Congratulations on getting in enough hay!
Everything we have are cold season grasses. Warm season grasses just don’t do well here, so no one plants them. Not worth the effort to establish (over several years), for the minimum returns in hay and not real beneficial as grazing for horses.
I have mixed plants in the pastures, which works pretty well in drought and heat times. We baled the big pasture this year, got 150 bales off it! Horses were not grazing it yet in May, so bales were a bonus.
Your hay sounds wonderful! where abouts is your farm?
Mid-Michigan, not far from Lansing. Clay-ish soil, which we fertilize yearly after doing soil testing. We want horses getting most of their nutrition from grazing in warm weather. Hay also needs to be nutritious, also fertilized yearly. I need to get hay samples to send in for testing, make sure diet things are balanced for our working horses.
ooof, CLAY! That’s hard to deal with. We have some patches of clay here and there. For us …when we find it, we actually harvest that soil until we hit rock. Lots of uses for clay. But as for a base in a field (hay or crop) …not fun!
Sincere question…Do you think that fertilizing the soil makes the grass more nutritious?
Clay does need ammendments, we spread horse bedding on it all winter. I get the 10 acres about 3/4s manure covered in that time with a very thin layer of wood fiber type bedding.as the annual ammendment addition. This helps the micro organisms in the soil to “pull down” the fiber, plant matter, into the soil to help clay be more absorbent, develop a good turf layer.
The annual fertilizing is ABSOLUTELY needed to get the needed minerals into the soil to feed the plants. Haying removes these minerals with feeding hay to the horses, not returning anything to the soil. Horses use those nutrients in their bodies, so horse manure is not really very good fertilizer like sheep, cattle or pig manure is.
We purchased the hayfields after they were dormant, not cut or fertilized for almost 25 years. Well covered with various weeds, scrub brush bushes, small trees. It was going back to forest, so it took a while to get cleared to plant hay grasses, then let them grow, develop roots, turf. I finally quit getting stuck on wet clay every time I drove over there! I mowed the new planting to 5 inches several times each season for 2 years after the seed went in. This forcied root growth instead of leaves. Reseeded where grass was sparse or as we cleared more ground, got rId of burn pIles.
I took multiple dirt samples from all over the fields, mixed them, got that soil tested. The fertilizer guy said it was the WORST soil test he had ever seen, in all his years at the fertilizer plant!! There were almost no lines showing color to indicate any mineral presence in the soil!! I was rather surprised because the weed cover “looked” thick, vigorous before we cut it down.
He suggested a plan of several small fertilizer applications a couple months apart, to get the total of needed amounts of minerals into the soil. Land could better absorb small amounts, much less chance of rain washing it away down the drainage ditches, using small amounts. So that is what we did. I got new soil tests done the next spring, for a different mix of fertilizer that first full summer. Showed some improvement, had mineral lines with color on that test! Again, put on spring and fall, to not overload the land trying to absorb it. Now, almost 7 years later, we do still soil testing, usually annually. My present fertilizer amounts needed are MUCH less, just keeping minerals balanced to have nutritious hay. My mineral lines now all have good color, show I have needed amounts to grow grass hay. If I would plant corn or beans, I would need different mineral balances in my fertilizer mixes.
My fertilizer guy is real happy with the soil test results. I am only applying fertilizer once yearly now, since I don’t need so much with better balanced soil. You have to replace minerals lost with baled hay removal. I am very happy with the hay test results, minerals in the acceptable ranges for horses, nothing low. Sugar tests high because it is grass hay, hard to avoid sugar in grass hay. We have no dietary issues in our horses because they are kept rather trim, no fat ones here, old or young. We are big believers in feeding forages instead of “grain” feedstuffs. Lots of grazing, though not 24 hours a day. Lots of good grass hay in winter. Their once daily corn and oat mix is for getting vitamins and Selenium/Vit E in them. No one gets over half a pound daily unless they are preparing for competition, still not over a pound then.
Fertilizing regularly does make a big difference in hay results. But without soil testing regularly, hay testing, “you don’t know what you are really missing!” Looks can be deceiving on hay bales. Some very nice looking hay we got contained almost no nutrition, our horses looked terrible by spring! This experience got me testing the hay because “looks” sure fooled us!! We had been buying hay for many years, thought we knew what we were doing. Felt pretty stupid looking at the thin horses.
Well done! And wonder of wonders, due to the last three weeks being very dry, I’ve now got my full amount of hay with no worries about the winter. Not only did my vet (also a horse guy and a great friend) put up some wonderful second cut round bales, but he just told me this morning his son cut and baled about 250 square bales. Yay!!!
Well an update, not too awful. I got a ton of alf mix for not a bad price, but as we were moving it around for the bigger delivery, a nasty surprise. Solidly half was moldy and felt damp inside. I’m currently feeding the carefully checked remaining bales as quickly as is safe and I complained to the hay guy. He is going to replace it with straight alfalfa (he says).
Different supplier delivered two tons of timothy/blue grass and two tons straight alf, and just perfect timing because I had two bales of the timothy from the year before left. Phew.
Oh man! You dodged a bullet.
Let me tell you the stupid thing I just did with that new gorgeous round bale of second cutting grass hay wrapped in netting, resting in my utility trailer: I carefully cut the netting and started slipping on the BIG hay net, and the hay was so soft the bale settled. So much so, that I couldn’t roll it off the trailer. So I moved the vehicle/trailer so it was on a little slope, placed a 6X6 chunk of lumber on the ground so the bale wouldn’t roll away, and pried the bale off the trailer.
Upon which, it happily rolled down the slope, over the 6X6, unrolling as it went. MFer.
So a 15 minute job turned into a 90 minute job, plus a call to my neighbor to have him help me shove the bulk of the hay in the BIG bag back on the trailer. For chrissss sakes!
It worked out alright, because I had a second BIG bag, plus assorted smaller nets, plus a round bale feeder rack, plus a place to store the trailer full of hay under shelter (and I don’t need the trailer any time soon), but lesson to self: Don’t cut the mesh until the bale is off the trailer.
What a doofus I am. 
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