Hay preservative systems for small squares?

[AKfish]

I just started feeding from the barn with about 350 small squares in it. When I baled it I had a few bales from the edge of the field that were 18 to 22 percent. Too wet but I had to get 'em off the field. The rest of the hay was averaging around 13 percent - I really like 10 - but I had to git 'er done!

Rained pretty steady the tail end of summer and darn near all fall. Ambient humidity was enough to rust yer shoes if you stood around a bit..

Those bales jumped to 20 percent the first week or so in the stack - uncovered in a 3-sided barn. They didn't heat bad; don't think I tested one that was above 75 degrees.

But, these first bales are just dustier than what you might have from stacked near a country road.

That's not an acceptable outcome for all the time and work we put into makin' hay!

I'm lookin' at a preservative setup for my square baler. I know next to nothin' about them but recall years ago rusty balers, etc. My question is for those that have used preservative and the pros and cons of that experience.

My thanks for any and all observations.

AKfish

 

[Tx Jim]

I have never used a hay preservative but I've seen this one advertised on Haytalk forum.
International Stock Food

 

[zzvyb6]

Use of propionic / propanoic acid ('acid') to try to inhibit hay from molding by spraying inbound hay at the baling chamber is not a new concept. In my experience, cows love it, horses hate it and will not eat hay with it and horse owner who buys hay hate it even worse. Its a very mild acid. You can smell and taste it (like vinegar) if a producer has used it.

I used to work for dairy farmer that baled with acid if the hay couldn't get enough dry time. When I had horses, I once bought some incredibly beautiful bales that my plugs would not go near.

When I started doing my own hay, I bought a moisture meter, and learned to set aside bales that would probably go bad.

The best 'solution' for me was to buy a tedder rake to fluff the cut hay when the dew was heavy. hay got rained on, and outer rounds dried slowly. Even hay that is drenched by several days of constant rain come clean, mold free and smell good after tedding. Tedding also breaks up the clumps of cut hay that can occur because of a jamb at the cutter bar, an other causes. This then gives you more consistent windrows when you rake it for baling.

Mine is a Kuhn GRS-25 that can be switched from a conventional rotary rake to the tedder via a gearshift and some wheel settings. I use its rake feature occasionally but my primary rake is a NH-55. The 55 ropes the windows so that wind doesn't blow them all around. My baler likes them better, too. The feeder pickup likes to draw in the roped hay so less in left on the ground. The rotary rake's windrows are 'fluffier' and tend to blow around if the wind picks up.

Acid is a last resort. If you sell any of your hay to 'horse people', the word will spread fast. Never saw a baler rust out because of 'acid', only because it's been left outside all year with hay still in it.

 

[AKfish]

Thanks Jim - I'll look into that. ZZVYB6 - I ted my hay already - although you made a real good point about tedding in the morning when the dews on. I haven't been doing that and I will this next season..
Also, adding preservative would be a monumental waste of money if my horses and my customers horses won't eat it!
I've read conflicting opinions regarding horses eating treated hay... Wish I could try a few bales. There's a fella about 30 miles from me that uses proprionic acid on 5'x6' round bales. He's one of only a handful of operators that have cows in this part of the state.
You can darn near count all the cows on the Kenai Peninsula with your fingers and toes! Plenty of horses - that's where you can sell some hay and that's why I don't have a round baler.
Might have to buy a round bale to feed up, though!

Appreciate the comments.

AKfish

 

[zzvyb6]

There is a groundswell of folks around here lately that are round baling because of the lack of help for square bale production. However, you can park a stationary square baler and feed/unroll a large roundbale into it. Since a large bale contains about 40 or so equivalent square bales, it blows a horse owner's mind to get really fresh looking and smelling square bales to take home. There are some videos on YouTube showing this being done. I suspect there are a few commercial unrollering machines by now, but a chainsaw or a hand hay saw is all you really need. Even the horses like the 'fresh' hay in these converted bales.

A JD-348 has a wide enough throat to swallow a wide round bale as it unrolls. All you need is a spear that's easy to spin. Dump the first layer or so and it can self unwind. Or you can make a double roller set with one driven by a small motor. You need a clutch or belt release just in case it gets too heavy, but the 348 behind a 4430 gulps it all down. Having a kicker on the back would be something to sell tickets to (maybe hard on an aluminum pickup, though.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTId1dTQA_0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXDrxnGa-cI

 

[RickB]

Horse owners here are mixed on the idea of feeding treated hay. You definitely need personal experience to draw on if you want to sell treated hay. Buffered propionic acid isn't hard on equipment like the old unbuffered product was years ago. HarvestTec makes application systems tailored to specific balers with as much or little complexity as you prefer.

 

[AKfish]

Labor is just as difficult to find around here as anywhere. kids can make as much money at McDonalds without the calluses. Small squares up here are currently selling for $12-14 a bale. If you invest in a round baler and then go to the effort and expense to rebale the rounds into squares what would you need to charge??
Likely wind up with alot fewer horses in the country. Folk's couldn't afford to feed 'em.

Thanks Rick - I'll check 'em out. And, I am gonna buy one of those treated round bales, too. I need to have a little first hand experience with the product myself.

AKfish

 

[Tx Jim]

There is a groundswell of folks around here lately that are round baling because of the lack of help for square bale production. However, you can park a stationary square baler and feed/unroll a large roundbale into it. Since a large bale contains about 40 or so equivalent square bales,

I'm curious what these 40 sq bales produced from one rd bale weight???? My neighbor is unrolling some 4X5.5 rd bales he purchased from me and is only making 19-20 sq bales weighing 55#s each from each rd bale.

 

[Bigfoot62]

I'm curious what these 40 sq bales produced from one rd bale weight???? My neighbor is unrolling some 4X5.5 rd bales he purchased from me and is only making 19-20 sq bales weighing 55#s each from each rd bale.

That's what I was thinking too, but I've never tried it myself.

 

[AKfish]

That's what I was thinking too, but I've never tried it myself.

I'd like to have those customers that could even begin to afford a re-baled square bale!!! Must have some high dollar horses and/or not much "horse sense"!

AKfish

 

[jagyzf]

I have a friend that uses Harvest tec and likes it. As Rick said horse people are mixed. I know when we bale (I help the guy) we only put a small amount on the hay. He puts it on just about everything beyond the driest of his 1st cutting. This year was the 1st time I know of due to poor weather forecasts he really needed it badly. A couple of times we had hay down that just wasn't ready, but with rain coming had no choice. The hay never heated and was great, he even sold a few wagons of it about a month later.

A few people I know around here do the same (put it on everything), they say it does keep the bales from getting "dusty" over the winter.

 

[hslogger]

I have never made hay myself. I have bought hay out of the fields and sometimes a barn for over forty years. If the hay has dampness feel to it, it stays in the field or in a "gonna use soon" stack NOT in my barn. All my hay when it goes in the barn gets salted. Layer of bales go on a wood floor that has been salted. Next layer of bales goes on top of the first layer that has salt on top of it. Each layer gets salted including the top.

I have found that this helps ****** mold, keeps the horses thirsty and drinking when they don't want to but should, in the winters. Damp hay will not go in my barn. One of the things I dislike about bale wagons, the only thing, is that the bales aren't touched by humans. When we pick up bales in the field by hand or with a Henry pop up loader, we cull out the heavy ones, ones that seem heavier than the norm. Salt and common sense, vigilance work for us.

 

[tcreeley]

I have been buying 200-300 bales of hay for my horses since 1976. I grew up on a dairy farm. I have bought all kinds of hay- abandoned fields to nice timothy/mix. Hay is hay. Unless it is dried properly, it will mold in the barn. I can always tell the bad bales- have a heaviness to them - can be from the shady or wet side of the field. Feed those right away or don't take them. Mold and dust injures the lungs.
I have also learned that you cannot store even well dried hay directly on the ground, even inside a building- molds from the damp in the ground. It has to be up on a wood floor, or on pallets laid down over a moisture barrier on the ground. I never have dust in well dried hay up on the second floor of my barn.

-I would never feed my horses treated hay- why would I want to? Hay off a recently sludge fertilized field gives horses colic 2 and 3 months later- no matter how dry and nice it looked going into the barn. -Lost two horses this way before I traced it to the hay.
I'd keep the additives out of the field.

Guy I buy from now- last 14 years- saves out a field of timothy/mix. He doesn't fertilize it - keeps it as is. It produces nice hay - sells me mine and keeps the rest. The hay is always excellent. The guy has a nose for the weather. Another guy up the road does it by the book- his book! He cuts on a sunny morning, has it rained on overnight, turns brown in the field drying for some days, baled and he has mulch for sale. He is the most unlucky guy going. Once in a while he gets a good crop in.

One old trick I remember for bad hay being fed to the cows was to use a watering can full of molasses and walk down the row sprinkling the bad hay to get the cows to eat it. Nothing wasted, but no nutrition in it. Less milk.

 

[AKfish]

Had a long talk with one of the local producers that uses propionic acid with a Harvest Tec system. Called him to buy a couple bales to feed my horses (and to hear about his experiences). Well, he didn't have any to sell me 'cause he hasn't used it for a couple of years, now.

Still has the system in place on his round baler - as a backup - but he's doing hayledge/baleage now. Has been training his horse customers the merits of hayledge. One gal lost a horse and seems to believe his hay is at fault but he's not convinced nor has he seen any testing that would indicate a botulism problem.

Nonetheless, he wasn't happy with the inconsistency of the application rates and the final product. He believes it was due to the fact that the computer was not analyzing the hay moisture fast enough to adjust the amount of preservative being applied.

He bales with a 90+hp tractor and windrows with a V-wheel rake. I think he said he was baling around 24 tons per hour (30 bales - 1 bale every 2 minutes). So, he figured that the moisture sensors were only reading @ 4 second intervals and the amount of hay moving into the bale chamber was great enough that some of the hay was not adequately treated.

You round baler experts can evaluate that one way or another... I've never rolled a round bale; so, I don't really know.

He did give me another hay producers name that uses the HarvestTec product and I'll give him a shout in the near future.

AKfish

 

[RickB]

Moisture sensors on round balers are inherently less accurate than the same sensors on square balers for two reasons:

Round balers only offer the outside of stems to the sensors, prperly mounted sensors on square balers will read moisture at the cut end of stems.

A high rate of feeding into round balers can lower the sampling rate per pound of hay and increase the amount of hay that is baled between a sensing event and the control system's reaction to the results.

The level of technology in the particular system and the operator's supplied input parameters are also contributing factors to success/failure.

 

[Tx Jim]

I agree with Rick that rd baler installed moisture sensors aren't as accurate as on sq balers or hand held testers. The rd baler I owned with moisture sensors & the others I've seen are mounted in the side wall of baler therefore only test mostly the outside of windrow.

 

[jagyzf]

The system we use doesn't rely on a moisture meter. You manually have to set the application rate, so it's for worst case. We do have a moisture meter on our current baler (New Holland 570) but didn't on our Deere in years past.

Anyone I know around here with a large square baler put the stuff on so heavy you can smell it 1/2 mile away when they are baling.

We have been using it for 8-9 years now with good results, mainly as a defense against dusting. As I said in earlier thread it wasn't until this year we actually put in hay that we wouldn't have gotten without it. Those bales stayed in the wagons for a week anyway before they were put in the barn. Then 3-4 weeks later several loads of that hay were sold. Person buying knew what they were buying and was very happy.

 

[AKfish]

Yup... What you're all saying makes sense. I couldn't help but wonder... Why not slow down just a bit and/or pull the wings on that rake in another cutter swath?

He also mentioned that the hay (even in the middle of the bale) felt moist to the touch and some of his customers were concerned about that. I shoulda asked if they ever totally dry down; but, forgot to.

HarvestTec fella did say that the computer and tank and some of the hardware, pump, would be able to migrate to a round baler platform in the future if desired. That sounded positive to me...but, using on a round baler appears to be somewhat more problematic vs a square baler.

In my mind, the juries still out on palatability and successfully feeding the treated hay to horses. I'm fairly convinced that it's not harmful but less so, regarding how well they'll eat the hay.

Appreciate the talk.

AKfish

 

[Tx Jim]

AKfish
Did you ever investigate this hay preservative I mentioned to you called Hay Guard?

 

[AKfish]

AKfish
Did you ever investigate this hay preservative I mentioned to you called Hay Guard?

I did chase that a bit, Jim. IIRC, it's a sulfer based preservative and is more expensive to use. I did not find an applicator "system" for the product, though. I'm guessing that you would need to buy the hardware from a different company.

AKfish