace, We Say Mam, If You Don't Like it, We Don't Give a Damn!"
Timely topic for a non agrarian. I have spent the last month in Idaho and Wyoming and have observed "hay" in multiple configurations. Yesterday I encountered actual cowboys who successfully found 5 stray bovines way up Cliff Creek in Wyoming and they explained the whole process to my wife and I. Ranching/farming is the last bastion of the American west and, is to me, fascinating.
A few days ago I hiked 1.5 miles up an overgrown 2 track on the edge of the Gros Ventre wilderness to find a substantial pole barn full of large bales and not a cow to be seen. Lots of Griz, wolf and elk tracks in the area but only old cow and horse turds. You guys who do this for a living, on the edge of civilization, should market adventure tours to the curious. I am available to help promote this untapped income stream.
Sammo and Large James, you guys need an agent! Call me.
mike r
Don't wish it were easier Wish you were better
Stab them in the taint, you can't put a tourniquet on that. Craig Douglas ECQC
Down here they are still in the fields because it has been so wet. Also, with all the rain we've gotten some folks got 4+ cuttings this year and all their barns are full and they have no where to put them. Good problem to have.
Moisture in the windrow, green hay, will also wrap around rollers and burn out bearing. So you get to crawl in there and cut that crap out with a pocket knife. Bad way to find out the dew hasn't quite burned off yet, sets the tone for the day.
1 option everyone has missed is "bale grazing", You can google that. But if it's the last cutting, they might throw up some hot wire and move it as needed to allow livestock access to more hay.
I've never met anyone here doing it, but I used to know 1 woman in MN that did. She raised sheep, and was a pretty firm believer that anything that rusted, depreciated, she didn't want around so she never had a tractor. She trucked the hay in and had her neighbor place it in a grid around the field.