Hay and bad weather

I’m in New Zealand and while it is summer, it has been quite wet ie several days of rain (from drizzle to torrential downpours) then one fine day, then repeat. December and January are our main hay months but it isn’t possible at present.

What would you do in these circumstances?

  • watch it go to seed, and cut and bale much later?
  • sell as standing hay for baylage?
  • sell as standing hay for silage?

What I see here, also a very wet growing season, are a few different strategies.

If you can get the equipment on the field, mow. The cut grass is just left in the field as waste. The upside is that it regrows and then when you can cut and bale the grass isn’t too mature. Will depend on how much growing season you have left etc.

Wait and cut and bale the overly mature hay later.

Haylage / silage isn’t a thing in my area, but sometimes farmers will bale hay for “construction” use in these sorts of conditions. I dunno how this works but my hay farmer does it regularly.

Graze the hay fields.

When I had the front of my property cleared, there were rules about reseeding the easement with a certain DOT mix and then they rented a shredder and bought perfectly good bales of grass hay to spread over the seeds. I would have been happier to see ‘mulch hay’ or something lower quality being used!!

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It would have to be not very mature to be cut, left, and not cause it to smother the growth underneath it.

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That’s not been an issue that I’ve seen here but we are so far south that it may be the grass species.

What farmers do here on hay they can’t get dry, is spray hay in the baler with proprionic acid. This is a vinegar based product, perfectly edible, which will prevent molding and fermentation. Sprayers mount on the baler, spray according to moisture levels they read on the hay.

You can find information about the spray on the internet, learn the parameters of application to use it.

There can be a strong “pickle smell” with the vinegar base, but it is not offensive. Sprayed hay should NOT TOUCH any unsprayed hay. The moisture will transfer to the dry hay and cause molding in the dry hay.

When we were buying hay one farmer used this proprionic acid spray, and put up some pretty wet hay. I did not know much then about doing hay then, so not sure how wet it really was after the rain. Seemed like he cut one day, then baled the next day afternoon. There just was only a day or two between showers ALL SUMMER. He needed hay for his cattle and horses. Hay was half alfalfa/lucerne, half grass, gorgeous stuff! Never got hot, stayed bright green even after a year old. The spray did make the bales considerably heavier to handle! Normal 50# bales were closer to 70#. We did not have to feed as much hay either, it retained 100% of it’s calories! Had quite a bit more left come spring than we normally would… Our horses liked this hay, ate it readily, vacuumed up every morsel! I have heard other people’s horses don’t care for this sprayed hay. The hay farmer’s horses and cattle ate it, other hay customers horses ate it, every stem without issues.

You will hear using the acid spray will shorten the life of baler, rusting them out, which may be true. However not being able to get ANY hay put up is worse! Farmer friend said shorter baler life was part of the cost of doing business as a hay farmer. He did not use the spray for every hay crop, just when wet weather was not letting hay dry enough to bale

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Most of the time we can get ours cut when it is still worth cutting. Even if some of the heads go to seed, it may be a tad stemmy you still have good undergrowth. While not ideal my animals consume everything they can get thankfully :slight_smile:

Hay is too precious to be that picky.

We only cut , bale and dispose of it if it has gotten rained on( heavily) once down and is past saving with a tedder.

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I’d let it stand until you get a dry week, bale it even if over-mature, and use it as filler/forage. And go on the market now to buy nutritious hay. With each feeding, mix a flake of your filler hay in with the purchased good stuff.