Outside round bale storage

[Anonymous-0]

What's the best way to store round bales without a building? I've tried stacks with tarps, rows with tarps, on pallets, etc but this year seems the best results were simply 5-6 bales in a row, end to end, on the ground with no covering, with 2-3 feet between rows. These seemed to keep the best. Is a hay shed really worth the cost and hassle?

 

[Don-Wi]

MOst of that depends on the use of your hay. If you're selling it to others, I'd say if you can keep it inside and dry, that hay will be more appealing to any customers. If it's just for your own herd and you have room to store it outside, then go for it.

With a shed, you can stack it as high as your loader can reach, so you can store more hay in a smaller area, and not worry about them getting wet in between each other and spoiling.

Donovan from Wisconsin

 

[Hootie]

I have used a plastic sleeves and set them on skids or some old tires and had good luck with it. Still some waste but nothing like not covering them. I got them plastic sleeves from my local farm store (Rual King) for $60.00 for 25 sleeves and you can reuse them.

 

[Anonymous-0]

Hootie, can you fill me in on a little detail about the plastic sleeves. How big are the bales they fit; 4 X 5 is the size of my bales. How do you get them on the bales. Do they stick over the ends of the bales. Thanks. Tom

 

[kyhayman]

The greatest loss is off the bottom. Using plastic twine cuts down on the bales falling apart. The best method to cut down on bottom loss is to use a crushed stone base on geotextile fabric. Its a lot cheaper than a building.

To me, it all boilds down to what"s the hay worth. If its stacked outside with no base and you lose 20 percent of a 50 dollar round bale thats 10 bucks. If you lose 20 percent of a 10 dollar bale its a lot less. Over 500 rolls and 10 bucks a piece loss, 5000 dollars, will pay for a decent hay shed in a year.

 

[JerryMT]

We stack our's two high; the lower one is verticle and the upper on is horizontal. The rows are two feet apart.

 

[JerryMT]

We stack our's two high; the lower one is verticle and the upper on is horizontal. The rows are two feet apart.

 

[Tech 7]

Here is my 2 cents....180 4X4-1/2ft bales stored this year net wrapped and placed on 10X20 truck tires. Two marks on the bale where it contacts the tire most of these bales are fed to our ewe flock although last spring hay was in short supply and I had excess. Sold '07 bales for $40 ea., '06 for 35 ea.(more luck than management).I like the tires as they are cheap and easy to come by,they don't rot and (usually)don't have nails in them like skids do.Net wrapping costs about $1-$2 per bale over twine but few around here use twine anymore.If I was selling hay all the time I might think different but I think $15-$20,000 would disappear into a shed pretty quick. I can't justify that, Bob

 

[thurlow]

Is a shed worth the cost and hassle? For me, it was, 'though I always had more hay stored outside than in. Never used net-wrap or sleeves; never put the hay on anything but the (well-drained) soil. The key is to keep as much moisture off as possible; stack with ends touching....tightly, etc. I realize that lots of folks only keep a few cows, but....maybe......think outside the box about building a hay barn. Do you have some trees you could cut for lumber? You can quickly pay for a cheap sawmill and you don't have to have first quality logs/lumber to put up a decent barn. I had three 56 x 56 ft barns; they'd hold 200-215 five by six ft. bales each. Also had 3 smaller barns; if I'd started building them earlier in my life, I'd of had enough for all my hay. Excluding labor (which was essentially free, since employees were drawing a check whether they worked or not) I only had the cost of hardware and roofing tin in them........less than $2000 in some cases, back when tin was cheaper. Had my own little sawmill for a long time; figure it and the barns paid for themselves numerous times. I typically fed about 90-100 (5 x 6) bales per week; no way I wanted to deal with tires or pallets or sleeves or wrappings. Sold the last of the cows almost 4 years ago after being in the (commercial cow/calf) beef cattle business for 47 years; haven't missed any part of it...........

 

[Hootie]

Yes Tom Tec the sleeves are for a 5X6 bale. You slip them on while you have the bale up tranporting them. You can use them for a smaller bale just duck tape the extra under with duck tape and slip the duck tape onto the bottom side and set down for storage. I have some that I have used for 3 years. This would not be for someone that bales alot of hay, but for me 3 horses its works quite well.

 

[Anonymous-0]

I use the black slip on bale sleeves, they seem to last the longest, so far. Takes about 5 minutes per bale to put 'em on. Wind won't blow em off, but roosting buzzards claw 'em up, some.
Poke here

 

[IaGary]

Doug here in Iowa we have a lot of rain.

We spoil a lot of hay in Iowa.

After I built the hay barn in 93 I started using 25% to 35% less bales to get thru the winter.

So you do the math will saving 25% to 35% of your hay pay for a shed to store them in.

Gary

 

[Critter]

Just like you we've tried everything to store hay outside. Like IaGary said after building our hay barns we noticed we had too much hay roughly 30% difference. The hay barns are well worth the money for us. My 2 cents don't build 1 huge barn to hold all your hay, build 3 or 4 small ones if your large barn burns there goes your whole winter supply.

 

[Iowa Jim]

I was taught in several Ag Economics classes that a Hay Barn offered the quickest payback of any building you could have on a farm. As Iowa Gary shoed you save both on quality and quantity of the hay.

What other commodity do we treat so poorly as we do round bales of hay? Even with net wrap you will lose hay by storing it outside.

Jim

 

[Anonymous-0]

Thanks all. As usual, good comments that help the thinking process.

The idea of more than one shed never occurred to me, makes sense. I'm not a big operator by any means, so maybe build a smaller shed for some of the crop (that much I can afford) and still plan to set a few outside. If that all works then put up another shed next year.

Thanks again.

 

[kyhayman]

Thats certainly an option, then feed first whats placed outside. I whipped up a really simple shed a few years ago in a big hurry. Just stuck it on the side of an existing barn.

Shed is 17 feet on the high side and 15 feet on the low side, and extends 28 feet from the side of the barn (used 16 foot rough cut 2x6's for rafters). It runs the 60 foot length of the barn. I set 7-8 inch cedar poles in the ground for it, 14 feet apart. It holds right at 200 round bales stacked bottom bale on end, 2nd bale on it, and 3rd bale in the center between 2 of the 2nd tier bales. By using multicolored over run roofing the total cost including all hired labor was less than 3000 dollars.